heart disease, insulin resistance, fatty liver, diabetes, statins and lies.

[mike_belben]

i know that is a pretty broad topic but i want to try to help the broadest range of people here and im shifting gears a bit from my preventative medicine thread so figured best to start a new one.  

background is that my wife has had one issue after another for my 12 years with her and a firehose of money spent in the medical system has only produced reliable billing and trials of every med under the sun which never cured a thing.  her health has only really declined since slinging out my babies, worse each time and she has suffered a lot.

recently, covid cost her taste and smell.  infection was about 2 years ago during a trial of a cancer drug prescribed for psoriasis (which i think is medically reckless) and now what we have is worse than no smell.  it came back as a debauched smell that we are clueless on at present. proteins smell like hot roadkill to her, and onions like gasoline, phantom cigarette smells that arent there, things like that. they all make her sick and it has changed everything about our lives, even what i can cook for me and the kids.  so i am really active in self study to get this cured and am making strides in other issues. we finally have a great doctor who lets me be her health advocate, and a recent visit i attended with a full page written list of details and tests i wanted ran was obliged and revealed 79% insulin resistance, exactly as i suspected. fantastic, finally something concrete we can start working on.

her bout with covid also brought about the onset of symptoms consistent with Multiple Sclerosis and optic neuritis, which is when i made troubleshooting her problems the primary focus of my life.  neurology diagnosed it as "A demyelinating disease" and pretty much said good luck, nothing we can do for you.  sorry you randomly go blind sometimes.

this is basically when your immune system acts like a mouse chewing the insulation off the wires to your car's computer and headlights. everything malfunctions and we have not had a lot of positive results treating any of that by diet, which i now feel is due to all the underlying insulin problems blocking our efforts. its hard to sort the new problems from the old hidden ones when you are starting from zero as a wannabe doctor but the stakes are pretty high for me and the kids here and the "real doctors" have consistently failed us.  i want to grow old with that ball and chain, finally vacation and spoil grandkids together.  not bury her early and show old pictures of her getting sicker with time until the end.  she is tired of diets and meds. i am dieting and fasting myself to encourage her by feeling like she has a partner in the suffering.

i need to vent here. its been nothing but failure from the medical system.  the system hasnt suffered for missed diagnostics but thrived by billing for it while it ruins us.  she has an accumulation of almost every symptom she ever had from the time we met, to this day and thats to credit dozens of 'experts.'  why did it take 12 years and a patient's greasemonkey husband suggesting we run the test to discover isulin resistance, which is extremely prevalent in the american population?  they thought nothing to prescribe harsh life altering meds.. even cancer meds and broad antibiotics that caused serious decline, but couldnt test for such basic things as insulin malfunction from obviously excess blood sugar?  i can see non-alcoholic fatty liver at a glance now but no doctor in a decade could even mention it? 

 i am angry at what it has cost our family emotionally, physically and financially. and how much wealth it has stripped from us and given to the medical industry that has failed to fix anything.  not the high blood pressure, psoriasis, hair loss, hives, digestion problems, inflammation. they have fixed nothing and im just furious.   if i performed this way as a mechanic i wouldnt be paid anything. Napa doesnt give me a kickback for prescribing parts you dont need. misdiagnosis is a crisis for my mechanical reputation but doctors seem to be immune from that while we get poorer paying them all. i know they mean well and it isnt their fault individually that the health system has such major flaws.  i am angry at a system.  one where the doctors who are taking their revolutionary information direct to the public via social media are constantly saying "this is the opposite of what they taught us in medical school."  i feel like i hear that 3x a day lately.  conventional medicine is just as wrong as conventional agriculture.  they are collecting fees to ruin your soil and ruin your health. you can prove it wrong at home for free with simple changes based on good data.

so thats the backstory, the past month a lot of study has gone into the mechanisms of energy sources for the mitochondria and how metabolism works, what forms of sugar are metabolized by what organs, what your hdl, ldl and triglycerides are actually doing, atherosclerosis composition, the effects of intermittent and long term fasting on organs and hormones and brain. how insulin, leptin and ghrelin work and so on.  it would take 20 pages for me to write out a quick review but i want to focus on the common denominators in all sorts of problems. im 42 years old and in 25 or so years of being a conscientious adult the medical narrative seems to be made of manipulated suggestive studies, cherry picked data and pure lies from benevolent sounding foundations designed to sell unnecessary drugs and treatments and processed/fast food poison getting "heart healthy" labels for a fee.  i look back and realize how many older family and friends have suffered long term and even died because of this system then and now and it just hurts me deep.  im sure there are dozens of members here on FF that are paying the same money racket system as it slowly kills them for misdiagnosis or mistreatment.  i want to see a change, so i will start here.  

to be continued.

[mike_belben]

so i was partly raised by grandparents, "nan and pa."  Pa was in the marines from 57 to 77 iirc and was tall and skinny as a rail in his youth. we ate like normal people in those days which was largely influence by the USDA food pyramid of 1982ish and whatever the television/paper said based on that. you all remember it.  get rid of the butter and lard, eat crisco, margerine and grains.  reduce eggs and milkfat. reduce cholesterol and go low fat.  egg whites but not yokes, white toast with margerine.  that was a "healthy diet"  

nan fried foods that im sure were done in butter or lard before my time that were now in corn or canola oil, whatever was cheapest. when my parents were still together,  nans house was great. because there was all the treats you could want.  have a pint of ben and jerries with sprinkles, caramel, whipped cream, oreos and m&m's all in one bowl. still hungry have another.  i positively ate ice cream until i puked and i know why now, because the insulin blocks leptin which tells you to stop eating.   their house was literally like a private ice cream joint, anything to have the grandkids come over.  i can remember her arguing with my dad oh its dairy.. and me reading ice cream labels to make sure it wasnt too much fat.  sugar was just for energy.  we all want energy right? lots of energy in a bag of skittles.

when my mother left we had to live there half the time and it didnt change much.  pa had cookies and ice cream just about every night, he wasnt fat so whats the harm?  there was never a moment where that house ran out of pringles, keebler fudge stripes, pepsi etc.  never. it was a sugar factory. my brother and i both got pretty fat in elementary school before going the other direction.

