Fat For Fuel Essay

2. Insulin is the hormone that breaks up all the carbohydrates from the food you eat and turns it into energy and regulates blood glucose levels while doing so, so without that hormone the body basically begins eating itself for energy, which results in extreme weight loss, fatigue, dehydration, and uncontrollable blood glucose levels that lead to many, many complications.

According to Mark Sisson (2009), longer-term ketosis can result from fasting or staying on a low-carbohydrate diet, and ketosis that’s deliberately induced serves as a medical intervention for epilepsy. In glycolysis, higher levels of insulin block release of fat from adipose tissues and promote storage of body fat, while the body is in ketosis, fat reserves are continually released and consumed as energy (Sisson, 2009, p.47). This is why ketosis is referred to as

Insulin assists in more processes than just carbohydrate regulation. It can also help the body process fat and protein. Proteins are broke into amino acids then absorbed into the bloodstream. The body uses these amino acids to make new proteins. Insulin helps make these new proteins. Insulin also helps the human body store fat from the food that was eaten. It is stored so it can later, when needed, be used as energy (Greene 11).

We’ve been told in the earlier years by nutritionists that some food are more healthy than others, but only to be overturned by later studies. Pollan feels that this orthodoxy is very contradicting as Americans have been assured about how having a low diet helps prevent health issues, but only to be revealed by even more professionals that these foods actually have harmful effects on health, “Sooner or later, everything solid we’ve been told about the links between our diet and our health seems to get blown away in the gust of the most recent study” (Pollan). They have been told that these foods are of no harm, yet to only acquire health issues such as obesity later in their lives. For instance, my friends tried to only eat foods that affirm a low diet, however, it has barely done anything to their health and weight. Surprisingly, these supposedly “low-diet” foods doesn’t provide the vitamins enough for the body to function properly (Miller). It has been said that low diet foods makes people want to eat more than usual because these foods are mostly served in smaller portions that make people think that they are eating

Ketosis is a metabolic state where the liver produces organic molecules known as ketone bodies. Technically, the term ketone denotes an organic molecule where a carbon atom, sandwiched between two other carbon atoms, is double-bonded to an oxygen atom (Peter Attia, 2014). To reach this state the body must deplete all glucose stores including those in the liver. This can be accomplished through periods of fasting or through intake of high fat and minimal carbohydrates and sugars. Both sugars and carbohydrates are converted to glucose for the body to burn as energy or ATP. When the body is starved of glucose it must switch gears in order to continue its existence. This switch of gears is what followers of the ketogenic diet call fat assimilation. The human body under the realization that there are no stores of glucose for energy asks the liver to create ketone bodies. Those ketone bodies use lipids or fat for energy. This is the greatest benefit for dieters since the goal for most is to lose weight through fat loss.

The weight in America is ballooning out of control and the American public needs help. There are a number of contributing factors that tie into the growing waistline of America such as a sedimentary lifestyle, over consumption of food which leads to a higher caloric intake, and the marketing of unhealthy choices by food companies through television ads and radio station commercials. In regards to the over consumption of food, the only person that is truly affected by this is the individual themselves. After all, they are the ones that will suffer from the chronic health conditions such as respiratory related issues due to shortness of breath, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension. All of our lives we have been told we are what we eat. If you consume food with little or nutritional value it will definitely show in your body and if you consume foods that contribute substantial vitamins, mineral, and proteins to the body that to, will also show. Food companies do have a right to market what is most profitable, it just so happen that what is profitable is inexpensive to make and detrimental to one’s health if consumed on a daily basis. However, millions of Americans have tried to get there weight under control on their own and many have been successful at it. According to numerous new reports, the Diet industry gross approximately 60 billion dollars a year but only a few million have shown long lasting results.

