Carbohydrates & Your Health – How Carbohydrates Affect Your Health
Carbohydrates. To eat or not to eat, that is the question!
What Is A Carbohydrate
In the simplest terms, a carbohydrate is a molecule made entirely of sugars that are linked together like a pieces of chain. The longer the chain the more complex the carbohydrate, the shorter the chain, the simpler the carbohydrate.
The difference between "simple" and "complex" carbohydrates is the number of different sugars that form the carbohydrate chain.
Simple carbohydrates, those with just a few different sugars linked together, are quickly broken down into glucose and sent directly into your blood causing a sharp and immediate rise in blood sugar.
Complex carbohydrates take longer to break down because their sugar chain is longer and needs more digesting – but your body eventually breaks the sugars down and as they are broken down they are converted into glucose and dumped into your blood causing a steady and prolonged rise in blood sugar.
From a blood sugar standpoint, the difference between simple and complex carbohydrates is complex carbs enter the blood stream slower and effect blood sugar longer than the simple ones.
Simple Carbohydrates
Simple carbohydrates include things like sugar, candy, soft drinks, cakes, pies, cookies, all refined flour products including white bread, bagels and crackers, rice, snack foods, pop corn, and so on.
Complex Carbohydrates
Complex carbohydrates include things like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and milk. Essentially, if the food is not meat, chicken, fish, cheese, or bacon, then it’s a carbohydrate.
The National Research Council has never established an RDA for carbohydrates because your body can operate just fine on a virtually carbohydrate free diet.
No one has ever been diagnosed with a carbohydrate deficiency.
Although carbohydrates are a potential source of energy, carbohydrates serve no vital purpose in your body, not structure and not function. Carbohydrates constitute less than 1% of the total body mass for an average 150 pound person.
Except for your brain, every organ and muscle in your body runs best on ketones, which are byproducts of fat metabolism.
The brain needs glucose; however, your body can instantly make glucose for the brain directly from both fat and protein proving again that carbohydrates are not essential.
Some Carbohydrate Foods Are Excellent
I am not suggesting you eliminate carbohydrates- that would be foolish. Many of the healthiest, most nutritious foods on the planet, foods you should enjoy every day, like fruits and vegetables, consist almost entirely of carbohydrates and fiber.
Fresh fruits and vegetables are loaded with essential vitamins and minerals plus a variety of micro-nutrients that provide you with a number of important health-enhancing benefits.
The Problem With Eating A Lot Of Carbs
The problem is processed and refined carbohydrate foods cause a rapid rise in blood sugar and initiate an insulin response that leads to weight gain, food cravings and always feeling of near constant hunger.
The only rational approach to carbohydrates is to enjoy the ones that do not spike your blood sugar so natural, healthy balance is maintained and that means get your carbohydrate calories primarily if not exclusively from fresh green vegetables, fresh seasonal fruit, and other foods high in fiber and low on the glycemic index.
There’s a lot of confusion surrounding the value of eating a diet high in carbohydrates.
Weight loss gurus have advocated low fat, high carb diets for over 20 years and during each of those years obesity, heart disease, and diabetes have have become more common and widespread.
Trying to lose weight following a low fat, and subsequently, a high carbohydrate diet is like trying to put out a forest fire by dowsing it with gasoline. It won’t work.
To lose it and keep it off, you have to reset your metabolism and shift it out of the fat-making, fat-storing mode and into the burn- stored-fat-for-energy mode. Only then will you be on your way to tank-top arms and film star abs.
Re-setting your metabolism in favor of burning stored body fat is a specific and knowable process and one of the most important steps in that process is to understand how carbohydrates affect your body
I advise my weight loss clients to get their carbs from fresh green and brightly colored vegetables and fresh seasonal fruit and leave the rest alone. And typically, their results are excellent.
Written by Dr. Russell J. Martino, Ph.DThe Voice Of Health
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