i guess Pa's first heart attack was early 1990s.  he probably had 4 of them.  countless trips to the hospital, from work, from home, from out in town.  my whole life he was a frequent flier at the hospital and it was just 'genetic.'  we considered him frail.  had bypasses and all that.  was on a pile of meds for cholesterol. constantly at the doctor for followup.  he had deathly anxiety of heights, would freeze driving the RV over a bridge in traffic, and i get that now too, the stress response and hormonal disruption from extreme insulin.  

the cabinet stacked in a lifetime supply of cookies and freezer full of ice cream was never addressed by the medical business.  im talking 20, 25 years of almost daily knowledge of the minute details of my grandparents lives and him under doctor visits every 3 days or so sucking up his USMC and postal pensions, no one told him quit the sugar or i would know about it.  it was me as an adult after i got out of the marines saying nan i dont wanna eat that its pure sugar.  my whole life around pa the medical advice was watch your cholesterol. you cant have those eggs.  thats too much fat.  but TV dinners had replaced the fat with corn oil. he was on statins since i was a boy. lipitor, nitroglycerine pills and ice cream every night. hey, its low fat.

guess what guys, its sugar that causes all this arterial hardening and plaque deposits.  cholesterol is only there to put out the fire that sugar lit.  the studies are designed/cherry picked by pharma-owned puppets to sell statins by associating the presence of cholesterol with heart disease as causative but it is only associative.  like firefighters are associated with burning buildings.  the sugar lobby has spent a fortune to ensure their product is never charged with arson.  theyll say we need more time to study it but you cant replicate a double blind death by sugar experiment to medical standards.  nor do you have to, the evidence is everywhere.  quit sugar at home and youll lose 20 pounds, i just did and hardly ate the stuff.  i went from 5'11 @200 to 178 in maybe 2 months without exercise, eating all that i want which in the absence of sugar keeps shrinking portion wise.  

your brain runs on cholesterol.  every cell in your body needs cholesterol to be water proof and not just solubilize out in your urine.  it is a repair machine and statins prevent you from producing it.  testosterone, progesterone, estrogen and vitamin D are made from cholesterol.  you will die without it.  dialysis patients with high cholesterol outlive those with low cholesterol.

the weston A price foundation can explain all the details here and completely destroy the validity of the massive statin lobby pushing this stuff on everyone, even fat kids.  pharma wants statins to be over the counter

Dangers of Statin Drugs: What You Haven?t Been Told About Popular Cholesterol-Lowering Medicines - The Weston A. Price Foundation

and harvard medical school will take their kickback from one statin producer to villify the competition, here:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/do-statins-increase-the-risk-of-dementia

this woman was on a wildly popular 2 part australian television broadcast that was cancelled by clear influence of pharma and the sugar lobby.  she shows how they cherry pick the studies and how the same few paid off "experts" manage to discredit and silence any opposition.
Dr. Maryanne Demasi - 'Statin Wars: Have we been misled by the evidence?' - YouTube




the "good and bad cholesterol" narrative is more smoke. HDL and LDL arent even cholesterol, they are lipoproteins that carry cholesterol from your liver to your gut and back to your liver. its triglyceride to HDL ratio that predicts heart disease.  your LDL is made of LDL-A (large buoyant) and LDL-B (small dense) which are measured together so you cant even tell how much of either you have when tested.  saturated dietary fat raises your LDL-A which does not cause clogged arteries.  carbs and sugars raise your LDL-B which do.  so is it the fat or the sugar that causes heart disease?  

sugars when cooked cause protein glycation or browning.  that is another heart attack on the way.  honey barbecue sauce made from corn for example.   fructose is 7x worse than glucose for protein glycation so that high fructose corn syrup in your rib sauce is bad, bad news.


im gonna use a lot of Dr Berg videos because they are so short, to the point and often animated.  it could take an hour and 20 minutes to get the same info from jason fung, robert lustig, david perlmutter, et al.  (disclosure statement, dr berg sells his own line of supplements and has some family drama with a son over their scientology religious history. he is for ketogenic diet.  many other sources of peer reviewed data support dr berg claims and i generally trust him to be useful in a very short timespan.)

This Is What Sugar Does to Your Arteries - YouTube

when you dismantle arterial plaque what do you find?  68% is a collagen fiber but the american heart association isnt on the warpath to reduce collagen is it?  no just cholesterol.   16% is a lipid and of the lipid portion, 74% of that is UNSATURATED fat.  not cholesterol, not bacon, not lard, not olive oil.  74% of the fat problem in your clogged artery is mcdonalds and chinese food.  its canola, rape seed, corn oil, soy, peanut oil and crisco.

What Is Atherosclerosis Plaque? â€" Dr.Berg on Cholesterol Levels (Part-2) - YouTube

[jb616]

Thanks for the education @mike_belben  Your wife has the right guy fighting for her. I admire your wisdom on a wide array of subjects and enjoy reading your posts. I'm also in complete agreement that sugar is the #1 problem of Americans. They put sugar in things that don't need it, but will get us hooked like an addiction.  I also watch Dr. Berg's videos even thought the one on tinnitus hasn't cured me.   >:(

[mike_belben]

thank you JB.  i agree some of dr bergs quick cures seem like quackery and i do my best to be an open minded skeptic of everyone,  who will consider info from any source and run his own experiments to sort truth from fiction. i am sure there are things im wrong about but christ is the only thing i really cling to.  evidence can change all my other convictions if it becomes overwhelming enough.

to wrap up the story with my grandparents...  nan lived to 96 i believe, passing a few years ago from a lengthy spell of alzheimers and some form of cancer discovered well beyond the point where invasive measure would improve quality of life, it was her time and i was thankful when she passed.  meanwhile pa took his statins, ate his keeblers and continued to decline upstairs.  he was 12 years her junior (3rd husband) and got quite wobbly by his late 70s. unable to carry a thought, tripping over words and eventually telling the same story over and over like nan did in the height of alzheimers.

