Welcome to episode five of the Energy Balance Podcast. I'm Jay Feldman of jfeldmanwellness.com and joining me today is my good friend Mike Fave of sapiensystems.com. Today we're going to be talking again about blood sugar and this was originally going to be part two of a two part series. We've actually decided to extend it out and do three episodes on blood sugar because there's just a lot to talk about.

Today we're going to be talking about the different types of sugars and how they affect our blood sugars. So we'll talk a little bit about the details of the simple sugars that carbohydrates break down into like glucose and fructose and some of the misconceptions regarding those sugars and how they affect energy balance. And then we'll also be talking about the different starch containing foods, their effects on blood sugar, and then which ones are ideal based on these effects and basically how we can eat starches in a way that's ideal for blood sugar regulation.

And then we'll talk a little bit too about cravings and hunger and their role in blood sugar regulation and energy balance. So if you want to check out the show notes for this episode, head over to jfeldenmanwellness.com slash podcast, where I'll be linking to any studies or articles or anything else that we referenced throughout the episode. And if you are dealing with any low energy symptoms like fatigue or brain fog or bloating or weight gain, or if you're dealing with any chronic health conditions, whether that's diabetes or autoimmune conditions, or you're just looking to optimize your health and really maximize your energy, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash energy and sign up for a free seven day mini course on energy balance. And that will help guide you through the different things that you can do to maximize your cellular energy and minimize the things that inhibit our cellular energy production. And with that, let's get started. All right. So we'll start by talking about the general effects of carbohydrates on our blood sugar, which we've already talked about kind of the generalities of our blood sugar fluctuation and how that's affected by carbs. But we'll just go over it real quick. basically, our blood sugar is always being used by our nervous system, can also be used as a fuel for our muscles or other organ systems, depending on our activity or what we're doing. And as that happens and drops our blood sugar down, we have all these adaptive mechanisms that come into form of stress hormones in order to make sure that we keep our blood sugar stable so that we have that consistent fuel. So we want, instead of providing that sugar for our blood from the stress hormones, we would prefer to do that by taking in carbohydrates. And that's gonna do a couple things. One is gonna keep our stress hormones down, but it's also going to allow us to keep the highest level of carbohydrate metabolism that we can manage. Basically keep that fuel consistent.

And so we want to try to anticipate those types of lows so that way we don't get to the point where the stress hormones are being produced or that when they are getting produced, we can stop them as quickly as possible. So in order to keep those stable blood sugar levels throughout the day and keep that stable fuel available throughout the day, we want to make sure that we're eating in a way that keeps our blood sugar stable.

And so that's basically what we'll talk about. But as just kind of a baseline, we know that carbohydrates are fueling our blood sugar. And so we want to make sure that we're eating carbohydrates typically at least every few hours, because by that point, our blood sugar will be relatively low. So that'll keep the stress hormones at bay. So this is, as we talked about also, one of the main reasons why low carb or keto or carnivore diets are really problematic is because they end up relying on the stress hormones to maintain our blood sugar instead of on carbohydrates that we're taking in, which means that we have constantly elevated blood sugar levels or constantly elevated stress level levels. And this includes glucagon, adrenaline, and cortisol. And it is worth noting that a lot of low carb or no carb advocates will say that the cortisol and adrenaline response goes away after a couple of days, which is true because we adapt and that adaptation comes at a cost.

So it's not a good thing but glucagon at the very least still stays elevated. that is also, glucagon is also a stress hormone and it's the main hormone responsible for diabetes and insulin resistance or the main hormone that's elevated in that case. It's definitely not a sign of healthy metabolic function. Instead, it's a sign of low energy state. And by the same token,
Another component of not eating carbohydrates is that anytime you do increase your fuel needs, increase your carbohydrate fuel needs, you are still going to be increasing those stress hormones rather than just using exogenous carbohydrates, using the carbohydrates that we eat to keep those stress hormones down. So that's just kind of the basics of, at least from a blood sugar standpoint, why we want to make sure we're eating carbohydrates and we want to make sure that we're eating them frequently enough to keep the blood sugar, to keep the adaptive stress hormones down.

