Fasting and Eating for Health (14 page)

Glucose Metabolism—A Finely Tuned Balancing Act
Our brain and body tissues require glucose for survival. Without adequate glucose circulating throughout our bloodstream and other tissues we would die.

Thus the prevention of hypoglycemia is critical to our survival.

The two major hormones that control our circulating glucose level are
glucagon
and
insulin.
Basically, insulin drives the blood sugar down and glucagon raises it. Insulin drives the glucose out of the bloodstream and into the cells. Other hormones secreted to maintain our blood glucose level when we are not eating include
epinephrine, cortisol,
and
growth hormone.
The prevention of hypoglycemia between meals requires an intact liver and the appropriate regulatory hormones to control it.

The Glucose Tolerance Test

Reactive hypoglycemia cannot be accurately diagnosed merely by a glucose tolerance test. First, understand what occurs during a glucose tolerance test: Before any readings take place, patients must fast for 12 hours. They then ingest 100 grams of sugar. Every hour afterwards, for five hours, blood is drawn and the glucose level is monitored.

In the first hour after glucose ingestion, the patient's glucose level is high.

The body takes a bit of time to react to the very large quantity of glucose it has ingested, but is then stimulated to secrete an unnaturally large amount of insulin to rapidly lower the exceedingly high level of glucose that has entered the bloodstream. As insulin is secreted, the glucose level drops. Plasma glucose concentrations often reach nadirs of less than 50 mg (and sometimes less than 40) in normal people who experience no symptoms. However, when a person's glucose level drops to 60 mg or less (the lower range of normal) and they start to experience symptoms, a doctor labels that person hypoglycemic. This is overly simplistic.

The glucose tolerance test is notoriously unreliable. It is an artificial and stressful stimulation and it can be expected that many normal people will get sick from this experience. When a large dose of concentrated sugar (glucose) is consumed after an overnight fast, we can expect it to produce a sudden surge in insulin secretion in response to the unnatural stress on the pancreas. This situation (consuming a large amount of refined sugar) might make many of us feel ill, but this is not indicative of disease. Consuming such a quantity of refined carbohydrate is always stressful to our system and should definitely be avoided.

Other reactions and the release of additional counter-regulatory hormones 74

also occur to compensate for the insulin surge. Therefore, it is not only the lowered blood sugar that makes a person feel ill. Besides that, the majority of patients diagnosed by physicians as having hypoglycemia never had blood glucose levels below 60 mg on their glucose tolerance tests when they experienced symptoms.

In general, consuming concentrated sugars is stressful to the system.

Besides generating wide swings in blood sugar, the consumption of sweets can deplete the body of nutritional reserves needed for optimal immune and endocrine function. Refined sugar products and other concentrated sweets can cause excessive fluctuations of insulin and other hormones that can cause symptoms in healthy people. This does not mean they have hypoglycemia.

A more reliable way for individuals to discern if their symptoms correspond with low levels of glucose in their blood is to go to the doctor's office or laboratory at the exact moment when they begin experiencing their symptoms, and get their blood tested. People usually find that their blood sugar levels are not unusually low at the time. In fact, it is very rare for them to find that their blood sugar is low when they are symptomatic.

But what about individuals who feel terribly ill at the same time their blood sugar is low? Does this mean that their symptoms are caused by low blood sugar? Not necessarily. They may be caused by other biological processes that cause discomfort and occur in the system at the same time the blood sugar drops.
Gluconeogenesis
is the process by which we maintain our glucose levels between meals by breaking down stored reserves of rioncarbohydrate tissues (primarily protein). During gluconeogenesis (which occurs when blood glucose levels are low), urea and other nitrogenous wastes are dumped into the bloodstream as the body's tissues are broken down: These products can make a person feel ill. Therefore, it is not merely low glucose levels that can cause the ill feeling; there are a number of other factors involved.

Most of the symptoms individuals complain of when they think they have hypoglycemia would not occur if low blood sugar alone was responsible.

Though weakness, hunger, and sweating are typical symptoms of low blood sugar, visual disturbance, mental confusion, headaches, and anxiety are not.

These latter symptoms result from decreased activity of the central nervous system and do not occur simply because of low blood sugar. Headaches and anxiety, for example, do not occur in "fasting hypoglycemia," such as when a diabetic is overmedicated by mistake, unless the person also has an autonomic neuropathy (nerve damage) that blunts the release of epinephrine.

Usually individuals who manifest these complaints when their blood sugar is low are not accurately described or diagnosed as hypoglycemic, and the standard treatment that follows is not satisfactory. We must first comprehend the true nature of these symptoms before we can understand the most effective way to help the individual who suffers with this problem.

Recurrent Headaches—A Close Relative of Hypoglycemia
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Troubling symptoms such as headaches, mental confusion, and anxiety that accompany a low blood sugar reading have biochemical similarities with the more common tension or migraine headaches. It is incorrect to believe that low glucose is the cause, though it may seem that way. Certainly it is easy to see why people think this, because the headache occurs at the time when the glucose dips when eating is delayed or a meal is skipped.

Assume you were drinking 12 cups of coffee every day. How would you feel if you suddenly stopped drinking it? Terrible, right? You would have severe headaches because when the caffeine is withdrawn the body attempts to detoxify or remove the buildup of this noxious substance. This is called withdrawal, or detoxification. Suppose you were addicted to high doses of heroin. Would you feel better if you tried to quit? Of course not. You would experience weakness, trembling, abdominal pain, and severe headaches.

Detoxification from most noxious substances results in symptoms much like those noted by individuals who claim they have hypoglycemia.

If a heavy coffee drinker skips a meal, a severe headache will probably occur.