for every new problem there was a doctor visit, a round of tests and more meds.  and a continued mental decline consistent with dementia. he got himself in trouble with a firearm and ended up setting off a chain of nursing home custody events throughout the covid period, where, due to his dual pensions, nursing homes would try to get guardianship over him.  while my grandmother was at home rotting which caused my father and aunt gave up their entire lives to care for her almost 6 years.  but no nursing home had a bed for her with no money or assets in her name. they all wanted him, his home and his pensions, thats just how the world works.  the homes would refuse to release him saying my family had inadequate capacity to care for him when he could care for himself if there was someone to keep him out of trouble, which there was  by then.  money money money.  he really did not need to be there but they would manufacture all sorts of claims for his safety to buy time for filing dates and push the guardianship paperwork through until my aunt got into a good family court with a judge that saw the evil in it and reversed it to my aunt as guardian.  

when off his meds, Pa's clarity would come back and he behaved well, knows whats going on and so forth.  on them he is demented, combative, mean and volatile. he has harmed several nursing home staff members wanting out. thats what an old dimented vietnam vet is gonna do, escape the VC containment cell he believes he is being held in.   the institutions insist he be medicated to the hilt, nearly sedated, and kept in.  this caused a tremendous amount of muscle atrophy.  when my aunt finally got him back home he was wheelchair bound from muscles not been used in several years.  at times he was strapped to beds and covid blocked all visitation. he was shuffled to many homes quite far away at times.  right now he is back home in his own house where my aunt moved in. he is off many of the meds and walking, im told he is improving mentally and physically, though the damage is done.  

again in all of this, no one said reduce the sugars. probably the best thing that has occured during his involuntary internment the past i guess 3 years has been being locked away from the cookies and ice cream.  he had grown quite a gut by the time i was an adult, and is now again the slimmest ive ever seen him, looking like an old frail version of the skinny young marine in the photos.

there is a fued about statins.  i am using my lifetime experience with Pa to say that i believe they gave him dimentia, im taking an event and choosing that side of the argument.  the one that doesnt sell 1 trillion dollars of pills annually to everyone, for everything. more later, ive gotta get some stuff accomplished around here. 

[dairyguy]

Mike is onto something here about the overload of sugar.     This podcast here from Freakonomics   Is Poor Nutrition a Supply Problem or a Demand Problem? - Freakonomics    touches peripherally on this with one startling quote as "If sugar would get banished from the foods in the grocery stores it would reduce (medical) problems by 40%!"

[Dragline]

You are spot on Mike,  don't give up.  My wife has been doing the same research as you, primarily to deal with some of her ailments,  for the last several years. She watches and follows Dr berg also. She has us both on whole foods,  nothing processed,  and I can see the difference in both of us. I only wish we could have learned it at your age (we're both 64). I think big pharma and the food industry have done us all a huge injustice,  and most doctors aren't trained to look at nutrition first. We have to look out for ourselves  and each other first

[B.C.C. Lapp]

Mike, I'm sorry your wife as suffered so long.  I pray she recovers very soon.
I agree with you on our medical system.   It ain't so great as some people say.

I have been a type two diabetic for 6 years although I have never been over weight at all and never lived a sedentary life style.    

I have had three different docs in that time and am now on the scout for a forth.   My story goes like this.    Six years ago I was diagnosed as diabetic.   At that time my then doc casually mentions that I had been pre diabetic for the last to blood works and now was in fact diabetic.
But he never told me.    His excuse was that sense I wasn't over weight there was nothing to do at that time.   Of course that was horse manure. There was plenty I could have done and he just never told me.   He put me on a statin med  and blood pressure meds and a diabetes med.   I felt awful.   Those prescriptions took my energy, made me have diarrhea and I was always sleepy.  Told all this to the doc. He changed the BP med and that didnt help.   Meanwhile I was trying to learn what to eat and what not to for my diabetes.  They don't tell you anything. They just say take these drugs. That doc moved and I got a new doc. He was horrified at what I was taking and changed two of the meds and discontinued the statin. He said I never needed that at all in the first place. 
 
The new meds were worse.   I quit taking one all together.   That doc kept making appointments for me for every screening you can imagine without ever asking or telling me.    He was one heck of a salesmen.  

Then my insurance changed and I had to get another doc.   She changed my meds again. I should tell you now NONE of these drugs ever did anything at all to lower my pressure or my sugar.    This new doc always wants all kinds of blood work and wants me to do all kinds of screenings as well.    Then, I got covid.     I got it real bad. I wont go into the details but I was so weak I could hardly stand.    I called my doc repeatedly.   I never could even get her on the phone.   Just the nurse. who kept telling me there was nothing they could do and they would not see me because I had covid and they did not want me there.   

Finally when I was coughing up wads of blood I staggered into the ER and they xrayed my chest and found I now had double lung pneumonia.    I was down two months before I could work at all.   Almost met my Lord.

When its all over I get a call from my doc and the nurse reminds me its time for my routine 90 day blood work.   I went in and told my doc, "When I'm not ill  you cant wait to get me here for routine stuff but when I desperately needed you you would not even speak to me on the phone. Why should I depend on you?"    She says she mis understood how sick I was.   Uh huh.  How do you misunderstand coughing up blood?  

I have no faith in our medical doctors at all.    My dad died of a medical mistake at 78 years of age. Never should have happened.   I was told I could sue the doc and the hospital.   But how does that bring my dad back?   And suing isnt my way.    I dont want their dirty money.

No idea what I'll do now. But I hate these pills and I dont know if I should be taking them or not.
Depends on who you speak to about it what you hear.   One doc told me he would never take a statin himself. Never.   But he proscribes them for others.    Makes you wonder.
 

[Walnut Beast]

                         https://youtu.be/bS2P313iVzQ  


DEAD DOCTORS DON'T LIE! - Dr. JOEL WALLACH - Excellent and Life Changing INFO!

[SwampDonkey]

There are diabetic associations (of medical doctors) in both the US and Canada. They have a lot of information that I think family practioners are or perhaps aren't connecting patients with. Dad had a cousin who had just been put on new synthetic insulin 20 years ago and was dead in 24 hrs. He had a stroke or two in years past from diabetes as well, lost part of a leg, so was a wreck. He wasn't over weight either, thin as a rake. But diabetes runs in the Crawford clan. It took grandfather and probably dad, both diabetic. Sugar is the root cause, colas, choc. candy and 'fake' ice cream are the main 'carriers' from what I've seen in family.