So for some people that can look like eating every three to four hours, typically. Of course, if you're more active or for people who are coming from a low energy state, more frequently can sometimes be helpful because when you don't use carbohydrates as efficiently, you wanna make sure you have a constant supply of them and typically in like smaller doses. So some people who don't metabolize glucose as well or carbohydrates as well probably wanna start with smaller amounts of carbohydrates in their meals in order to avoid really high blood sugar spikes, which basically just happens when the cells aren't able to use the sugar in the blood fast enough. And then that can then lead to a blood sugar crash, which ends up increasing all those stress hormones again. So the kind of two components there is frequency of eating and then the amount of carbs that we want to be eating in our snacks or meals is dependent on a general metabolic function. And in order to keep our stress as low as possible, our stress hormone.

So the next component that's important to talk about is basically the type of carbohydrates and how the different types of carbohydrates affect our blood sugar regulation. basically as far as carbohydrates go, at the very basic level, all carbohydrates start as simple sugars or break down as simple sugars. And those are glucose, fructose, and lactose. And then the combination of those different sugars, we find in all sorts of different foods.


Those are monosaccharides, yeah? Yeah, so those are all monosaccharides and then combinations that involve two of those monosaccharides are disaccharides. So sucrose and lactose are very common ones where lactose is a combination of galactose and glucose. then sucrose is a combination of glucose and fructose. And then we also find all sorts of other combinations in foods. Some of the other important ones though is just that in general, starches are long chains of glucose.

And they can sometimes be branched and be very complex or they can be more simple. But the important point as far as what we're talking about right now with blood sugar is that they're purely glucose. And there's a bunch of other combinations of these different sugars as well that are just not as relevant right now. yeah, so based on the different combinations of these sugars, they'll all have different effects on our blood sugar based on the way that they're absorbed and kind of where they go. So fructose in particular, differs from glucose as far as where it goes, when it's absorbed and how it's absorbed and digested. And so one of the main differences is that instead of going and hanging out in our blood like glucose does, fructose goes directly to the liver and then gets- a lot of people like to say is a reason for it to be a toxin and that's because alcohol goes directly to the liver as well. Right. But it's not necessarily like the reality of the situation. Yeah. Basically our liver is a processor of metabolic, of all sorts of toxins. So yes, when people talk about fructose as if because it goes to the liver, that's suggesting that it is a toxin. But the actual reason why it does is because it's the main fuel for the liver, which then helps it metabolize toxins. So just an interesting side note there is that fructose actually increases the clearance of alcohol by driving liver metabolism. It also directly increases liver glycogen stores and things like that, more so than starch or starch or plain glucose.

Yeah, exactly. yeah, so because of that, fructose is a really great fuel for the liver. It's both used as an energy source for the liver and then also allows the liver to store it as glycogen, which is basically our storage form of sugar for our brain and for the rest of our bodies too. And then also the liver can then repackage it as other carbohydrates like glucose and then release those for other parts of the body to use. But basically the liver is kind of like the meaty.

Mediator in this case. And that's helpful from a blood sugar standpoint, because it means that the fructose isn't just hanging out in our blood and actually can dampen the dry, like the increase in blood sugar that happens from glucose. And the reason why that can be as important is just because as we mentioned earlier, a big spike in blood sugar can then cause like a rebound effect. you're saying it's important that fructose goes to the liver and that we have fructose in combination with glucose because fructose dampens the spike in blood sugar that you would see with just plain glucose. And then it also attenuates some of the spikes in insulin levels, which would go with those spikes in blood sugar. Right. Exactly. So just because of that, it helps the blood sugar stay more stable, which is helpful for them. In combination with glucose.

Yeah, and combination. And the reason I make that point is because there's very, very few sources in nature where you would just get pure fructose. Most sources of fructose also come with glucose. And I think another important point to add here is that a lot of people like to think, well, since fructose goes to the liver, it automatically creates fat. That's like a lot of people are worried about eating sugar because they assume that fructose creates fat automatically when it goes to the liver.

