Exercise too does help a little with insulin resistance (but not enough to repair the damage done by a diet high in sugar), plus people that exercise tend to also eat healthy.
The story is that fructose gets metabolized differently than glucose and for example leads to accumulation of fat in your liver and then your pancreas and it’s all downhill from there, I.e. having a fatty pancreas is correlated very well with insulin resistance and prediabetes.
And then the problem with sucrose and HCFS are is that they have both glucose and fructose and the foods containing them have no fiber to slow down the digestion, so it’s hitting that liver hard, with that fructose being converted directly in fat deposits.
I do agree that wheat is bad too. Personally I’ve cut wheat from my diet.
But don’t look at the glycemic index alone as that’s an oversimplification.
Also let’s get one thing straight ... you cannot live without fat, no matter what fat we’re talking about and anybody that claims otherwise doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And you can die without salt. In these cases the debate has always been about quantity.
But you can live without putting another gram of sugar in your mouth for your remaining life. Although it’s pretty hard to do because sugar is in everything these days, including packaged bread because it extends shelf life ;-)
Those have been debunked. You're running on that same assumption, correct?
> we've been operating under the assumption that eating sugar is the primary cause of high blood sugar leading to insulin resistance
That's called Type 2 Diabetes. I don't know if that's an assumption?
> When you look at the glycemic index and glycemic load of foods, it's actually wheat that comes out on top.
Wheat is glucose though, not fructose.
Cutting soda out of your diet is probably better than having a naked sandwich.
I would say that switching to whole wheat from white bread is a positive, though.
1. Yes, those have been debunked. That's why I said "used to".
2. Most people assume dietary sugar creates high blood sugar. I'm stating that, like saying dietary fat makes you fat, it sounds intuitive but may not be true.
3. Yes, wheat is glucose. Why do you mention fructose? I didn't.
Whole wheat bread will raise your blood sugar, just like white bread.
And possibly more than soda. http://quittingsugar.com/2012/07/11/bread-and-coke-smackdown...
Consuming excess amounts of fructose will (via complicated metabolic pathways) produce a lot of uric acid by your liver. That's what's causing hypertension. This shows the metabolic pathway diagrammed out:
https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?t=3395
Pretty interesting.
Is there a competing theory?
> 3. Yes, wheat is glucose. Why do you mention fructose? I didn't.
Glucose is not sugar; fructose is. They take different pathways when metabolized. It's true that lots of white bread has added sugar, but that's not the wheat. I would say that if wheat is a silent killer, France would be in big trouble, and they're not.
Glucose is absolutely sugar. Fructose and glucose are both simple sugars (table sugar is sucrose, a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose).
The starch in wheat is made up of long chains of glucose, which again, is a sugar. It sometimes has added sugar as well. Both those facts are true for both white and wheat bread.
RE: France, are you kidding me? French people do get fat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_France
Like most of the world that switches to a "western diet", France is not immune to it. They've got McDonald's and junk food there too.
That said France has been a "paradox", as noted since the 1980s, due to their low incidence of coronary heart disease or other chronic diseases, in spite of their high consumption of dietary fat and cholesterol.
Of course, the French diet is only a paradox due to the American dietary guidelines being dead wrong. And as they switch more and more to the American diet, of course, they stop being a paradox.
Hypertension is another word for high blood sugar - that's what you were talking about. It's part of a larger related problem called, Metabolic Dysfunction/Syndrome
> Glucose is absolutely sugar.
Glucose is a complex carbohydrate. Sugar is not, it's a simple sugar.
Edit: As other's have pointed out, I am wrong: glucose is a simple carb - the fact remains that it is not fructose and still feel that this is important.
Fructose is metabolized in the liver via Fructolysis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructolysis
Glucose can be utilized by almost every living cell on earth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate_metabolism
And that big difference is why taking in cals. via sugar is different than taking it in via glucose, even though, as you say, glucose is just a long chain of simplier carbs.