Heavy coffee drinkers who delay breakfast for a few hours will also experience mental fatigue, headaches, and confusion. Those who are not addicted to coffee will generally not suffer when breakfast is delayed. Are the headaches experienced by caffeine addicts caused by low blood sugar? They occurred only when the blood sugar was at its lowest point, but clearly these are manifestations of withdrawal or detoxification that occur because we skip or delay eating and the body eliminates retained noxious material most effectively at this time. The body takes the opportunity to accomplish self-cleaning, or detoxification, when it is not busy digesting and assimilating food and nutrients.

Likewise, the symptoms of so-called hypoglycemia are most often related to withdrawal or detoxification. Resolution of this condition is best accomplished by methods that allow the body to lower its toxic load. To call these symptoms hypoglycemia shows a gross oversimplification of what is occurring and illustrates an insufficient understanding of body chemistry.

There are hundreds of other toxins our body may be exposed to on a daily basis. When we skip a meal, delay eating, or fast, the body almost immediately begins to detoxify and clean itself of waste. Withdrawal from any one or many of these non-nutritive substances retained in our tissues can generate a sickly feeling of weakness, confusion, or headaches.

When patients undergo therapeutic fasts, blood sugar levels below 50 mg per deciliter are not uncommon. As the fasters' blood sugars dip to low levels, they may experience weakness and lethargy. Though these patients occasionally experience headaches, the headaches always resolve with continuation of the fast. This is the body's way of telling us the elimination of the toxins causing the symptoms has been completed. Even if the blood sugar levels continue to fall, the headaches do not recur. This illustrates that these symptoms were not the result of low blood sugar, but were caused by other processes that were occurring simultaneously with the lowering of blood glucose.

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Those who fast after following low-protein, plant-based diets have less discomfort and are less likely to have a headache during the early stages of a fast. This is because withdrawal from proteinaceous or nitrogenous wastes is the chief culprit that precipitates headaches and sickly feelings.

High-protein diets and medications can control symptoms of so-called hypoglycemia in the same way continued coffee drinking controls symptoms of caffeine withdrawal. Individuals with these conditions can completely recover without resorting to dangerous high-protein diets or medication to control symptoms. Treatments and high-protein diets give only temporary relief as they do not address the cause.

Problems with Protein

In the United States and many other industrialized countries, a diet high in protein is thought to be health promoting. Unfortunately, most people indoctrinated with this notion in their youth still cling to this outdated and potentially dangerous misconception. In reality, high-protein diets are linked with the development of serious diseases including cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, renal insufficiency, and kidney stones.

As human animals we are not biologically adapted to a high-protein diet.

Metabolically there is little difference between humans and the great apes, who are predominantly vegetarians. Like the ape, we are not adapted to function optimally on diets that are high in protein and fat. Therefore, we suffer the consequences of heart attacks, cancer, autoimmune illness, and so on when we consume a diet ill-adapted to our basic constitution.

The misunderstanding of human protein requirements began 70 years ago when two scientists published the results of a study that showed that rats fed vegetable protein grew more slowly than rats fed animal protein. Today, we have to interpret this information much differently. First of all, we now know that humans and rats have different protein requirements and that people can get all the protein they need from plant sources. More important, we now have found that rats that grow and mature the quickest
die earliest.
Not only is rapid growth a poor indicator of the value of a food, but foods that promote rapid growth in animals and humans are the precise foods that promote premature aging of our body and even cancer.

With all species the longer an animal takes to reach maturity, the longer it lives. We know, for example, that women who mature earlier as measured by their age of puberty have the highest risk of breast cancer. So another reason to avoid high-protein foods is that they promote premature growth and maturity.

The average American consumes about 150 grams of protein a day—about five times the amount actually needed. This excess protein, not to mention the fat that accompanies it, is extremely damaging. So what does this have to do 77

with headaches and hypoglycemia? Plenty. Consuming excess protein produces certain toxins, by-products of animal food digestion, which enter our bloodstream. These toxins have the ability to cause central nervous system symptoms, such as mental confusion and headaches. The effects of these toxins become most noticeable when the digestive tract is not busy digesting and glucose levels are low. It is under these conditions that nitrogenous wastes are effectively mobilized.

Since the American diet contains more protein than we need, the liver attempts to break down the excess and excrete it in the form of urea via the kidneys. The level of urea is measurable in the blood with a blood test called
BUN
, or blood urea nitrogen. Urea is one irritating substance that results from consuming excess protein. However, there are many other toxic by-products of protein metabolism besides urea that are not so easily measurable in the bloodstream: Researchers are finding that many of these other by-products of protein digestion have a powerful toxic effect on the brain, and can cause mental fatigue and confusion as their levels rise in the body.

The liver is the major organ of detoxification and it is especially when the detoxification pathways in the liver are compromised that we see an increased likelihood that individuals will suffer from the toxic effects of their high-protein diets. A good way to illustrate the effect excess protein has on cerebral (brain) function is to look at patients with diseased livers. Patients with advanced stages of liver failure who cannot adequately metabolize excess dietary proteins develop a change in mental function, drowsiness, confusion, and disorientation. They may eventually become markedly confused before lapsing into a coma. Dietary proteins, especially the ones containing sulfated amino acids and aromatic amino acids—from the proteins contained in animal products—must be significantly curtailed in patients with liver disease. This is the established treatment for this condition. Without restricting animal proteins, their disease and mental condition will significantly worsen.

A crucial point to keep in mind here is that there are about 14 other toxins besides urea that are breakdown products of protein metabolism. Even though urea is the only one we can inexpensively measure in the bloodstream at this time, the other protein-related toxins are more responsible than urea for the mentally confused state we see in cirrhotic individuals.

Uric acid and other potentially harmful nitrogenous wastes such as ammonia increase in our body when we consume excessive protein. Vegetable proteins generate less ammonia and other harmful wastes and are less acid-forming as well.