That's not necessarily the reality, especially in humans. And rat studies, maybe because they have, from what I understand, they have a degree of different processing of the sugars than we do. But when you look at, I mean, even just from like, a genetic lineage or an evolutionary lineage standpoint, if we're on the same lineage as monkeys and or apes and their main diet is ripe fruits, particularly chimps, then you would think that they would have a high amount of simple sugars in their diet to a large extent. And so they should have some capacity of the liver to handle carbohydrate like that. So you would think that we would also have the ability to retain that. I mean, if you look at research and like just in general, people have just, they're just fine handling the different simple sugars and monosaturides, disaturides doesn't necessarily make people fat. Yeah, not at all. It doesn't create that doesn't create a ton of liver fat. mean, most of the studies that they look at for fatty liver and things like that have a combination of factors that aren't just sucrose or plain fructose or glucose or anything like that. There's a combination of factors going on in the rat studies to produce those effects and even in human studies or in primate studies. So, yeah, yeah, the research is pretty clear as far as our liver's ability to metabolize fructose and how different it is from rats.

Where rats just don't metabolize it very well, they don't use it very well to produce energy. Rats' livers are much more likely to convert that fructose to fat, whereas we're much more likely to either use the fructose to produce energy or to convert it to glycogen or to convert it to glucose and then send it out into the bloodstream. But basically our livers handle much, much more fructose than rats do. Yeah. I think another important point here is a lot of people like to discuss like the rat studies and fructose and things like that as causing an increase in blood lipids and things like that. That's another thing I see people talk about is like, the sugars are going to like cause hyperlipidemia or blood lipid issues or things like that. And particularly with fructose. And I think we talked about this on another podcast. But when you give free fructose and then it goes into the intestine and you don't absorb it and you produce endotoxin, endotoxin is a very good trigger for the liver to produce blood lipids as a protective mechanism. So produces cholesterol and triglycerides and different components to bind the endotoxin as a protective factor. So it's not necessarily that the fructose itself is increasing those blood lipids. It's that the fructose is increasing endotoxin and as a protective factor, the liver is increasing the blood lipids.

Yeah, exactly  because of all these differences between rats and humans and also considering like the different context of the research, because as you were saying, a lot of the issues with the fructose studies have to do with the way it's being digested and that you're giving free, you know, a bunch of pure fructose without glucose. boluses of pure fructose. Yeah. Which is going to completely skew the research because we don't digest pure fructose very well. But as we mentioned, you don't find free fructose or pure fructose without glucose in nature and any foods that we're eating. So.

Jay
It's just not really relevant, the context that they're it in. Researchers have acknowledged too that rat livers and human livers are so different in their ability to metabolize fructose that there can be no comparison made, essentially. And rat intestines are also, rat intestinal structure is also very different from human intestinal structure. So when you look at a lot of these studies, and we talked about this in the previous podcast where you see that...

The human intestine and the chimp intestine is different and we have the same evolutionary lineage. But rats and humans are very, very different in their intestinal structure as well and the way in the diets that they're meant to eat as well. Again, humans have a very expanded small intestine that's meant to absorb proteins, carbs, and fats, whereas the rats and the mice, have a degree of ability to absorb protein, carbs, and fats.

A lot of their intestinal function comes from fermentation, think, in the cecum, which is expanded in them right before their large intestine. So they have a lot of fermentative capacity. So when you start, and a lot of the studies they do, this is another thing that people talk about is, if you have fat and sugar together, then you'll create fat because you can only use one or the other. And a lot of the rat studies, they do high fat, high sugar in order to induce obesity.

I think a lot of that effect is because of the effect of a high fat diet on the rats, particularly with the sugar on their fermentation capacity in their intestines and then the subsequent disturbance of their intestinal flora and production of endotoxin and things like that, inducing obesity in the rats, rather than just like a caloric intake model. So there's much more going on in terms of, or even just the macronutrient intake model. There's much more going on than just carb intake and fat intake together causing the issue.