> RE: France, are you kidding me? French people do get fat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_France
Fat isn't necessarily unhealthy; Metabolic Syndrome is the underlying problem.
It's all interesting stuff, huh?
With respect, please do some fact checking before restating whatever you think you know outside your area of expertise.
I've been reading The Salt Fix (http://thesaltfix.com), it has references to many studies ... not sure what to think of it, but being confronted with a serious electrolytes deficiency lately and having the symptoms to go with it, I tend to believe it.
Lots of different issues are related, and I'm not going to say there can be a simple way to make it all make sense - for example: what is the symptom, and what is the disease?
I'm trying to share what I know to help others, not to stroke my own ego. If I make mistakes in typing things out, I apologize. I never said I was a doctor, and I appreciate the feedback.
Sucrose, "table sugar", is a disaccharide of one glucose group and one fructose group.
"Complex carbohydrate" is ill-defined, but I guess could refer to polymeric saccharides, a classification which wouldn't apply to sucrose, glucose, or fructose. In any case, you'd need a strange perspective to see glucose as a "complex carbohydrate": it's only got six carbon atoms.
Point taken.
The metabolism of the two are still, very different (glucose and fructose)
But, I do try to study up on the subject, since I am an athlete. If I bobbled two things up: calling glucose a complex carb, and mixing up high blood pressure with high sugar levels, I believe I believe I have already apologized and conceded that I was wrong. If it isn't clear, take this post as doing that again.
Citation? Everywhere I look says that it is a simple sugar.
That is not what most people assume. In fact sugar has never been vilified properly, which is why diabetics are still prescribed diets with sugar, which is basically murder.
But btw — this is not an assumptions, you can actually measure it at home. I got a glucose meter at home, got it for self experimentation. Whenever I eat something with sugar in it, my blood glucose spikes and even stays slightly higher than my average for several hours afterwards. Whenever I'm eating meat or green veggies however, I don't get any glucose or insulin response (you can measure your insulin response by noticing a lower blood glucose than the baseline).
You can also understand if you're a diabetic or pre-diabetic too by the time it takes your blood glucose levels to come back to the baseline (the level you were at prior to eating). If it takes 2 hours, you're still insulin sensitive enough. If it takes 4 hours, you're a diabetic, or well on your way to becoming one.
Self experimentation is actually easy in this case, you don't have to guess ;-)
In fact T2 diabetes is not a disease of high blood sugar, although the health care industry is yet to fully acknowledge it. T2 diabetes is a disease of hyperinsulinemia (i.e. high levels of insulin in your blood), which creates a vicious cycle that can lead to high blood sugar as a symptom, due to developing insulin resistance, which makes your pancreas dump more and more insulin into the blood stream, until the pancreas is no longer able to keep up with the required load of insulin, very high blood sugar levels being the symptom. At some point the beta cells of the pancreas begin to die too. And if you lose the function of your pancreas, that's T1 diabetes.
Interestingly T1 diabetics can also develop T2 diabetes by injecting themselves with too much insulin. People without a functional pancreas (T1) and with high insulin resistance (T2) are essentially screwed.
This is why treating T2 diabetes by giving patients synthetic insulin shots is like giving them poison, the same poison that's been making them ill, treating the symptom and not the disease.
To treat T2 diabetes, or pre-diabetes (which is prevalent in half of the US's population by now), you have to stop your body from producing so much insulin.
Many doctors claim that T2 diabetes is a degenerative disease that can only get worse (if you give them poison as treatment, of course) and yet many T2 diabetics have reportedly achieved full remission, completely getting rid of their medication, by switching to low carbs diets. Assuming they still have a functional pancreas of course.
---
So yes, it's without doubt that dietary sugar creates high blood sugar and T2 diabetes, but the way it does that (via hyperinsulinemia) is not common knowledge or treated properly ;-)
But to make things clear — we are talking of sugar as in the generally understood sense of sucrose and HCFS, whose consumption has been out of control and rising since the end of WWII at least, with obesity and diabetes rates to match it. And we can agree that anything based on white flour has been a problem too.