Hang in there guys, it's a grocery war zone out there. ;)

Canada needs a nation-wide diabetes strategy now - Diabetes Canada

American Diabetes Association | Research, Education, Advocacy

[snobdds]

As an actuary for BCBS, I study this stuff for trends.  

Sugar is not inherently bad for you.  Our bodies can tolerate and be ok with a moderate amount of sugar.  Heck, fruit has a lot of sugars in them and they are needed for our bodies. 

The one thing our bodies can not handle are seed oils.  Everything trends back to these nasty man made things. Get rid of every type of seed oil in your house; Canola, Vegetable oils, Crisco, Margarine, etc.  

The only fats our body can process are animal fats and nut oils.  Stick to Beef Tallow, Coconut Oil, ghee, Butter, Olive Oil, Avocado Oil.  

 

[mike_belben]

As an actuary for BCBS, I study this stuff for trends.  

Sugar is not inherently bad for you.  Our bodies can tolerate and be ok with a moderate amount of sugar.  Heck, fruit has a lot of sugars in them and they are needed for our bodies.

The one thing our bodies can not handle are seed oils.  Everything trends back to these nasty man made things. Get rid of every type of seed oil in your house; Canola, Vegetable oils, Crisco, Margarine, etc.  

The only fats our body can process are animal fats and nut oils.  Stick to Beef Tallow, Coconut Oil, ghee, Butter, Olive Oil, Avocado Oil.  

i am totally in support of seed oil elimination.  now that i am free of them, going back to mayo or ranch dressing makes my joints ache to the point of disrupting sleep.  omega 6 fatty acid inflammation from the seed oils.  

but i cant let you off the hook so fast on sugar.  nothing personal.  


youve got glucose, sucrose and fructose.  your cells run on glucose, all of them in the form of glycogen i believe.  so if you have 200 lbs of body weight you have 200 lbs of cells burning up glucose.  sucrose is part fructose, part glucose. again, all your cells use up that glucose.  your liver alone is forced to metabolize the fructose, even that found in fruits. im not villifying fruit but i will address that in a bit.

we all know drunks that have pickled their livers to death.  cirrhosis of the liver, from alcohol.  alcohol is what?  fermented sugar.  alcohol is metabolized in the brain, and excess energy from the alchohol not needed by the cells to power activity is stored as fat, on the liver.  the most toxic form of fat.  fatty liver is lethal.  the good news is the body is smart enough to burn this off immediately if you stop pouring sugar down your crop.  the pancrease is like the DPW after a snowstorm.  you have a nor'easter, give em 3 days and theyll plow the whole city.  but dump 6 inches every 6 hours and before long there is a crisis. youre snowed in.  eating from 6am to 10pm is a pancreatic blizzard.  insulin resistance is almost assured.  

back to sugars.  fruit is fructose, which is also only metabolized by the liver.  non alcoholic fatty liver disease is the death by soda that the sugar industry is suppressing.  all this high fructose corn syrup has been refined to a simple sugar, there is no fiber in a coke or a whopper or ketchup, etc. real whole fruit has this same sugar but in nature, fruits and honey arent available until just before winter and they are full of vitamins, minerals and dietary fibers which create a fullness that auto limits overconsumption.  fruits are creations way of preparing you for the coming famine of winter.  sweetness is universally yummy, it is a signal for you to fatten and get ready for fasting and famine.  thats probably why the creator designed sugar to raise insulin and supress leptin, to tell your brain keep eating. winter is coming, you need to gorge yourself on these grapes so we can store some energy on you for when the food is gone in february.

today the western world is able to consume year round whole fruit abundance.  while it is possible to get fat on fruits, the nutrients and fiber in fruits grown on healthy soils will trigger your satiety response through  and tell you stop eating.  how many pineapples can you fit in your stomach vs how many mountain dews?  

the mountain dew has zero nutrition and causes a tremendous insulin spike.  your endocrine system has no mechanism to say no to it. and your liver just cant handle 3 cans a day.  even still, eating kiwis from 6am to midnight will still be a pancreatic snowstorm of insulin.  insulin becomes desensitized and eventually resistant long before any doctor says anything about it.  you know what they say?  "your levels look normal."   but you are 80% insulin resistant.   



ive always had pretty healthy organs but the good news is some mysterious health issues got me in for all sorts of labs which i can then redo after a period of lifestyle change to have a genuine before and after that i know is real because its my labs and my diet.  my heart rate has always been low.  off of processed foods and sugar, its at 49 beats per minute down from 55-60.  pretty healthy.  im pouring avacado oil and butter into eggs and sausage full of fibrous veggies and my heart is getting even better.  explain that, crisco/american heart association/harvard/tufts/mayo clinic.  i give blood all the time, wife is a phelbotomist.  so i know my blood is pretty dang good from their monitoring as well. 

saturated fats buffer insulin spikes. thats why atkins/keto work for everyone who tries. but they dont talk about that do they.


thanks to everyone for sharing personal stories and cheering me on here.  i dont want sympathy or praise or class action suits against any industries, i just want to see people get smarter about who we trust, and realize we consumers are universally preyed on for our incomes.  no one cares if we are dying from overconsumption of their product.  ive recently come across someone i cant recall saying the fertilizer companies, aware of the health consequences of their sprays, are branching into medicines to treat issues caused by their ag solutions.  after reading the story of bayer AG i will believe it.

[snobdds]

As an actuary for BCBS, I study this stuff for trends.  

Sugar is not inherently bad for you.  Our bodies can tolerate and be ok with a moderate amount of sugar.  Heck, fruit has a lot of sugars in them and they are needed for our bodies.

The one thing our bodies can not handle are seed oils.  Everything trends back to these nasty man made things. Get rid of every type of seed oil in your house; Canola, Vegetable oils, Crisco, Margarine, etc.  