You have to look at the entire anatomy and physiology of the intestines of those animals and like and their livers and stuff like that especially in comparison to humans because there is and there is a big difference between them and a lot of people like to To say well, then we can't use rat studies at all and it's like you can use rat studies for some things Because some of the physiology between humans and rats or humans and mice or humans and primates or humans and dogs are very similar but when it comes and and that's more when you go into like when you go into like specific effects once you're inside the body, once you're on the cellular level, the digestive tract is technically not inside the body. It's like a hollow tube all the way through. And so the diets and the foods that we're meant to eating based on different animals are very different depending on the digestive structure. So when you start looking at some of these things, it has very different effects in different species.

And so it's important to have the context of the study or the context of the idea in place when you're doing this type of work. Yeah. When you're looking at this type of work. Yeah. So suffice it to say, based on those various differences, a lot of the research suggesting that fructose is not ideal is based on rat research or just based on other contexts where it's not really relevant.

Or giving pure even for human research. They're giving pure fructose or they're giving high amounts of pure sucrose and And also in some studies they're doing it in conjunction with polyunsaturated fatty acids and things like that which has again a different Physiologic effect and those things are very important and then also there's other there's other studies showing like the processing of fructose and fats and the liver and things requiring certain nutrients and you start putting you start giving people these energy sources on nutrient deficient diets or not even people, but animals, then they start to develop fatty liver because they cannot process the nutrients. So there's multiple factors going into this besides just, and fat together will make you fat.

There's many components in there beyond that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So in terms of blood sugar, we touch on the fact that fructose is really helpful for keeping blood sugar stable. One is consumed with glucose. And when we consume glucose alone, on the other hand, if we're consuming a large amount and depending on our ability to metabolize it, and this could be in the form of starches or it could be in the form of just a lot of pure glucose, although we don't really see that very much naturally. Typically, if you're getting pure glucose, it's through starch.

Jay
There are things that we will talk about to mitigate this, but pure starch on its own can cause spikes in blood sugar. that then will cause, a fault, like we'll then be followed by a crash that can increase stress hormones and can lead to basically less stable blood sugar. but there are things that we could do to mitigate that, to prevent that from happening. One of them is having fructose with the source of glucose. but there's other things that we can do to some are based on slowing the digestion with the addition of fats. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I was gonna say you can add fats, can add fiber, you can add protein to the meal. And all these things will basically slow down digestion and help to stabilize blood sugar. And the thing is, this is all context dependent as well. Because yes, starches are gonna spike insulin to a large extent. In some situations, like for example, if you're a bodybuilder and you wanna replenish glycogen and things like that, having some starch after a workout with some, with a meal that has protein and sugar from fruit juice or something like that and fats actually makes sense for that particular context. It's not that you can never eat starch, you can only eat sugar. It's just based on these contexts, there's reasons why we would actually want to use both and not just use one or one over the other or anything like that. So yeah, I think this is important that you're using the different fuel and the different source of food for the desired effect that you want. It's very difficult, in my experience, to gain weight just using sucrose from fruits. So if you're trying to put on weight as a bodybuilder or as a strength athlete or something like that, starch from something like tubers may be entirely necessary and part of that may be related to its effect on blood sugar and different things like that. the context is important with this type of stuff.

As far as fruits go, were saying that the simple sugars and fruits, glucose, fructose and sucrose may not be as efficient for putting on muscle mass. Yeah. But in that case, you're talking specifically. Well, you want muscle mass. But yeah, just in general, overall, like mass gain is difficult with just the simple sugars, particularly from fruits and things, particularly from fruits and fruit juice. Right. And that's partially or at least partially because a lot of the fructose is taken up by the liver.

Jay
Whereas the glucose is going to be more likely to fuel the muscles. And that's been shown in the research too, that starches, for example, are just a primarily glucose-based carbohydrate is going to refuel muscle glycogen faster than one that includes fructose, which will fuel liver glycogen faster. So all of that is context dependent. But starches are a great carbohydrate option for people who digest them well and who are using them in the context of a meal that typically includes protein or at least some amount of fat, the fat which you really need for the digestion anyways, which also helps to keep the absorption at a rate that we can use effectively. yeah, each of them have their kind of roles and why don't we, unless there's anything else you want to add, we can talk about the different types of starches because there's a lot of variation between them. Okay. No, I don't have anything to add. mean, I could start on the starches if you want.