We are not talking about eating fresh apples (although apple juice is a problem). And fruits too are damaging on diabetes, anything with a lot of carbohydrates becomes damaging, so we'd better ensure that we don't get there.
Cutting out the sucrose, the HCFS and even the white flour is not such a drastic change. A few years back people couldn't imagine living without cigarettes either.
My grandparents lived without any sugar in their diets (countryside folks), my grandfather was eating 10 eggs per day and lived to 99 years old, working his land until 95.
Have you measured blood sugar after ingesting bread, and compared it to ingesting pure sugar? It might surprise you to know that a typical serving of bread will cause your blood sugar to spike MORE than even a very large amount of sugar.
Under rest, 30% of fructose is converted to fat by the liver.
https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?t=3873
The real reason to exercise (for health) is it improves your skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity - it's certainly not because you burn a ton of calories from the exercise,
Alcohol and opioids at least have a stigma, and most governments enforce marketing and public health information accordingly. Starch and sugar can never be appropriately demonized because they are "just food", and have some of the largest companies in the US behind them.
The advent of processed food has created 2 entire generations of obese, insulin resistant people. The marketing starts as young as possible, and it is normalized to not think twice about eating sugar all day.
I'm still trying to get over the fact that the FDA actually banned partially hydrogenated oil. Very surprising that they said no to the entire processed food industry in such a big way, to the benefit of consumers. I'm sure the food conglomerates went into it knowing they had other options like interesterified oils up their sleeves, though.
Some people also suggest Alzheimer is a 3rd form of diabetes. I read a study that nasal applied insulin actually helps Alzheimer.
So, no slamming of sugar, just some preliminary evidence that may want to ask yourself if you really need to drink a liter or 2 liters of coke per day.
STOP EATING SUGAR PEOPLE!
But sugar people are delicious! They're such sweethearts.
I don't really get this advice. I compound lift and when I was lifting regularly I peaked at 145kg/320lbs. I've never done focused core exercises with any regularity, I just focused on good form/posture and a neutral spine. Perhaps compound lifting itself is enough to build the core strength you need for squatting? Obviously I wouldn't recommend other people leave it out, but it doesn't seem to have done me any harm.
In a perfect world, this is true - and I wish you continued good luck and health.
However, you should reflect on the mechanical advantages and levers that your body is capable of producing as it curves and flexes around a particular joint ...
500 lbs distributed nicely and evenly across all of your vertebrae works quite nicely ... but all you need is a little twist ... a little hiccup ... just two or three vertebrae coming into line instead of a gentle curve ... and you suddenly have multi-hundreds of pounds on one little lever.
Not to spoil it for you, but the squishy little disc loses.
I am a huge proponent of back squats without aids - like belts - for the purpose of developing natural core strength like what you have experienced, but it is very, very cheap insurance to work your abs/back/sides in addition.
Belts are aids in that they allow you to literally flex your stomach muscles and valsalva to a great degree - they provide no intrinsic support, instead providing something to brace your own muscles against. This is literally the argument one makes for core work! I also agree - it's important to learn to be able to squat without a belt, and I largely will with the exception of my heaviest sets of the day. It helps you appreciate the assistance and work on your own unaided valsalva.
If you do slip into this catastrophic scenario you're visualizing, being able to hold a static plank for 3 minutes isn't going to help that - you haven't trained the muscle at all to do what it needs to do at that moment - stop being static and move. Having the sheer grunt power and experience of having hundreds of lbs on your back for years is what's going to save you, and I'd argue that there's plenty of muscle groups that you've built up over the years to keep you safe in just such a circumstance - your spine isn't floating in a vat supported only by abs. I've dumped the bar, failed lifts, things have slipped, but I've never slipped a disc because I am strong enough to survive the load.
