Hacker News Reader

Comment by justinator | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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.

View on HN

Hypertension? How is that relevant??

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

> Hypertension? How is that relevant??

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?

Glucose and fructose are both monosaccharides - also known as "simple sugars".

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.

> Glucose and fructose are both monosaccharides - also known as "simple sugars".

Point taken.

The metabolism of the two are still, very different (glucose and fructose)

>Glucose is a complex carbohydrate

Citation? Everywhere I look says that it is a simple sugar.

Hypertension is high blood pressure. Glucose is a simple sugar.

With respect, please do some fact checking before restating whatever you think you know outside your area of expertise.

As a professional athlete, health is an area of my expertise. Desk jockying is the hobby.

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.

Hypertension can be caused by many factors, including genetics, however there are indications that one of the biggest factors is sugar consumption and not salt, as was previously believed and still is to some extent.

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.

This thread has sunk into absurdity. I assume at this point that you are a hilarious troll, but in case you are actually serious: virtually everything you said is wrong on a basic level you could verify with Wikipedia or whatever.

I am being as honest as possible - I'm not a troll. Do trolls usually have 6+ year accounts?

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.

> RE: France, are you kidding me? French people do get fat.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com