The only fats our body can process are animal fats and nut oils.  Stick to Beef Tallow, Coconut Oil, ghee, Butter, Olive Oil, Avocado Oil.  

i am totally in support of seed oil elimination.  now that i am free of them, going back to mayo or ranch dressing makes my joints ache to the point of disrupting sleep.  omega 6 fatty acid inflammation from the seed oils.  

but i cant let you off the hook so fast on sugar.  nothing personal.  


youve got glucose, sucrose and fructose.  your cells run on glucose, all of them in the form of glycogen i believe.  so if you have 200 lbs of body weight you have 200 lbs of cells burning up glucose.  sucrose is part fructose, part glucose. again, all your cells use up that glucose.  your liver alone is forced to metabolize the fructose, even that found in fruits. im not villifying fruit but i will address that in a bit.

we all know drunks that have pickled their livers to death.  cirrhosis of the liver, from alcohol.  alcohol is what?  fermented sugar.  alcohol is metabolized in the brain, and excess energy from the alchohol not needed by the cells to power activity is stored as fat, on the liver.  the most toxic form of fat.  fatty liver is lethal.  the good news is the body is smart enough to burn this off immediately if you stop pouring sugar down your crop.  the pancrease is like the DPW after a snowstorm.  you have a nor'easter, give em 3 days and theyll plow the whole city.  but dump 6 inches every 6 hours and before long there is a crisis. youre snowed in.  eating from 6am to 10pm is a pancreatic blizzard.  insulin resistance is almost assured.  

back to sugars.  fruit is fructose, which is also only metabolized by the liver.  non alcoholic fatty liver disease is the death by soda that the sugar industry is suppressing.  all this high fructose corn syrup has been refined to a simple sugar, there is no fiber in a coke or a whopper or ketchup, etc. real whole fruit has this same sugar but in nature, fruits and honey arent available until just before winter and they are full of vitamins, minerals and dietary fibers which create a fullness that auto limits overconsumption.  fruits are creations way of preparing you for the coming famine of winter.  sweetness is universally yummy, it is a signal for you to fatten and get ready for fasting and famine.  thats probably why the creator designed sugar to raise insulin and supress leptin, to tell your brain keep eating. winter is coming, you need to gorge yourself on these grapes so we can store some energy on you for when the food is gone in february.

today the western world is able to consume year round whole fruit abundance.  while it is possible to get fat on fruits, the nutrients and fiber in fruits grown on healthy soils will trigger your satiety response through  and tell you stop eating.  how many pineapples can you fit in your stomach vs how many mountain dews?  

the mountain dew has zero nutrition and causes a tremendous insulin spike.  your endocrine system has no mechanism to say no to it. and your liver just cant handle 3 cans a day.  even still, eating kiwis from 6am to midnight will still be a pancreatic snowstorm of insulin.  insulin becomes desensitized and eventually resistant long before any doctor says anything about it.  you know what they say?  "your levels look normal."   but you are 80% insulin resistant.  



ive always had pretty healthy organs but the good news is some mysterious health issues got me in for all sorts of labs which i can then redo after a period of lifestyle change to have a genuine before and after that i know is real because its my labs and my diet.  my heart rate has always been low.  off of processed foods and sugar, its at 49 beats per minute down from 55-60.  pretty healthy.  im pouring avacado oil and butter into eggs and sausage full of fibrous veggies and my heart is getting even better.  explain that, crisco/american heart association/harvard/tufts/mayo clinic.  i give blood all the time, wife is a phelbotomist.  so i know my blood is pretty dang good from their monitoring as well.

saturated fats buffer insulin spikes. thats why atkins/keto work for everyone who tries. but they dont talk about that do they.


thanks to everyone for sharing personal stories and cheering me on here.  i dont want sympathy or praise or class action suits against any industries, i just want to see people get smarter about who we trust, and realize we consumers are universally preyed on for our incomes.  no one cares if we are dying from overconsumption of their product.  ive recently come across someone i cant recall saying the fertilizer companies, aware of the health consequences of their sprays, are branching into medicines to treat issues caused by their ag solutions.  after reading the story of bayer AG i will believe it.

There is a difference between refined sugars and natural sugars.  Natural sugars are not bad for you and give the body a lot of antioxidants that can't come any other way. 

[mike_belben]

i dont want to villify doctors as a class.  i still feel it is a noble, altruistic profession and we absolutely need them.  but the kind of doctors we the ignorant, trusting consumer need are the ones who care more about people getting better than they do about having the drug rep come around and say theyve met the next prescription quota for more swag. your doc might be a great guy, but pharma might have his hand pretty far up your docs ash without you knowing it.  

google will never stop finding you cases of kickback malpractice and thats just the ones thatve been caught.  

i know pharma is aggressive about pushing pills from personal experience too.  20 years ago i had a gf who was recruited to be a pharma rep.  she had a college degree and great job in something completely different but the big bucks snagged her away to go work at something that paid better with zero experience.  why did they want her so bad?  she was pretty. pretty woman are always the spokesmodels.  the men they are selling to hope generous corporate purchases lead to an affair. that simple. bait them into orders with pencil skirts and red heels. 

fast forward to 2017ish, my prettier wife gets a job at an oncologists office, one of the "best around" ... doing bloodwork at a time when we are really, really financially suffering.  for about a year we feasted on leftovers she brought home from applebees, olive garden, texas roadhouse, etc.  you know where it came from?  the drug reps who had a rotating schedule of when it was their turn to buy lunch for the entire staff 2 days a week.  there was a line of reps waiting their day to influence the whole staff.  it should be a crime. the entire office ate and the leftoevers fed our family for usually 2 more days.  all the pens, calendars, stationary and related swag you could tolerate.  influence up the wazoo is completely, completely normal at your local cancer center. 

wife had to quit that job over the emotional stress of growing attached to little old men and ladies who would become friends and then die every few weeks. the doctors are numb to it, they have to be, they deliver death sentences every day and i feel for them. thats cause for PTSD right there.  oh you wont be alive in a year, well you got 15 minutes, next.  its dehumanizing.

  quite a few times wife had to stick her neck out to get the managements attention on a medical anomaly of a favorite patient that they missed, and she saved a few lives by noticing something amiss and having that person sent to the ER right across the road immediately.   we became extended family with one of her coworkers at the cancer center and while over there for a holiday dinner i said maxine, hows things at the office.  anyone getting better?  she paused in a moment of slight shock to truly contemplate it and said forlornly "no... they just die" with a sad look in her eye.  


i know of many cancer survival stories but they all involve people who made major life changes in diet, sleep and stress. my time as a cancer treatment insider is only tales of slow death and i really hate that.  i feel like by not speaking up sooner ive stayed on the wrong side of the system because it literally threw me some scraps to eat.  ive gotten the guilty conscience without collecting a dime. just some lethal processed leftovers that probably didnt do me as much good as i figured at the time.  i guess i didnt know what to say until the medical failure got my wife.   

i have hope that we can turn her around but ill be doubly wrong if i just keep it to myself and fail to capture the chance to help others in the process. 