Do accidents happen and people get hurt? Absolutely, but both runners and old ladies slip discs too.
I would love to see some evidence of this. Here's Brian Shaw's workout routine. Without question one of the strongest men in the world, I see no dedicated core work:
http://deadliftworkouts.com/train-strongman-series-brian-sha...
Core work is not a bad thing, but it's not required.
But if you are low-bar squatting, your back isn't going to be completely upright, and so keeping a significant weight at a angle requires muscular contraction. Your back is going to get worked.
Yes, almost any exercise is better than none. The earlier in life the better. Good core is super important in, well, anything including sitting on the chair. Hiit I consider very good based on effects on me, but would like to see some long-term results and its definitely only for people already doing some regular training.
But where do you get the low rep info? This is good for only very specific exercise goals, mainly bodybuilding. Not something most people should strive for. Arnold type body looks great on photos, but is utterly impractical for normal life, super hard to reach and maintain. Low rep means you are close to your limits, which is area where injuries happen a lot, and wear on all parts of the body happens much more (muscles love it, but joints and connective tissue disagrees, and spine has a say in the topic too). Wear is something you are not aware of till its too late and all kinds of pain start to manifest.
Lighter weights, more reps(15-20), shorter stops between them (30-60s), and you not only gain much better results in stamina (what good is it to be able to lift 100kg 3x times and you're done, when you need to move apartment for example or do multi-hour hike/anything else). Muscles grow like crazy too, if you have weights just right. Its much easier to keep good form of exercise when you are not at your limit.
I was with you until you got here. A typical high-rep range for compound work should be between 8-12. 12-15 for auxiliary work. Most lifters would consider a rep range of between 3-5 to be low-rep.
>and you not only gain much better results in stamina (what good is it to be able to lift 100kg 3x times and you're done, when you need to move apartment for example or do multi-hour hike/anything else
Heavy lifting actually trains both fast-twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers, as it takes your entire muscle to lift heavy. The reverse can not be said for higher-repetition lifting. I've never trained in the mentioned rep range and anecdotally am able to do multi-hour hikes/anything else just fine. I find that the running/biking crowd loves to perpetuate this myth and generally does so with use of the phrase "meat-head".
Glad you don't disagree that its more injury-prone to lift heavy. Of course its all good if one has perfect form, but technically its impossible to keep it 100% of the time. Again anecdotally I had various smaller tendon/ligament issues when lifting at my max, every few months I had to stop for a week or two to heal. Since switching to what I described, I can do exactly the same, but no injury at all for 4 years.
But all bodies are unique, I found what works for me and my goals long term, if different approach works for you, stick to it.
And yeah, I hope no one is claiming that weight lifting trains your aerobic system.
The issue is when people claim that weight lifting is detrimental to cardio-related activities, which is what OP seems to be insinuating.
The difference is that I made a statement which is scientifically accepted as true, followed by an anecdote to support it:
"Heavy lifting actually trains both fast-twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers, as it takes your entire muscle to lift heavy. The reverse can not be said for higher-repetition lifting."
There's a reason why NFL running backs can run an entire game and still squat 600 lbs; basketball players are also some of the most active athletes but still put up huge lifting numbers. Reps in the 12-20 range do not increase muscular endurance any more than the 6-8 rep range. [1]
Also, professional athletes do both high rep and low rep weight training. The high rep build the strength but the low rep build the endurance to use the strength.
It does support my claims - but that was not the purpose of the study so you'll actually have to read beyond the abstract to see it
>Also, professional athletes do both high rep and low rep weight training. The high rep build the strength but the low rep build the endurance to use the strength.
I agree - which is why I don't believe that heavy weightlifting is detrimental to one's ability to do multi-hour hikes.
Kind of a false equivalence. Firstly, I'm not sure that long, arduous hikes are very relatable to e.g. moving around in old age, whereas doing a single squat is absolutely comparable to getting out of a chair for anyone. Secondly, my guess is that you'd be utterly useless if you had to carry a pack whose weight equalised the difference between your respective bodyweights.
