It is very stylish to be concerned with the protein, fat, and carbohydrate content of our diets. This has led to a lot of articles that are confusing for us all because of the tremendous differences in their content. I hope this article simplifies the subject so that you will feel comfortable with your eating habits again.
According to scientists, primitive people ate diets that were hunted and gathered as they walked about the earth. This is known from fossils—even feces (poop) became fossilized, so we know what these people were eating: meats, fibrous vegetables (greens, asparagus,etc.), roots, and picked fruits. Scientists maintain that we have eaten this way for 100,000,000 years. Much more recent is our efforts at agriculture. Again, according to scientists, human society with organized agriculture goes back 10,000 years or so. This means that bread, rice, breakfast cereal, and other grain products are very recent additions to our diets. Beer may be the reason that primitive man even wanted to raise grains, or the desire for wine creating grape farmers.
This is important for us because of the new biochemical challenges that our bodies are being tested with.
Let’s talk about insulin. If you look in any medical textbook, there will be a section dealing with insulin and the “normal” control of blood sugar. When the blood glucose levels get too high, our bodies secrete insulin to prevent body damage from the high glucose levels by shunting the extra glucose to the fat cells. This is a good thing, but it was very uncommon in the lives of primitive people.How often did they consume large amounts of carbohydrates? Perhaps a special festival where beer or wine was consumed? Summertime when there were large amounts of ripe fruits? In our society, it is common for insulin to be secreted 4 to 6 times daily with various meals and snacks.
So what? The problem with all of this insulin secretion is that the insulin is a pro-inflammatory hormone. That’s right, secretion of insulin leads to inflammation throughout the body. So your joint pains, your headaches, your bruises, your strains—all of your pains are made worse through the secretion of insulin. This is terrible, isn’t it? Our very way of lifestyle and diet leads to increased inflammation!
This is the problem with selecting an untested lifestyle that only dates back 10,000 years: we haven’t adapted to this huge change.
If we were eating the hunter-and-gatherers’ diet, our blood sugar would rarely go high enough to require insulin secretion. For millions of years, then, we rarely secreted insulin. We ate fats, proteins, some nuts and berries, and fibrous vegetables. No insulin required.
Now we eat diets requiring insulin every meal! We have developed new diseases unknown to primitive man: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc. Of course, we don’t worry about starvation, sabre-tooth tigers mauling us, or being eaten by a pack of wolves, but,really we have made a lot of problems for ourselves through this10,000-year-old experiment.
When we eat too many carbohydrates, our white blood cells are less active for 4 hours—each time the blood sugar goes high. No more orange juice for colds and flus!
Remember, when we drink alcohol, juice, sugar beverages, or eat cakes, pies, pastries, bread, cookies, or breakfast cereals, then we secrete insulin.
If we have cancer cells, they have 16 times as many insulin receptors as our fat cells, so when they are present, they eat almost all of the glucose released from these dangerous foods. And our white blood cells don’t fight for a while, either.
If we don’t have cancer, then the extra glucose is turned into fat. Then, once we go without food for a while, once the glucose has run out, then our livers make glucose—at first from stored starch, and then from fat. But the metabolic shifting mechanism of the liver can be impeded through many possible ways. With this problem, the person becomes hypoglycemic and the adrenals, liver, and thyroid can become imbalanced as well.
All of these sugars also challenges our hearts—we develop cardiovascular disease. As our blood vessels get worse and worse, we develop circulatory problems (most importantly) in our hearts and brains. This leads to heart disease, circulatory problems, senility and other brain conditions, etc.
When we secrete a lot of insulin through bad lifestyle, we exhaust our insulin manufacturing plant (the pancreas) and develop Type 2 diabetes. This also promotes increased cardiovascular problems.
Are you getting the picture? Our food experiment in organized agriculture has led to most of the common forms of death in our times.
This is why I like the high protein, high fat, low carbohydrate diets that are touted with different names. Of course, we should want the grass-fed and organic animal products, moderate intake of vegetable fats, and general avoidance of simple carbohydrates. That’s enough for now. The rest will become topics for future articles.