Welcome to Darko’s Weekly Mar 08 2014
“I present, you be the judge”
Some of the biggest health problems in our society are caused by or are directly linked to obesity. The battle with unwanted weight is usually lost no matter what type of diet one chooses to pursue. Usually, after a brief success, all the hell breaks loose and all the weight comes back and then some. It may seem very strange that one can try a carbohydrate diet, another can try a protein diet or a diet directed by a blood type and the results will be very similar. Even with a raw food diet as it is being presented to us one will eventually have problems. The reason for this is simple. We rely on bad science and a guilty conscience towards taking life. We are caught between the faulty science, religion and bad habits. We will always find ammunition to defend our stance on the issue. In my book “Owner’s Manual for the Human Body”, I explained the relatioship between fat and sugar, those two different types of fuels that can fuel our cells. Now I would like to sink my teeth into this subject and make it easy for everyone to understand regardless of your education or religious orientation.
We can start witha few simple questions and answers.
- Why do we eat? Because we are hungry.
- Why are we hungry? Because we need energy.
- Where is the energy created? In our cells.
- What can our cells use to produce energy? This is what we are going to talk about in this article.
Our digestive system is just a repackaging plant that by breaking the food that, by breaking down we eat, supplies the necessary ingredients for our cells to use. The actual end result, the burning of the ingredients is done by our cells and to understand what type of food we should eat we first have to understand what type of nutrients can our cells use to produce energy and what is the most efficient way to produce it.
Before we concentrate on human cells let us examine cells in general. In nature we have basically two different groups of cells according to the type of fuel that they use to produce energy. One type of cells utilizes glucose (sugar) and the other type will utilize keton (fat). You may ask “what is the difference” especially when we take into consideration that all our cells can produce energy utilizing either one of them. To answer this question, first I have to explain what sugar is and how sugar is converted into energy and what fat is and how in converted into energy.
Sugar is a molecule that consists of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Fat is a molecule that consists of carbon and hydrogen. To produce energy (electric energy) the carbon has to be separated and eliminated and the free hydrogen becomes the energy. To do so the cell will bond two atoms of oxygen to an atom of carbon creating carbon dioxide and eliminate it through respiration and free hydrogen will stay in the cell. This process will take place in the cellular generator that we call mitochondria. Since the oxygen is necessary to eliminate the carbon, that means that cell which is burning sugar, does not need additional oxygen since the oxygen is present in the molecule of sugar. Such glucose burning cells are found in plants. Furthermore those plants will transform excess energy into a complex sugar that we call carbohydrate and store it in cellulose fiber to be used when food is not available or as the primary fuel in reproductive cell such as in grains, potatoes, bananas, rice…
Cells that are programmed to use fat as an energy source need to have oxygen injected into the mitochondria where it can bond with the carbon in the fat to make carbon dioxide which is then eliminated and in the process release free hydrogen. This is a tightly controlled process. Oxygen has to be delivered to the cell and then it has to be absorbed into the cell so it can finally be used. Cancer cells have a problem absorbing oxygen because their osmotic pump is not functioning properly. This is the reason why they can’t utilize fat in energy production but they will thrive on sugar. Furthermore the organisms whose cells are programmed to utilize fat as their energy source will store excess energy in the form of fat and deposit it in the fatty tissue to utilize in case of food shortage or as the fuel for creating new life. Animals are just such organisms. When animals eat, the final product of digestion will be fat and as such it will be absorbed into the blood and distributed to the cells. It does not matter if the animal is a carnivore, an omnivore or a herbivore their cellular energy production will be based on burning fats and not sugar. There is no animal that has any storage of carbohydrate in it´s body. Scientists argue about what is the proper diet considering the length of digestive tract and shape of the teeth or mobility of the jaw and all those things are not important. It is just a side issue of the repackaging plant of the body. Animal cells can utilize fat or sugar to create energy and now we will see where the difference is and why humans are getting fat, have short lives, show signs of aging and have diseases and how it is all connected to the food and glucose in particular.
Animal cells are programmed to burn fat to produce energy. No matter if the animal had its meal or if its stomach is empty as long as it has fat deposits (food reserve) it will have full power and will not show signs of exhaustion or lack of energy. A lion can go without a meal for several days and it will still hunt with full force the same as if it had eaten the day before. A whale can live off of its blubber for months. The sane goes for a bear and so on. So what has happened with humans? Most of us can barely survive without eating between meals. Usually two hours after our meal we start feeling hungry and weak, no energy, light headed, in desperate need of a snack. Even herbivores can go without eating for a while and not exhibit weakness as long as they have fat deposits, but not us. We can be fat, barely able to move due to the reserve food that we have stored for our cells and at the same time our cells can be starving, missing the fuel and we feel it as light headiness, tiredness and inability to concentrate. There is no way that we would be able to hunt in this condition. What has happened to us? The answer is in the fuels that power our cells. We are powering our cells with a fuel which is different from that which we keep in reserve. Once the fuel supplied by what we eat is burned, the cells have to rely on the stored reserves which are not the same. Cells that are used to burning sugar are not prepared to deal efficiently with fat and the output is reduced by two thirds. We are the only animal that uses sugar (glucose) as the energy source for its cells and we do this by choice and not by design.
After the meal our blood absorbs large quantities of glucose. This sugar has to be removed from the blood so it is bonded to insulin and either absorbed into the cells or, if the load is too large it will be transformed into triglycerides and deposited as fat for later use. So far so good. And now we are going to expose the problem.
To make this easier to understand I will use simple measurements that we can easily relate to.
We know that one unit, let’s call it a gram, of fat has three times more energy than one gram of sugar. There should not be a problem to switch the fuel, right? Wrong.