If that were true bodybuilders would do great at marathons and triathlons.
It takes more than leg and back muscle to do great at marathons and triathlons. Aerobic development, VO2 max, lactate threshold are just as important. Further, you would want less weight (muscle mass) in the areas that are not required for your marathon. That's why many professional bikers and marathon runners intentionally neglect gaining upper body muscle.
Weight lifting won't train you to run a marathon, but it certainly isn't detrimental towards multi-hour hikes. Don't move the goal-posts on me :)
(And Arnolds body type is not possible without steroids, in any case)
No one gets "buff" on accident. No one gets to the size where they have trouble fitting through a door on accident (and without drugs).
>Low rep means you are close to your limits, which is area where injuries happen a lot
High reps = more movement, and just like a hard disk drive, more movement means more chances for failure. The injury that sent me to the chiropractor was a warm-up ~125lb Deadlift that I did with impromper form. Weight does not correlate with Injury risk.
>what good is it to be able to lift 100kg 3x times and you're done, when you need to move apartment for example
The "joints and connective tissue" (tendons aka grip) you mentioned prior is exactly what gets trained on heavy reps, and takes a LONG time to develop.
You don't see any logical fallacy in your statement? If more movement = simply more risk, then ultra-trail runners would be all in wheelchairs in 5 years. What you load on yourself on top of your weight makes huge difference. Give those ultras 10kg backpack and they will be having all kinds of knee/ankle issues in very short time.
Doing deadlift warmup with cca 55kg seems ridiculously high, I am not surprised you eventually had an injury. Really buffed up guys in my gym start with cca 30 kg only after proper warmup of whole body via some other way (I do it same way, usually on elliptic trainer for 5 mins).
Joints and tendons get trained with whatever you do, bodyweight can still do the trick if done properly. You are right it takes horrible amount of time, also healing injury can take months easily. I prefer sport climbing for those, flexibility required is substantial, and overall the sport is awesome on every single level, especially on the rock outdoors.
Whatever works for you long term, stick to it. You should know your body better than anyone else. I know amount of load made a big difference in injury risk for me, going lighter but still almost till muscle failure I have lost 0 of the power, and gained tons of endurance. But that's just me.
A regular bar is ~20kg by itself.
This is true for exercising regardless, TBH. The more you build up now, the less trouble you have maintaining it later.
A quick summary: No gym, lifting is at home 3 days per week of 30 minutes each day. First form a habit, any kind of exercise will do. Sounds like you’re there. Once lifting, keep it compact and accessible, start with just a bench and adjustable dumbbells. He also only does a few minutes at a time, not a half hour block. Eat some protein.
Here's the ones I use [1][2].
>Both aerobic and resistance training exercise can provide weight-bearing stimulus to bone, yet research indicates that resistance training may have a more profound site specific effect than aerobic exercise.
> While there is a small effect of calcium supplementation in the upper limb, the increase in BMD which results is unlikely to result in a clinically significant decrease in fracture risk. The results do not support the use of calcium supplementation in healthy children as a public health intervention.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD005119/MUSKEL_calcium-for-improvi...
Or perhaps in both cases, the body must experience stimulus such that the tissues "know" they need to get at the necessary supplies coming in.
Why build muscles, or stronger bones, if the body overall never does anything to need them? It would be wasted motion from their point of view.
Not disagreeing with it on face value, mind you, but the actual research basically states that you can't just start exercising... you have to already been exercising (and not even all that much, like, ~5000 steps ~= 2 miles a day, some HIIT (less is more) + low rep heavy weight lifting one or twice a week) benefit from this.
So, all of us who are in our 30s now? The time is now.
Also, re: weight lifting, try to target all of your muscle groups right. Don't be the guy who skips leg day, don't be the guy who has a shitty core and is trying to squat 250+. Guys like Jeff Cavaliere are who to look at on how to do this right.