Sure, yeah. And so we've touched on or talked about extensively really the differences between starches as far as digestion goes. So all the issues with anti-nutrients, all the, I mean, that's really the main one, but just kind of why grains are not ideal from the gut standpoint and things that we want to do when we are eating starches to make sure that they're digested well. But as far as the blood sugar regulation goes, there are differences too. I want to add a little caveat there when for that specifically.

So when we talked about the grains and starches, we talked about them having nutrients and then a lot of anti nutrients. Yeah. So a lot of people, when they eat grain starches, they get the like slump after. And a lot of people automatically assume that that's a that's directly a blood sugar problem. It may not necessarily be a blood sugar problem. It could actually be like a like a depending on what food you're eating, like a pharmacologic effect of that food. So certain grains like wheat and rice contain opiate peptides in them and depending on how your digestion is set up, you may actually be getting an opiate effect from them. So the slump may be from the opiate effect and not necessarily a blood sugar dysregulation from them. They also can cause blood sugar dysregulation, more so wheat than the rice, and they also can spike and go up and down. It really depends on how your body handles it.

Jay
So yeah, essentially there's more factors going in than just the effect of the starch on the blood sugar. Because for example, a lot of people can get inflammation from wheat and the inflammation in and of itself will affect blood sugar by dysregulating the inflammatory hormones or the adaptive hormones like cortisol and things like that and affecting the gut biome and things like that. So you can...It's not just dependent on, I have a carb and it's going to affect my blood sugar. There's the aspect of if I'm going to eat something like wheat and the wheat has a high amount of lectins or the compounds that bind to the mucous layer in the gut and it starts stripping that layer and then I start, then my body starts interacting with the proteins in the wheat and the, start because the mucous layer is stripped, I start interacting with the bacteria in my intestine. Then I'm going to have an inflammatory response.

In general and that's going to elevate cortisol and the chronically elevated cortisol is going to affect your blood sugar regulation overall. So it's not just starch and sugar, there's also the inflammatory aspect and it's why we talk specifically about the importance of certain foods over other foods and things like that. Go ahead, Gwen. Yeah, I mean those are all great points. You also just mentioned a slump after starches or after carbohydrates and that can also be from a reduction in stress hormones.

So a lot of people are used to going throughout their days running on stress hormones like adrenaline. People who are especially using a lot of coffee on relatively low calorie or low carbohydrate diets, that can be kind of their baseline function. And so after eating a carbohydrate that's being used effectively, it can drop those stress hormones down. And if underneath those stress hormones, you're actually relatively tired, that can make you feel tired. But that's not also not a good enough.

It can unmask somebody running on stress hormones. Yeah. Yeah. And so again, that doesn't mean that your blood sugar is dysregulated. That can just mean that your stress hormones were elevated prior. Yeah. I think it's the state that we're aiming for here is a relaxed readiness state, like a state where you're able to do things, but you're relaxed. It's not a frantic or excited state. It's more of like I'm okay now when if I have to do this, okay, I can do that. It's like very calm low-key. And so yeah, so exactly. So you can have either an unmasking of a stress state with carbs or you can have blood sugar dysregulation where it will bring you up and then drop you down or you can have some type of, you can have an opiate or you can have an opiate effect from depending on what type of starch you're eating. If you're eating potatoes or something like that, it's probably not an opiate effect.

And then the last one is an inflammatory effect of the particular food your body is not dealing well with the food. could make you, afterwards it can make you sleepy. And there's little nuances in how you feel in each of those states. They don't all feel the same. And as you deal more with food and you start to become more aware, you'll notice the differences in the different states. So you'll notice that in, for example, you'll notice that like the relaxed state, it doesn't make you sleepy.