[mike_belben]

There is a difference between refined sugars and natural sugars.  Natural sugars are not bad for you and give the body a lot of antioxidants that can't come any other way.

i could be wrong but at this moment i am under the impression fructose is fructose, its gonna spike insulin and go through your liver, stored as fat if you arent burning it by high intensity output right then and there.  the only difference between high fructose corn syrup and a kiwi or blueberry is like you said, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, flavinoids, polyphenols, dietary fiber etc that you need which the coke doesnt have.  the fruits are worth it and the coke isnt.  the kiwi will still take you out of ketosis and put you back in fat storage instead of fat burning mode.  
fruit, honey and molasses overload is how i transitioned off of refined sugar.  now i dont crave sugars much at all.  used to be id eat a whole cake if it made it to my house.  took a while for brocolli and swiss to seem like something i wanted.

[snobdds]

So at BCBS, we had to comply with the Obamacare law passed in 2010.  There was a incentive mechanism for providers to achieve quality of care. It basically rewards providers that don't have repeat customers for the same diagnosis.  So cure the patient, don't just treat the patient. 

One of the things this allowed us to do is really drill down on the metadata and see correlations for conditions and treatments.  Doctors have good theory training, they know how diseases progress and the steps required to treat a person.  The problem is, they only have anecdotal evidence and their past experiences to know if that works or not.  If it dosen't they just move on to the next approved treatment.  To be honest, it wasn't a very good system.  Trial and error we called it in insurance.   We now we have hard data to see what works and what dosen't.  BCBS is now going to start steerage of care, in these blue distinction centers, that gives doctors a much higher reimbursement if they follow our understanding of what works with the highest level of success.  Insurance companies have all the data and we string all three areas of medicine; causation, correlation, and treatment in a highly efficient way of medical care.  Health costs are on a unstainable tract and something new needs to happen to try and reign in these costs. 

We'll see how it goes, but it's hard to fight the math on this.  

[snobdds]

There is a difference between refined sugars and natural sugars.  Natural sugars are not bad for you and give the body a lot of antioxidants that can't come any other way.

i could be wrong but at this moment i am under the impression fructose is fructose, its gonna spike insulin and go through your liver, stored as fat if you arent burning it by high intensity output right then and there.  the only difference between high fructose corn syrup and a kiwi or blueberry is like you said, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, flavinoids, polyphenols, dietary fiber etc that you need which the coke doesnt have.  the fruits are worth it and the coke isnt.  the kiwi will still take you out of ketosis and put you back in fat storage instead of fat burning mode.  
fruit, honey and molasses overload is how i transitioned off of refined sugar.  now i dont crave sugars much at all.  used to be id eat a whole cake if it made it to my house.  took a while for brocolli and swiss to seem like something i wanted.

Yes fructose is fructose and glucose is glucose, but one should not limit the benefits of fruits because of the fructose. 
The data I have in front of me shows no real correlation between sugar and chronic conditions. It's just not there.  The one exception is for diabetics, but that is a whole other discussion.  Keto has made sugars bad, but it's misguided thinking.  In fact, heavy keto users have a higher risk of endocrine disorders. 
Like I said earlier, all paths lead back to seed oils.  It's in everything we eat at the processed level.  It's in everything we eat at restaurants.  It's everywhere.  
A person is best served, and it's back by metadata, to eliminate the highly processed oils in our diet.   

[Dave Shepard]

Natural sugars need to be eaten with their naturally occurring fiber to be used properly. Oranges are ok, but orange juice just gets stored as fat without the fiber. I watched Dr. Lustig on this subject almost 15 tears ago, and he is very convincing. 

[mike_belben]

The data I have in front of me shows no real correlation between sugar and chronic conditions. It's just not there.  

then i just cant have faith in the completeness of your company's data on sugar.  maybe you should tell them to put some money into more independant sugar-health research.  the sugar lobby is constantly blocking it.  if they want cheaper insurance costs, educate people away from sugar too, not just seed oils.  itll be a healing revolution.  

 
britannica says beet sugar accounts for nearly all refined white sugar in the EU and 1/5 of total world production.  beets contain a plant defense toxin called azetadine 2 carboxylic acid, this is a non nutritive amino acid that fakes the body that consumes it into accepting AZE as a necessary amino acid, proline 2.  this occurs in humans.  the body builds a protein with a counterfeit amino acid, then the immune system finds the imposter tissue, calls out the white blood cells and inflammation to eradicate it.  the stuff gets into our food supply via sugar and cheap beef fed beet pulp from the sugar processing waste.


L-canavanine is another of these found in legumes.  its why raw kidney beans will make you severely ill.




Cell death and mitochondrial dysfunction induced by the dietary non-proteinogenic amino acid L-azetidine-2-carboxylic acid (Aze) - PubMed

In addition to the 20 protein amino acids that are vital to human health, hundreds of naturally occurring amino acids, known as non-proteinogenic amino acids (NPAAs), exist and can enter the human food chain. Some NPAAs are toxic through their ability to mimic protein amino acids and this property is utilised by NPAA-containing plants to inhibit the growth of other plants or kill herbivores. The NPAA L-azetidine-2-carboxylic acid (Aze) enters the food chain through the use of sugar beet (Beta vulgaris) by-products as feed in the livestock industry and may also be found in sugar beet by-product fibre supplements. Aze mimics the protein amino acid L-proline and readily misincorporates into proteins. In light of this, we examined the toxicity of Aze to mammalian cells in vitro. We showed decreased viability in Aze-exposed cells with both apoptotic and necrotic cell death. This was accompanied by alterations in endosomal-lysosomal activity, changes to mitochondrial morphology and a significant decline in mitochondrial function. In summary, the results show that Aze exposure can lead to deleterious effects on human neuron-like cells and highlight the importance of monitoring human Aze consumption via the food chain.

