The Cause Of The Healthcare Crisis
There’s a new danger looming over the horizon, a crisis that has been created by our modern society and how we run our healthcare services. If we’re not careful, the damage is going to be colossal. The mainstream media isn’t talking about this, except for interviews with a handful of medical professionals. One such figure stands out, a man who has brought to light the severity of the situation. His name is Dr. Robert H. Lustig, a clinical pediatric endocrinologist. He is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on metabolic disorders.
Metabolic disorders have become increasingly worse in the US, according to the CDC website, 1 in 10 (34 million people) have diabetes, and 90-95 percent of those people have type 2 diabetes. Another statistic from the CDC paints an even starker picture, 73.6 percent of the adult population (anyone 20 and over) in the US (2017 – 2018) are overweight or obese. The situation isn’t much better in the UK, with 62 percent of the adult population also overweight and 1 in 4 adults considered obese.
Introducing The Scientists
How did this come to pass? In the 1950s, a scientist by the name of Ancel Keys noticed that heart disease deaths in America were on the rise, roughly 588 per 100,000 people. He believed that the reason for this spike in heart disease was due to lifestyle factors such as diet, activity levels, and stress. In 1958, a decades-long study gathered data from populations across seven countries: Japan, Italy, England, Wales, Australia, Canada, and the US. The results were first published in 1978, indicating that higher saturated fat intake and blood serum cholesterol were correlated with greater deaths from coronary heart disease. Click here to see the graphs from the original study.
This study was heralded with much fanfare and propelled Dr. Keys to scientific fame, earning him the title of “Father of the Lipid Hypothesis.” However, while this study points out that there’s a correlation between saturated fat and coronary heart disease deaths, sugar consumption also shows the same correlation. Keys himself states there’s an inter-correlation between sucrose (sugar) and saturated fat, but these two dietary factors are not analyzed separately.
A second issue is with the term “saturated fat.” Often trans fats and various vegetable oils are lumped under the same umbrella. It’s proven at this point that trans fats have incredibly negative effects on human health. There’s a huge body of evidence indicating that excessive polyunsaturated fat intake in the form of vegetable oils can cause systemic inflammation in humans.
There’s been much back and forth in the scientific community about the seven countries’ study. One thing is for certain, decades of US dietary government policy were based on Key’s work, like the food pyramid. The general health of the population has not improved and got increasingly worse over the decades.
Our Sweet Love Affair
So we’ve discussed a little bit about Ancel Key’s work and how it’s shaped policy in America and laid the groundwork for today’s healthcare crisis. However, you may be wondering if it isn’t the fat in our diets that is the problem, what is? The answer is in all of our favorite treats, good old sugar. In evolutionary terms, sugar tells us that something is safe to eat and is a dense source of calories or energy, like fruit or honey. However, our modern food industry puts additional sugar in practically every food you can think of. This is a big problem in America, especially where people are consuming around 100 pounds of sugar every year.
Sugar is a problem because it’s metabolized chiefly in the liver. There’s no other cell or organ in the body that can make use of sugar. Now you might be shouting at the screen, “nonsense, you have blood sugar, every cell in your body uses sugar as fuel.” This is a misnomer. You don’t have blood sugar, you have blood glucose. Glucose; is the stuff in bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes, the carbohydrates that humans have been eating for thousands of years. Glucose is not an issue, outside of people with metabolic disease and insulin problems, which is more than two-thirds of us (hence the popularity of low carb diets). The issue is the compound fructose. Sugar is roughly half glucose and half fructose, give or take a few percent.
Fried Liver Anyone?
Fructose is metabolized in the liver. If you’re drinking a can of soda, then all of the fructose in it goes directly to the liver. Your liver has a very limited capacity to metabolize fructose. The massive amounts of sugar in processed food overwhelm the liver. The only thing the liver can do with the sugar is converted it into liver fat. Hence, the epidemic of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in both adults and children. This plays havoc with insulin and to cut a long story short, if insulin goes wrong then it sets us up for a whole host of physiological problems.
The whole gamut of modern chronic disease is all related to poor liver health and high insulin, hypertension, dementia, and heart disease. There are even causal links between sugar consumption, high insulin, and cancer. This has a huge knock-on effect on our health services. They are overwhelmed by a tide of chronic disease and drugs are not the answer.
The Solution To The Crisis Is Not So Far Away
Much like it took time for alcohol and then tobacco to be regulated, history repeats itself with sugar. The fact is that sugar is having a very negative effect on our collective health. It’s responsible for the lion’s share of chronic diseases. There’s plenty of data showing this. The food industry is doing its best to avoid change or regulation by stating that sugar is a natural product. So is cocaine, and so are several varieties of mushrooms that can melt your liver inside a week (link if you’re interested).
Thankfully, there are people like Dr. Robert Lustig who are bringing to public awareness the deleterious effects of sugar. Just like it took time for the public to accept smoking as a cause of lung cancer, alcohol in excess is an addictive and unhealthy substance. The same is true with sugar. In the meantime, one of the best things that you, as an individual, can do for your health is to reduce or cut your consumption of refined sugar and eat as many whole foods as possible.
Thanks for reading.