It doesn't make you feel sort of bad or that your brain's not working. Your brain is actually working very well. It's just not, there's not an element of, there's not a franticness. There's not an urgency about things. Whereas if you're having a blood sugar crash, you'll be hyper and then all of a sudden you'll just, you'll hit the wall and you'll be like, and all of a sudden you'll start to get jittery and a little bit sweaty as, glucagon and adrenaline start to elevate to sort of stabilize your blood sugar after it's crashed. The inflammatory state literally at least in my experience for me, just produces sleepiness. So it's literally just like a complete, my brain is foggy and I'm just sleepy and tired and nobody's home. And then the last one was, what was the, unmasking. No, so we have the relaxed state for unmasking. Then we have blood sugar crash, inflammation, and an opioid effect is sort of, again, it's similar to like a brain fogginess, sort of like inability to function type of thing.

A lot of people call it the ITIS or things like that. Yeah, I don't typically think of the unmasking in the same way that you're describing it where typically if you're unmasking high stress hormones, meaning that you were running on them before, that often doesn't necessarily result in like a relaxed energetic state. that means that your body needs more fuel, needs more energy, needs more rest. And so if you're unmasking that, it might mean that you're actually feeling tired and exhausted. But again, that
can be a positive thing and that you're dropping down these stress hormones that you've been running on, which most people are just based on their lifestyles. So again, the point there being that it's not necessarily a negative thing. Whereas on the other hand, if you are in a healthy state and you're eating carbohydrates, it should allow you to continue or at least maybe restore a small fluctuation away from that resting energetic state. But yeah, as far as figuring outwhat these effects are, the more that you experiment with different foods, different amounts, different types of  carbohydrates, the more that you'll be able to identify what's going on. And yeah, it's definitely, if you're feeling these negative effects, I would argue that it's based on the type of food, the type of carbohydrate, how well you're digesting it or not digesting it, how well you're able to metabolize the carbohydrate rather than the like carbohydrates themselves. And of course that's in the current health scene, it's very common to blame all of our issues on carbohydrates themselves. And we've talked about how important carbohydrates are for various reasons. yeah, so just kind of, I just think it's important to point out that it's not the carbohydrate themselves, but there's all these different other things to consider that could be responsible. Yeah. I think just the carbohydrates in our current society are the trickiest macronutrient to meet because
most of the carbohydrate sources that we grow up on or that society is built on or things like that are grain based and there's inherent problems with the grain based carbohydrates overall. So it's important to make the distinction between the carbohydrate as a problem or the source of the carbohydrate as a problem. think that that's a really important point.

And for an example, just in general, fruit juice for me, like fruit juice that I know doesn't bother me or fruits that I know don't bother me, I don't have any of those. Like I eat the fruit, I eat the juice, I digest it, no problem. There's no blood sugar dips or swings or anything like that. It's sort of just like after a few hours, after like I've basically burned through those carbohydrates or I've used those carbohydrates and the meal has digested with the fat and protein that I ate or whatever, I start to get hungry again. And then if I wait a certain number of hours after like five, six, seven hours
of not eating or so, probably close, depending on what I'm doing. If I'm like, if I was working and I was very busy with what I was working with, then I would start to feel it after about five hours, you start to feel the blood sugar dip. And then you can feel the adaptive hormones start to kick back in. So that'll be your glucagon and your adrenaline and things like that. And then once those kick in, you stabilize again for a period of time and you're okay.

You're actually, you're still a little hungry, but you can function fine. And then after extended periods of time and not eating, you start to feel the cortisol hits you. And then you start to lose your appetite and you, you, you don't, you don't feel as well, but you can, you still function. So you can feel like there's like different walls of the, of like the, and the adaptive energy process adjusting and not, and whatnot. Yeah. And those specifics can vary person to person or within a person based on the metabolic state or all sorts of other factors, but that's just kind of.

Yeah, that's fine. When first started, weren't, I know when we first started doing this, I wasn't lasting as long. Now I last much longer between meals. Yeah. I think that was, that was kind of a good overview there. Do you want to start talking about the specific different types of starches and how they affect like specific foods? Okay. So yeah. So for the different types of starches, there's basically amylopectin and amylose.

