berke@ucla-cs.UUCP (12/25/85)
After years of reading books such as "Sugar Blues" and having all sorts of
friends go hypog. or worse, and watching people eat honey instead of sugar, I
finally sat down with a friend of mine in a library to find out what if
anything was wrong with sugar.
We found in some books that glucose, and I believe, galactose diffuse across
intestinal walls and so the only thing governing the rate is the concentration
of glucose in digestion, compared with that in the blood. On the other hand,
the other simple sugars are carried across the boundaries ("active transport?")
by chemical substances, so the rate is limited by the quantity of these
chemicals.
Since sucrose is half glucose, we could undersand the problem of table sugar.
That is, sucrose is a compound of glucose, and I can't remember which other
simple sugar, and it is the glucose diffusing across boundaries that is
the trouble.
Honey it turns out, is half pure glucose, not in compound form, so it's just
as "bad." That is, bad in terms of eating glucose.
As I recall, starches and other complex carbohydrates don't break down into
glucose. So as far as we could figure, eating fructose (fruit sugar - now
available in refined form) shouldn't have the "rush" and "blues" effects of
glucose-containing substances.
This is not a treatment for hypoglycemia! I am not a doctor. In fact,
it took a nutritionist, and me, an avid "I know what I eat" nut for twenty
years, several books on nutrition, and medicine, to get this far. Doctors and
biochemists poo-poo the bad effects of sugar (unless you are already diabetic
or hypoglycemic, and even then ...) and health-food proponents treat sugar
as though it were some part of a religious cult.
A biochemist friend of mine was the stimulus for this particular research in
that he stated of sugars that "They're all interconvertible in the body
anyway. This turns out to be incorrect, but it led to the transport theory.
If anybody can add to the previous discussion, either validating or denying
facts, please let me know. (If you reply, I can summarize). I would like
to give you references, but when we did this I was truly interested in my own
health, and not in expounding nutritional theories.
Peter BerkeGMP@PSUVM.BITNET (12/29/85)
The problem with discussions like these is that they consist of the blind
leading the partially sighted. I have been ghostwriting for physicians for
many years and have learned that laypeople, even computer geniuses really
do not have the information they think they have. There is a great deal of
hideously erroneous information exchanged on this network. I think anyone
who suspects diabetes or hypoglycemia should see a physician and have a proper
diagnosis made. The issue is not simple. It involves both heart and kidneys
and improper treatment could be disastrous. It is easy to badmouth the
medical profession because they cannot work miracles on demand. On the other
hand, I have been a writer long enough to know who really writes the self
help books you see scattered all over the bookstores. They appear definitive
and many are well written, but they are usually half-truths at best. There
is NO general health diagnosis you can make from a book. You need individual
diagnosis and if the diagnosis is serious you need a second and third
opinion. Especially about diabetes and hypoglycemia. I am not a physician!
bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein) (01/03/86)
>From: GMP@PSUVM.BITNET > >The problem with discussions like these is that they consist of the blind >leading the partially sighted. I have been ghostwriting for physicians for >many years and have learned that laypeople, even computer geniuses really >do not have the information they think they have. There is a great deal of >hideously erroneous information exchanged on this network. I think anyone >who suspects diabetes or hypoglycemia should see a physician and have a proper >diagnosis made. The issue is not simple. It involves both heart and kidneys >and improper treatment could be disastrous. It is easy to badmouth the >medical profession because they cannot work miracles on demand. On the other >hand, I have been a writer long enough to know who really writes the self >help books you see scattered all over the bookstores. They appear definitive >and many are well written, but they are usually half-truths at best. There >is NO general health diagnosis you can make from a book. You need individual >diagnosis and if the diagnosis is serious you need a second and third >opinion. Especially about diabetes and hypoglycemia. I am not a physician! Note: this is *NOT* a flame The problem with discussions like *these* is that there really are things that people get from other people, other than talking to physicians. For example, you note that "..anyone who suspects diabetes or hypoglycemia should see a physician". Agreed. How do we "suspect"? Either we are born with how to suspect hypoglycemia, we just feel lousy (whatever that means) and take ourselves to a doctor and announce this or we hear from someone (say the net) that if you feel like xyz after doing abc you might have hypoglycemia (go see a doctor.) I think most people realize that seeing a doctor is a proper thing to do for some ailments, not for others. Hypoglycemia is probably a good example of what *should* be discussed as I bet many people with it attribute the symptoms to other things, like imagined emotional problems and are not seeing a doctor. Also, where do you draw the line? Certainly I would agree that if I thought I had diabetes, whoosh, off to the doctor. What about a headache? No, we take an aspirin unless there is something unusual about it, or do we take a tylenol (acetaminophen) or ibuprofen (another over the counter remedy)...hmmm, we could ask a doctor, or do you just say to someone 'hey, which of these should I take?' even if that person is across a net. Answering the question should not be construed as doling out medical advice (I take Excedrin which is a mixture of aspirin and acetaminophen and some caffeine, works well for me.) What about feeling dragged out after eating mega-sugar? Is that indicative of serious disease or something a lot of people experience which is best treated by avoiding foods which seem to bother you? Is the reassurance from some other people that this is quite common bad medical advice? Should we not talk to anyone but doctors about our health at all? Harm is surely done by *not* speaking to doctors, harm is surely done by speaking to doctors (speak to a doctor, you won't get an argument, just bring up the medical testing done to protect against malpractice, going into the wrong doctor with a simple headache could be a disaster.) There is no easy answer, but maybe if we keep talking to each other some of us will learn something (even if just what is bad advice and how to recognize it.) You have to assume people have some common sense, even if some don't. -Barry Shein, Boston University