When it comes to common chronic diseases like insulin resistance, obesity and type II diabetes, our government is very good at compiling statistics concerning the age, sex and race of people with these diseases. They also consider these diseases to be driven by poor lifestyle choices—eating too much calorie-dense food and not getting enough exercise. This perspective also implies that people with these disorders lack a certain level of self-control and discipline, more or less making a moral judgment.
Scientific Discrimination
There’s only one glaring problem with this approach—when the issue of race is carefully examined, it becomes apparent that certain races have a much higher incidence of these disorder than others. If you connect the dots this implies that certain races are prone to making poor lifestyle choices and lack self-discipline. Of course even implying that might be true crosses the line of political correctness that nobody is willing to cross. Thus the elephant in the room is never acknowledged and the issues driving these racial differences are never addressed.
It is clear that Native Americans, blacks and Hispanics have a higher incidence of these disorders than white people. I think it’s time to re-examine why this may be so. What if the experts are wrong? What if these metabolic disorders are driven by other factors besides excessive food intake and lack of exercise? I believe that we now have the information showing that this is indeed the case. Recent research suggests that the type of food you eat is much more important than the amount of food when it comes to your metabolic health.
Follow the Fructose
It now appears that the simple sugar from fruit called fructose is the primary driver of insulin resistance, the first step down the metabolic road to obesity and type II diabetes. Unlike our ancestors, we don’t get most of our fructose from fruits, honey and other natural sources of fructose. Most of our fructose comes from sucrose (sugar) and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Modern processed foods are loaded with sugar and HFCS. Although the metabolism of fructose is somewhat complex, I recommend reading Richard Johnson’s books The Sugar Fix and The Fat Switch for more details. Suffice it to say that many of us are consuming much more fructose than our bodies can safely handle.
On a metabolic level insulin resistance seems to trap fat inside of cells where it cannot be released for energy needs. Because your cells rely mainly on glucose for energy needs, your brain sends out hunger signals even as your fat stores continue to increase. This process is outlined very well in Gary Taubes book Why We Get Fat. He explains why people seem to get hungrier as their fat stores increase, resulting in the paradox of a starving fat person.
When Glucose Fries Your Brain
When you have insulin resistance and consume high glycemic carbohydrates, your brain is subjected to magnified glucose spikes. Because neurons don’t need insulin for glucose to enter into the cell, this blast of glucose occurs inside every neuron in your body. Over time these glucose spikes lead to neuron dysfunction, triggering a form of food-induced brain dysfunction called Carbohydrate Associated Reversible Brain syndrome or CARB syndrome. People with CARB syndrome can develop up to 22 brain dysfunction symptoms that interfere with their ability to function. These repeated glucose spikes trick your brain into thinking that there are unstable food supplies in the environment, so it pushes your body into a famine-protective metabolic mode where fat is stored at any caloric intake. Thus people with CARB syndrome are driven to store extra fat from two directions—at the cellular level and the brain level.
Although it is true that people with CARB syndrome who consume more food will tend to store more fat than people who eat less, the extra food is not the cause of the abnormal state that is driving the fat storage. This is clearly seen when you measure body composition. It’s important to remember that obesity is defined as excessive body fat, so size and weight do not really define obesity. Many normal sized people and even some thin people with CARB syndrome have excessive body fat. Even relatively thin people with anorexia have excessive body fat when you measure their body composition. They also have the same brain dysfunction symptoms as larger people with CARB syndrome.
How Race Comes into Play
If you accept that the CARB syndrome model is driving much of our obesity, then it makes sense that the incidence of these metabolic disorders is inversely proportional to the amount of time a race has been exposed to sugar, grain-based high glycemic carbohydrates and omega 6 fatty acids. Whites have been consuming sugar for a least several hundred years and grains for about 10,000 years. Blacks have been consuming these dietary elements hundreds of years or less. With the exception of corn the same is true those with origins from South America. Native Americans have only been consuming this food for a few generations, so they are very sensitive to the adverse effects of our modern diet loaded with processed food. These differences reflect some degree of evolutionary adaption in races that have been exposed to these dietary elements for a longer period of time.
Of course intermarriage complicates the picture but it still holds up that a given individual’s susceptibility to these dietary elements is largely driven by genetics, rather than personal choices. People living in poverty are more prone to developing CARB syndrome simply because cheap processed food is often the only food they can afford.
In my opinion it makes little sense to blame people for their metabolic problems. They are victims of the research and medical communities that have failed to see the elephant in the room—CARB syndrome. Our government also needs to accept their share of the blame for promoting processed foods by their senseless farm support programs. It makes little sense to subsidize sugar, grains and vegetable oils when it is apparent that they are driving many of our chronic diseases.
Regardless of Your Race, Follow the Rules
Whatever your racial background, you need access to high quality information about how to stay healthy in a world loaded with toxic food. Once you have this information and you choose to ignore it, then you can share some of the blame for your health problems. Consider yourself warned. From this day forward, you are in the driver’s seat when it comes to your metabolic and brain health. My job is to give you the information that will keep you moving in the right direction and I do take my job very seriously. Your job is to decide whether or not to follow my advice.
The strategy for reversing CARB syndrome involves five simple rules:
- Reduce your intake of sugar, HFCS, grain-based carbohydrates and vegetable oils. The easiest way to do so is to follow a Paleo-style diet like the one outlined in Loren Cordain’s book The Paleo Answer or Robb Wolf’s book The Paleo Solution.
- Exercise at least 30-40 minutes every day. Exercise is good for your metabolism and improves your brain function.
- Take supplements like L-glutamine and Cinsulin to reduce your cravings for sweet and starchy foods. L-glutamine is a simple amino acid. Take 1,000 mg three times daily on an empty stomach. Cinsulin is a refined form of cinnamon that sensitizes your cells to insulin. Take one before each meal.
- Take an omega 3 supplement. I recommend taking about 2,400 mg of EPA/DHA daily. This is a higher dose than most people are currently taking.
- Take a combination precursor supplement. These supplements typically have a combination of L-tyrosine and 5-htp in a ratio of 10 to 1. They help to maintain healthy levels of monoamine neurotransmitters. This in turn helps to suppress carbohydrate cravings and other symptoms reflecting low levels of neurotransmitters. This type of supplement is usually taken twice daily on an empty stomach. CARB-22 is a supplement especially formulated for this purpose.
These are five simple things you can do today to dramatically increase your health and ability to function. Now that’s a program just about anyone can handle. The only relevance race has to this matter is that it gives you a “heads up” about your relative susceptibility to eating a diet loaded with processed food. It’s also important to remember that no race is immune from this disorder. Instead of focusing on superficial issues like race, we need to focus our efforts on what it will take to keep all of us healthy. I guess that means we can throw the race card out the window and focus on more important issues.