Amylose is like a string of starch and amylopectin has like different branches of starch. The amylopectin, because it has like different branches, the glucose molecules are able to be hydrolyzed. They're sort of be able to hydrolyze simultaneously. Where the amylose starch, because it's just one string of starch, it has to be hydrolyzed one at a time by our digestive enzymes essentially. And our body stores carbohydrate in a form of starch, technically as glycogen, where it is like branch chains of glucose. So since there's branch chains of glucose on the amylopectin, enzymes can, multiple enzymes can hit multiple sites at one time, whereas on the amylose, it's one at a time. So the amylopectin is digested quicker than the amylose. It also has a higher glycemic index than amylose.

Jay
And so for people who have issues digesting starch, they may do better with amylopectin than amylose because a lot of the amylose or not a lot of it, but some of the amylose may make it into the colon. And depending upon what bacteria you have present in your colon, may affect your ability or it may affect how you feel with that particular starch if amylose is reaching there. So if you have a dysbiotic bowel and you have a lot of amylose reaching the colon, then you may start to feel you may start to feel bad after you eat that type of starch because you're basically feeding whatever pathogens are in the colon. So for some people, so you have a situation where you digest amylose really well. So there's no problem. Not much reaches the colon at all. You don't digest amylose that well, but your colon isn't so dysbiotic. So when it reaches, you're fine, or you don't digest amylose well and you have a dysbiotic bowel. So you probably best to avoid it. And then on that, in those cases, then you can start, and this is for people who have a lot of digestive issues, you can try to move towards higher amylopectin, faster digesting starch sources. And in this case, for the starch sources that both of us generally like to recommend would be things like tubers first, so white potatoes and sweet potatoes, yams, and then some of the starchy fruits, which is like squash and pumpkin and things like that.

As far as squash and pumpkin, their starch sources, they're not so dense in starch as the tubers are, and their starch sources vary. I don't know the specifics of the different squashes and the different pumpkins. But for rice and potatoes specifically, the shorter grain variations of rice tend to have more amylopectin than the longer grain versions of rice. So a jasmine white rice, it's still on the longer grain spectrum is gonna digest much faster than a basmati white rice. And then a sticky glutinous rice is gonna digest much faster than that jasmine white rice. depending on how your digestion is functioning and whatnot, you may wanna use a sticky white rice or jasmine rice over the basmati rice.

Jay
And then for the tubers, you're going to want to use the waxy potatoes over the flowery potatoes. And waxy varieties are like new potatoes. then flowery varieties are like the russet potatoes. And so yeah, essentially, the waxy variety of potatoes should digest easier. for white rice, white rice is sort of in a secondary category underneath the tubers. And the... the fruit starches, which is squash and pumpkins and things like that, particularly because the white rice for some people can have some opiate effects. And it also has much less nutrition than something like a yam or a white potato or the squash or the pumpkin or something like that. But just in general, the reason I put them together is because most people use rice and potatoes. Around the world, those are the main starches that people eat is yams, white rice, potatoes. That's the basis besides the other grains, which we already discussed are have a lot more issues than these than the potatoes and the rice or the tubers and the rice. so essentially, again, it's the waxy potatoes are the easier to digest and the short grain white rice is the easiest is the easiest suggest of rice. So if you have issues with starch, then I would stick to those. If you can't digest starch at all again, sugars from specific fruit sources are the best. And we will cover that in a little bit. Yeah, definitely all good things to consider. A few things to expand on. One is the nutrient content. So the nutrients in potatoes and the starchy vegetables or starchy fruits, there's much more.

When you said nutrition, basically what we're talking about is micronutrients, so minerals and vitamins, which have all sorts of benefits, but in this context, they're really helpful for metabolizing the carbohydrates in them. So that can make those sources a lot better from a blood sugar standpoint too, where you have much higher vitamin and mineral content, which helps us metabolize them and use the carbohydrates in those starches better.

