Biochemistry of Obesity ... Sugars

We are going to be talking a lot about sugar. Why? because your body needs sugar for ENERGY. But there is the half-truth that makes it so easy to fall into the bottomless pit. As a Hypnotist you might view sugar as a nominalization. Sugars are carbohydrates; there are a bunch of different sugars. There are simple sugars like glucose, Ribose and Fructose (monosaccharides) and complex sugars like Lactose. (Polysaccharides). When your body digests a complex sugar, say lactose, the intestinal villi make an enzyme called lactase, which splits lactose into the simple sugars Glucose and galactose so it can be absorbed, and transported thru the blood to the rest of the body and eventually to the liver, The point being that, the only sugars really absorbed to make energy are the simple sugars. Carbohydrates are digested quickly into simple sugars. That is why a diabetic watches carbs very carefully.
The most important sugar is right handed Glucose (also called dextrose) Glucose is a ubiquitous fuel in biology. It is used as an energy source in most organisms, from bacteria to humans. The insulin reaction, and other mechanisms, regulate the concentration of glucose in the blood. Glucose concentration is what a diabetic measures when they are testing “fasting blood sugar” Under normal circumstances Glucose is readily used by every organ and in every process in the body. So … very little of it actual gets to your liver where the all important “What will I do with this stuff” decision is made.
Ribose is another very important sugar. It comprises the backbone of RNA, a biopolymer that is the basis of genetic transcription It is related to deoxyribose as found in DNA. Once phosphorylated ribose can become a subunit of ATP, NADH, and several other compounds that are critical to metabolism. Ribose is a building block and we will come back to that after we talk about Metabolism a bit
Fructose (also called levulose) is another sugar that enters the metabolic process. It however is often mentioned as a health hazard and rightly so because it is metabolized entirely differantly than Glucose. It is actually quite similar to alcohol in the human body and causes a number of digestive problems. Since there are only a few other things that the brain can do with fructose, a large volume of your fructose intake arrives at the liver for that fateful,,, “What am I going to do with this stuff” decision, The human liver converts a large percentage of fructose into fat which increases the risk for the metabolic syndrome. It is the “fructosification” of our food supply the will be of most interest here….. (In case you missed it .. yes fructose can be metabolized in the brain and we will be back to that in a later blog)
But first, …. I have just posted an excerpt from a lecture by Dr. Robert Lustig of the University of California (San Francisco) that will set the stage for a better understanding of the way our body deals with Sugar… Take about ten minutes to listen to Dr. Lustig as a talks about ... Sugar,