Let us estimate that every cell in our body requires an average energy of 60 Ah (ampere per hour). To produce energy when mitochondria (the cellular generator) receives the fat it will start injecting oxygen and start producing about 20 Ah of energy per mitochondria (generator). Since the cell needs 60 Ah of energy, the cell will activate two more generators. Now three mitochondria will produce exactly the correct amount of energy needed. If one gram of sugar holds 100 Ah of energy, one grams of fat will hold three times as much and that means 300 Ah of energy. This gives the cells five hours to burn one gram of fat utilizing three generators and producing the correct amount of energy. If after five hours no food was supplied by the animals feeding, reserve food in the form of fat will be supplied to the cells from the reserve fat depot and the cells will continue to supply the correct energy and the animal will not feel any loss of energy ( stamina or concentration ). Do not forget that most of the energy in our body is consumed by our nerves especially the brain. Now let us examine what will happen when the cell starts to burn sugar.
When glucose enters the cell it will be absorbed into the mitochondria to be burned as a fuel. As we know, mitochondria in animal cells will inject oxygen to burn the sugar because it is programmed to burn fat and to burn the fat it needs to add oxygen. The molecule of glucose contains its own oxygen because it is programmed to be utilized as energy source in plants where oxygen is in short supply. The effect of the extra oxygen is similar to the case where a welder is welding steel plates and someone opens the valve and additional oxygen hits the spot. The metal plate burns, creating a hole. The cells affected will not burn holes but the reaction will be explosive and the sugar will burn within 10 minutes producing 100 Ah of energy. Overcharge is always more dangerous than low charge and to avoid disaster the cell will immediately disable two generators. Since the cell needs only 60Ah of energy it will store the extra energy like the car battery will do in a car and it will supply the energy during one hour and forty minutes. After one hour and forty minutes the energy is gone and since we do not eat every hour and half, the body will supply the cells with its reserve fuel and that is the fat. HERE COMES THE PROBLEM. As fat enters the cells it will start producing energy but the cells have disabled two generators so every cell will be running on only one generator producing only one third of required energy. Our one gram of fat will now take 15 hours to burn, but that doesn’t help the cell’s current needs.To prevent problems that can be caused by over production of energy the cells will not activate other mitochondria and they will continue functioning on one third of required energy while they are waiting for sugar. If the sugar does not arrive in 30 hours, the cells will start activating required amount of mitochondria to produce sufficient amount of energy utilizing fat as a fuel. This is why after second day of fasting energy returns into our body and it becomes easier to tolerate hunger.
Understanding the action of cells helps us to understand why we are getting fat and why we do not burn the fat efficiently. This explains why we are weak even though we have a lot of reserve food in the form of fat stored in our body.
To efficiently burn sugar we would have to eat every hour and a half and the meals would have to be small so we do not get fat. If we skip a meal or a meal is not available we are going to be incapacitated no matter how much reserve fuel we have because our reserve fuel is fat while our dietary fuel is sugar. Now you can understand how carbohydrate diet is harming our health. Major energy recovery and repairing of the cells is done at night in deep sleep. At that time we do not eat and since our cells are adjusted to burn glucose which is not available while we sleep the cells will be forced to do this recuperation process on one third of the energy. No wonder we are sick.
As I explained in my book, herbivores in their digestive tract, produce fatty bacteria that they use as a source of fat to fuel their cells. For us to be able to do this would require adaptation. To adapt to a vegetarian diet would take several generations and we would have to experience changes in our digestive system. One of them would be a larger stomach. I wonder if any woman would trade her figure for a vegetarian diet knowing that she would always look like being pregnant. Vegetarians are arguing that they are healthy and disease free. This is not true. If a vegetarian eats cooked food he or she will become fat and develop diabetes mellitus. If they watch their diet and add a lot of raw vegetables and restrict the amount of cooked food they will be healthy but gradually become skinny and dehydrated. They may reach 90 years of age but they will look unhealthy, skinny, wrinkled, dry and old. Vegetarians have to supplement vitamin B12 since it cannot be absorbed from plants and vitamin D2 from plants is a far cry from the vitamin D3 that is in animals so vegetarians in North countries will suffer from vitamin D deficiency from luck of the Sun exposure and inability to supplement the vitamin D3 through their food. Vitamin D3 is based on cholesterol and deposited in animal fat.
In my book I explain how carbohydrates in vegetables are trapped in a cellulose fiber that animals do not dissolve. This is why wild animals do not have access to glucose. Lot of “experts” are blaming fructose for our health problems and obesity. This is confusing people who want to eat healthy so they started to question fruits as diet for their fructose content. Fructose has been labeled as the “toxic sugar”. This is just another brainwashing of doctors and the public. Eaten raw, fruits and vegetables have sugar only in traces because the carbohydrate is not accessible. Fructose being very sweet (10 times sweeter than glucose) gives us the feeling that there is a lot of sugar in fruits. One kilo of bananas will have 4 grams of glucose and 7 grams of fructose in its juice but it will have 48 grams of carbohydrate trapped in its fiber. One can eat 5 kilos of raw bananas a day and experience weight loss but having two cooked bananas a day will cause them to gain weight.
The only reason why we receive enough energy from vegetables is because we destroy the cellulose fiber by cooking the vegetables thereby releasing all the carbohydrate making it available for absorption in the form of sugar. This increases the amount of insulin in the blood creating diabetes and speeds up our aging. As a bonus we get inflammations and consequently a lot of different diseases. All of this is explained in my book “Owner’s Manual for the Human Body”
Next week I will explain the difference between GLUCOSE and FRUCTOSE
Love you all
HEALYOURSELF 