Azetidine-2-carboxylic acid in the food chain - PubMed

Azetidine-2-carboxylic acid (Aze) 1 is a non-protein amino acid present in sugar beets and in table beets (Beta vulgaris). It is readily misincorporated into proteins in place of proline 2 in many species, including humans, and causes numerous toxic effects as well as congenital malformations. Its role in the pathogenesis of disease in humans has remained unexplored. Sugar beet agriculture, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, has become widespread during the past 150 years, and now accounts for nearly 30% of the world's supply of sucrose. Sugar beet byproducts are also used as a dietary supplement for livestock. Therefore, this study was undertaken as an initial survey to identify Aze-containing links in the food chain. Herein, we report the presence of Aze 1 in three sugar beet byproducts that are fed to farm animals: sugar beet molasses, shredded sugar beet pulp, and pelleted sugar beet pulp.

Misincorporation of the proline analog azetidine-2-carboxylic acid in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis: a hypothesis - PubMed

The misconstruction of proteins as a result of the displacement of one of more proline residues by their congener, azetidine-2-carboxylic acid (Aze), can result in various disorders. A number of lines of evidence suggest that multiple sclerosis may be among these. This concept adheres to the current view that multiple sclerosis lesions originate in the myelin sheath and that the underlying molecular abnormality involves the myelin basic protein. The Aze hypothesis posits that myelin basic protein and possibly other closely related molecules are misassembled in sites of lesion formation because of the substitution of Aze for one or more prolines within consensual epitopes. These include a highly conserved myelin basic protein hexapeptide sequence, PRTPPP, and an alpha helix bounded by prolyls. Recent studies have focused on the immunopathogenetic effects of posttranslational modification of this region. This hypothesis proposes that the domain is structurally, functionally, and antigenically altered by the intrusion of Aze in place of proline and that such misassembly may involve other proteins and adversely affect interactions with neighboring molecules. This report reviews evidence supporting the hypothesis that ingestion of Aze in the diet, in conjunction with genetic susceptibility, may predispose or contribute to the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.

[mike_belben]

Natural sugars need to be eaten with their naturally occurring fiber to be used properly. Oranges are ok, but orange juice just gets stored as fat without the fiber. I watched Dr. Lustig on this subject almost 15 tears ago, and he is very convincing.

i agree the fiber is essential to feed your colon bacteria so it doesnt eat your epithelial mucosa for lack of fiber. i eat a ton of prunes now and my digestion has become flawless.  the change has been dramatic.  


dr berg made a comment i saw recently about the "fortified with vitamin C" label being a lie that required govt altering the definition of vitamin so that two chemical ingredients synthesized to create ascorbic acid could be legally called vitamin C.  so i looked into it a bit. i cant prove anything one way or another but this has been an interesting read

Whole Food Vitamins: Ascorbic Acid Is Not Vitamin C - Living Well Clinical Nutrition Center


i can say confidently that dosing a plant in urea might technically give it something we call nitrogen but it sure does not create a robust self sustaining microbial community in the soil to convert gravels and sands and rocks to soluble nitrogen via the rhizophagy cycle.  not all N is created equal.  my guess, probably not all vitamin C either.

[mike_belben]

@snobdds  

are you able to share the source of the data that BCBS uses to make these decisions on how to steer medical decisions?

[snobdds]

The data I have in front of me shows no real correlation between sugar and chronic conditions. It's just not there.  

then i just cant have faith in the completeness of your company's data on sugar.  maybe you should tell them to put some money into more independant sugar-health research.  the sugar lobby is constantly blocking it.  if they want cheaper insurance costs, educate people away from sugar too, not just seed oils.  itll be a healing revolution.  


britannica says beet sugar accounts for nearly all refined white sugar in the EU and 1/5 of total world production.  beets contain a plant defense toxin called azetadine 2 carboxylic acid, this is a non nutritive amino acid that fakes the body that consumes it into accepting AZE as a necessary amino acid, proline 2.  this occurs in humans.  the body builds a protein with a counterfeit amino acid, then the immune system finds the imposter tissue, calls out the white blood cells and inflammation to eradicate it.  the stuff gets into our food supply via sugar and cheap beef fed beet pulp from the sugar processing waste.


L-canavanine is another of these found in legumes.  its why raw kidney beans will make you severely ill.




Cell death and mitochondrial dysfunction induced by the dietary non-proteinogenic amino acid L-azetidine-2-carboxylic acid (Aze) - PubMed

In addition to the 20 protein amino acids that are vital to human health, hundreds of naturally occurring amino acids, known as non-proteinogenic amino acids (NPAAs), exist and can enter the human food chain. Some NPAAs are toxic through their ability to mimic protein amino acids and this property is utilised by NPAA-containing plants to inhibit the growth of other plants or kill herbivores. The NPAA L-azetidine-2-carboxylic acid (Aze) enters the food chain through the use of sugar beet (Beta vulgaris) by-products as feed in the livestock industry and may also be found in sugar beet by-product fibre supplements. Aze mimics the protein amino acid L-proline and readily misincorporates into proteins. In light of this, we examined the toxicity of Aze to mammalian cells in vitro. We showed decreased viability in Aze-exposed cells with both apoptotic and necrotic cell death. This was accompanied by alterations in endosomal-lysosomal activity, changes to mitochondrial morphology and a significant decline in mitochondrial function. In summary, the results show that Aze exposure can lead to deleterious effects on human neuron-like cells and highlight the importance of monitoring human Aze consumption via the food chain.