When food is ingested in a person body it is broken down into smaller components including a sugar called glucose. Glucose travels to the cells in our body through the bloodstream and this is made possible due to insulin. As stated earlier insulin is produced by the beta cells and is stored in the pancreas. When the glucose levels go up in a person’s body the pancreas release the stored insulin in order for the glucose to get into the cells. To summarize insulin is what allows for glucose to produce energy. The cells in our body

Let’s take a moment here to understand what insulin does. Insulin is the main product that escorts sugar into the cells to be burned off and converted into energy. Kind of like your prom date walking you into the big event arm-in-arm. Nobody wants to go to prom alone, so the sugar (glucose) just hangs around waiting for her date. In diabetes the sugar is either at an all-girls school or all the dates are already taken by other sugars. With both you will see excess sugar in the blood.

The function of insulin is to convert carbohydrate to glucose. People that suffer diabetes actually have problems with their insulin either their insulin is not sufficient to convert carbohydrate to glucose or the insulin cannot function correctly. The insulin can be injected to the patient body based on the schedule made by the

body. Unused energy is turned into fat that leads to increased sugar levels in our body. The blood sugar level is

While typical healthy individuals use insulin to draw sugar into their cells for energy usage,

At first, the pancreas makes additional insulin to try to induce glucose into the cells. however eventually it cannot maintain, and therefore the sugar builds up in your blood instead.

As a child, I was taught that if I were to follow the amount guidelines of the food pyramid for the different food categories, I would be able to eat healthily and be skinny, but I now know that the food pyramid is completely false and outdated. Since the issuing of the food pyramid guidelines in 1980, there has been little revision done by the government to update these guidelines. The most recent revision only placed a cap on added sugars, but that’s it. The original food pyramid and dietary recommendations were not based on clinical trials, which means that actual humans were not evaluated to test if these dietary recommendations were effective. Instead, they used a method known as Prospective Epidemiology, which is mainly observational studies. They did this by sending out questionnaires to people asking about their diets and lifestyles and did follow up tests for years to determine the health outcome from their lifestyles. This method is highly ineffective for this type of research because it did not account for a lot of other factors that could have had affected the data, such as false data provided by the questioned people or other external factors. It also only provided the associations to obesity and not the actual causes. An example of this would be if an obese person were to watch television for a majority of their day, that action would be associated with developing obesity. (The government

In addition, their plasma was checked levels of triglycerides and hormones. The results of the first study show that in the mice on ketogenic diet lost as much weight as the mice on the calorie restricted diet, but the group on the high carbohydrate-high fat diet (which ate just as many calories as the ketogenic diet group) showed an average increase of 6 lbs and twice the increase in body fat composition (as shown via DEXA measurement). The average body fat composition of all animals in other groups remained at around 3.4 lb per animal. Although both groups lost the same amount of weight, the metabolic rate (gathered by the CLAMS apparatus) of the ketogenic diet mice was 15% greater than the mice on the calorie restricted diet. Microarray analysis showed suppression of certain genes (e.g. FAS) involved in fatty acid synthesis in animals on the ketogenic diet, whereas in the high carbohydrate-high fat group, these genes were significantly

If there is one thing Americans know a lot about its diets. Everything from Weight watchers to Atkins and everything in between has been promoted on televisions, in bestselling books and now advertised all over social media. Each one claiming to be the answer to weight loss, lifelong health and even making claims of reversing disease. Unfortunately even with this inundation, Americans are larger than ever. It’s confusing. Who is right, who is wrong? What can be believed? What can the average person actually attain and stick to? The government even has a say in what people should be eating. The food pyramid and more recently MyPlate have been attempts to steer people towards health. Unfortunately, they have been steering people in the wrong direction. A low fat high carbohydrate diet has been promoted extensively for many years, but it has left Americans fatter than ever So what is the answer? It surprises some and frustrates others, but a high fat, moderate protein and low carbohydrate diet is the way to go. This way of eating is commonly referred to as the ketogenic diet or keto. The ketogenic way of eating is the best diet because it promotes safe, healthy weight management including appetite control, reduces inflammation and high blood sugars, and supports brain health.