Some Hazards of Fructose including High Fructose (HF) and High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)
Could consuming a lot of fructose make you fat? Make it easier for you to develop diabetes? Destroy your memory?
Here is what the studies say…
Researchers find that eating high levels of fructose impairs memory in rats
In an article from Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2009 Oct;92(3):410-6. Epub 2009 Jun 12. entitled: http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwexa/news/archive/2009/09_0716-fructose.html by Amy Rossassociate professor at Georgia State’s Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, in a media release from July 16, 2009
Said:
ATLANTA — Researchers at Georgia State University have found that diets high in fructose — a type of sugar found in most processed foods and beverages — impaired the spatial memory of adult rats.
Amy Ross, a graduate student in the lab of Marise Parent, associate professor at Georgia State’s Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, fed a group of Sprague-Dawley rats a diet where fructose represented 60 percent of calories ingested during the day.
She placed the rats in a pool of water to test their ability to learn to find a submerged platform, which allowed them to get out of the water. She then returned them to the pool two days later with no platform present to see if the rats could remember to swim to the platform’s location.
“What we discovered is that the fructose diet doesn’t affect their ability to learn,” Parent said. “But they can’t seem to remember as well where the platform was when you take it away. They swam more randomly than rats fed a control diet.”
Fructose, unlike another sugar, glucose, is processed almost solely by the liver, and produces an excessive amount of triglycerides — fat which gets into the bloodstream. Triglycerides can interfere with insulin signaling in the brain, which plays a major role in brain cell survival and plasticity, or the ability for the brain to change based on new experiences.
Results were similar in adolescent rats, but it is unclear whether the effects of high fructose consumption are permanent, she said.
Parent’s lab works with Timothy Bartness, Regents’ Professor of Biology, and John Mielke of the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada to examine how diet influences brain function.Although humans do not eat fructose in levels as high as rats in the experiments, the consumption of foods sweetened with fructose — which includes both common table sugar, fruit juice concentrates, as well as the much-maligned high fructose corn syrup — has been increasing steadily. High intake of fructose is associated with numerous health problems, including insulin insensitivity, type II diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.
“The bottom line is that we were meant to have an apple a day as our source of fructose,” Parent said. “And now, we have fructose in almost everything.” Moderation is key, as well as exercise, she said.
Exercise is a next step in ongoing research, and Parent’s team will investigate whether exercise might mitigate the memory effects of high fructose intake. Her lab is also researching whether the intake of fish oil can prevent the increase of triglycerides and memory deficits. Results from that research will be presented by her graduate student Emily Bruggeman at the 2009 Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago this fall.
ANd it get’s worse from there…
The role of high-fructose corn syrup in metabolic syndrome and hypertension.
In an article entitled The role of high-fructose corn syrup in metabolic syndrome and hypertension. by Ferder L, Ferder MD, Inserra F. Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Ponce School of Medicine, 395 Zona Industrial Reparada 2, Ponce, PR 00716-2348, USA
They say:
Obesity and related diseases are an important and growing health concern in the United States and around the world. Soft drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages are now the primary sources of added sugars in Americans’ diets. The metabolic syndrome is a cluster of common pathologies, including abdominal obesity linked to an excess of visceral fat, fatty liver, insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, dyslipidemia, and hypertension. Trends in all of these alterations are related to the consumption of dietary fructose and the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as a sweetener in soft drinks and other foods. Experimental and clinical evidence suggests a progressive association between HFCS consumption, obesity, and the other injury processes. However, experimental HFCS consumption seems to produce some of the changes associated with metabolic syndrome even without increasing the body weight. Metabolic damage associated with HFCS probably is not limited to obesity-pathway mechanisms.
So, HFCS is not as safe as those commercials on tv would make you believe. Imagine that?
But that’’s not all…
Increased Fructose Associates with Elevated Blood Pressure
In an article recently published in Journal of the American Society of Nephrology Increased Fructose Associates with Elevated Blood Pressure by Diana I. Jalal, Gerard Smits, Richard J. Johnson and Michel Chonchol from the Division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension, University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center, Aurora, Colorado
They state:
The recent increase in fructose consumption in industrialized nations mirrors the rise in the prevalence of hypertension, but epidemiologic studies have inconsistently linked these observations. We investigated whether increased fructose intake from added sugars associates with an increased risk for higher BP [blood pressure] levels in US adults without a history of hypertension.
…
After adjustment for demographics; comorbidities; physical activity; total kilocalorie intake; and dietary confounders such as total carbohydrate, alcohol, salt, and vitamin C intake, an increased fructose intake of ?74 g/d independently and significantly associated with higher odds of elevated BP levels: It led to a 26, 30, and 77% higher risk for BP cutoffs of ?135/85, ?140/90, and ?160/100 mmHg, respectively. These results suggest that high fructose intake, in the form of added sugar, independently associates with higher BP levels among US adults without a history of hypertension.
Translation… When you have high levels of fructose consumption either (HF) (HFCS) thee is a HUGE risk for developing high blood pressure… which we all know is a confirmed killer.
Better to go with natural sweeteners preferably stevia based that are not glucose or fructose…
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