Azetidine-2-carboxylic acid in the food chain - PubMed

Azetidine-2-carboxylic acid (Aze) 1 is a non-protein amino acid present in sugar beets and in table beets (Beta vulgaris). It is readily misincorporated into proteins in place of proline 2 in many species, including humans, and causes numerous toxic effects as well as congenital malformations. Its role in the pathogenesis of disease in humans has remained unexplored. Sugar beet agriculture, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, has become widespread during the past 150 years, and now accounts for nearly 30% of the world's supply of sucrose. Sugar beet byproducts are also used as a dietary supplement for livestock. Therefore, this study was undertaken as an initial survey to identify Aze-containing links in the food chain. Herein, we report the presence of Aze 1 in three sugar beet byproducts that are fed to farm animals: sugar beet molasses, shredded sugar beet pulp, and pelleted sugar beet pulp.

Misincorporation of the proline analog azetidine-2-carboxylic acid in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis: a hypothesis - PubMed

The misconstruction of proteins as a result of the displacement of one of more proline residues by their congener, azetidine-2-carboxylic acid (Aze), can result in various disorders. A number of lines of evidence suggest that multiple sclerosis may be among these. This concept adheres to the current view that multiple sclerosis lesions originate in the myelin sheath and that the underlying molecular abnormality involves the myelin basic protein. The Aze hypothesis posits that myelin basic protein and possibly other closely related molecules are misassembled in sites of lesion formation because of the substitution of Aze for one or more prolines within consensual epitopes. These include a highly conserved myelin basic protein hexapeptide sequence, PRTPPP, and an alpha helix bounded by prolyls. Recent studies have focused on the immunopathogenetic effects of posttranslational modification of this region. This hypothesis proposes that the domain is structurally, functionally, and antigenically altered by the intrusion of Aze in place of proline and that such misassembly may involve other proteins and adversely affect interactions with neighboring molecules. This report reviews evidence supporting the hypothesis that ingestion of Aze in the diet, in conjunction with genetic susceptibility, may predispose or contribute to the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.

I too thought there would be a nice correlation on sugar as an underlying cause for a lot of chronic conditions.  It turns out I was wrong. 
We have enough data to statically have a very high confidence interval to come to this conclusion.   

[snobdds]

@snobdds  

are you able to share the source of the data that BCBS uses to make these decisions on how to steer medical decisions?

The source of our data is our own metadata, collected by each independent BCBS.  I have a pool of over 275 million people to draw from.  Each claim comes in with a primary diagnosis code and various secondary codes.  Once ICD10 came into being about 7 years ago, it really gave a highly segmented way of collecting health data.  Since then it has allowed us to really discover trends in medicine that was never seen before.  

[doc henderson]

Many rules developed by major insurance impairs the Doc from doing his job, rather than guide.  It is often to save money.  Other guidelines cause unneeded labs, imaging and admissions, for stroke protocols as an example.  the sugar if high is not good for you but is also an indicator of other metabolic illness and many are linked, called the metabolic syndrome.  all these together, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and hyperinsulinism, promote stroke and heart attack.  Most nutrition can be interchanged.  protein made up of amino acids, can have a nitrogen removed and you have sugar.  people who are starving, loose muscle mass to feed metabolic needs of cells.  fat is made from sugar as a storage form and breaks down to sugar.  it can be used for energy, and produces ketones that have energy, but without sugar metabolism (in diabetes), not efficient.  starches are complex carbohydrate, and breaks down into sugar from branched structure, that can only release little at a time, so it is less glycemic.  If you eat high protein, you lose weight, because you have to burn fat to get sugar, and the amino acids break down to sugar.  this is hard on kidneys as it has to deal with large amounts of nitrogenous waste.  A professor at K state, lost 30 pounds eating nothing but twinkies.  all his labs looked good.  most of our culture's illness is from ease of obtaining food, and even poor folks get plenty of calories.  mostly complex carbs and are overweight.  Being overweight promotes the metabolic syndrome.  so does age.  things you get away with for 50 years, catch up with you.  lowering insulin levels by decreasing sugar has the same effect as taking testosterone or anabolic steroids.  unless you overall take in an excess of calories (more than you need for expenditure).  If you are gaining weight, you are making more deposits than expenditures.  Anything you believe will help you, will be perceived as helpful.  Including "sugar pills".     called the placebo effect.
"And that is all I have to say about that"!  Forest Gump.

[snobdds]

Many rules developed by major insurance impairs the Doc from doing his job, rather than guide.  It is often to save money.  Other guidelines cause unneeded labs, imaging and admissions, for stroke protocols as an example.  the sugar if high is not good for you but is also an indicator of other metabolic illness and many are linked, called the metabolic syndrome.  all these together, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and hyperinsulinism, promote stroke and heart attack.  Most nutrition can be interchanged.  protein made up of amino acids, can have a nitrogen removed and you have sugar.  people who are starving, loose muscle mass to feed metabolic needs of cells.  fat is made from sugar as a storage form and breaks down to sugar.  it can be used for energy, and produces ketones that have energy, but without sugar metabolism (in diabetes), not efficient.  starches are complex carbohydrate, and breaks down into sugar from branched structure, that can only release little at a time, so it is less glycemic.  If you eat high protein, you lose weight, because you have to burn fat to get sugar, and the amino acids break down to sugar.  this is hard on kidneys as it has to deal with large amounts of nitrogenous waste.  A professor at K state, lost 30 pounds eating nothing but twinkies.  all his labs looked good.  most of our culture's illness is from ease of obtaining food, and even poor folks get plenty of calories.  mostly complex carbs and are overweight.  Being overweight promotes the metabolic syndrome.  so does age.  things you get away with for 50 years, catch up with you.  lowering insulin levels by decreasing sugar has the same effect as taking testosterone or anabolic steroids.  unless you overall take in an excess of calories (more than you need for expenditure).  If you are gaining weight, you are making more deposits than expenditures.  Anything you believe will help you, will be perceived as helpful.  Including "sugar pills".     called the placebo effect.
"And that is all I have to say about that"!  Forest Gump.

I get the friction for the medical and insurance industries.  It's always been a persistent point of contention.  That is why we are trying a new model to see if our big data can supplement a dr. to get the patient the best medical outcome.   Time will tell. 

I too agree that the body will get its sugar where it needs to to fulfil body functions. Sugar is not the problem, excess calories is. 

[mike_belben]

you ever lived with a person who is insulin resistant or has metabolic syndrome?