Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtw | Hacker News Reader

This is simplistic. When I am on a low carb diet but for whatever reason decide to eat a doughnut or anything loaded with simple sugars, then I begin to be irritable, have cravings and generally less focused on work. The findings applies only for people who are stuck on high-carb diet

View on HN

Your reading is simplistic.

This is talking about blood glucose levels, which is influenced by many factors, including glucose production in the liver.

Also, if your glucose level increases too much, your body deals with it by taking it all away, being you into a sugar low. Afair ;)

His reading is simplistic, but so is the article: there is no mention about different metabolic states, for instance.

The brain depends on a very small quantity of glucose to function - it arguably is more efficient with ketone bodies, for instance [1] - so covering not only glycolysis seems like an incomplete research.

[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/the-fat...

Yes, this is another flaw, but there are much bigger flaws in their work!

Also, they only fasted people for 3h. I've sucked a lot of junk out of peoples' stomachs who have had longer fasts, so this is not even a glycogenolisis phase: they could easily have been digesting food still. The participants were students, so maybe some had drunk alcohol, which, like a ketone is a two-carbon molecule...

A spike in blood sugar is not the same as not having depleted your normal blood sugar concentration.

Fructose causes cravings not glucose. Glucose is barely sweet, and gives you a instant energy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com