Jay
Again, to reiterate, that would be all the different types of potatoes and the fruit, vegetables. Those ones all have higher nutrient content, whereas white rice has very little as far as vitamins and minerals go. And the same would go for the other grains, where we've talked about the anti-nutrients in there and how those inhibit the absorption of many or most of the vitamins and minerals there too. So nutritionally, they aren't very good in addition to digestion-wise not being ideal. There are some, so we mentioned also in the past that processing those grains, either soaking and sprouting them or fermenting them makes them more digestible. It also adjusts the nutrients in a way that allows us to absorb them in addition to reducing the anti-nutrients. So that's another kind of benefit there. And so some of those that might be worth considering would be corn, which goes through, if it goes through an extamalization process that can make it more digestible and also allow us to absorb more of the nutrition from it. Same thing with oats. If you're getting sprouted oats or other grains, those can be, those would probably be in that same tier as white rice or maybe a little bit below. Depending on your, depending on your tolerance, of course.

Right. Right. And then there's also, there's some other various roots that we didn't talk about like cassava, which is the same as tapioca and yuca. Those are all the same food. And those would be up there with the other roots and tubers like potatoes. Some of those have to be processed appropriately though. got certain varieties of cassava can inhibit thyroid function and things like that. you have to be, go ahead. Well, I was just saying that's pretty well known. Like the cultures that are using cassava as a food go through really extensive processing in order to be able to use it. And the tapioca that you would find if you're using like tapioca flour or something like that has already been through processing it in a way to remove those things. Yeah. Yeah. So again, yeah, those are the, so to summarize everything, we have our hierarchy where we have at the top of four starches. So basically sugars, we in our, in the hierarchy that we're presenting, and this is just for ease of understanding. It's like, obviously there's caveats and depends on context and things like that. But to start, have fruits and sugar at the top, which would be the ideal sources for, for most situations. After that, you come down and we go to starches. Now within the starch category, we have to start the tubers and the sort of starchy, the tubers and roots and sort of starchy fruit vegetables. So again, that's cassava.

Sweet potatoes, yams, white potatoes, pumpkins, and squashes. Then underneath that, we go to white rice. The reason white rice is below that is because it has less nutrients than these other sources. And then below white rice, we have corn and oats. And the reason corn and oats are below those is because they can have more anti-nutrients and problematic compounds than white rice and then the tubers, obviously, unless they're processed a particular way and not everybody handles them well.

It's person dependent, it's context dependent, individual dependent. Yeah. And in all of these cases, regardless of the type of starch, we want to make sure that we're cooking them very well to break down the starch before we're digesting it. helps to break it down and makes it more digestible for us. And then also making sure that we're eating them with fats, both for the digestive effects, but also the blood sugar effects where they'll be digested a little bit slower. And that'll allow for a slower release of, or slower absorption of the carbohydrates and the starches, which leads to a slower increase in blood sugar and a more steady blood sugar level. Yeah. Yeah. I agree a hundred percent. So for protein, basically protein stimulates insulin release because insulin helps the protein get into the cell. Now, when you stimulate the insulin release, doesn't, it's not good. It doesn't mean that it's only going to push protein into the cell.

So if you just eat protein, oftentimes you can actually drop your blood sugar. then obviously certain types of amino acids, particularly the branched chain amino acids, which is leucine, isoleucine, and valine are stronger in their insulinogenic effect, meaning they have a stronger effect on raising insulin to be pushed into the cell. So foods that contain high amounts of branched chain amino acids, if eaten by themselves without carbohydrate can actually lower your blood sugar and not make you feel very good. An example would be having just eggs for breakfast or just cheese or something like that. Something that doesn't have a lot of carbohydrate with it. mean, meat too. Yeah, meat as well. Meat is also a good source of the branch chain amino acids and can also lower blood sugar if eaten by itself, which is kind of funny because a lot of people talk about eating protein to stabilize blood sugar.

And it's like, no, it doesn't, it doesn't really stabilize blood sugar. Like it does have an insulinogenic effect. So, it drops blood sugar, which drops blood sugar. If you're looking through the view that and all just because high blood sugar is representative of a disease state does not mean that anything that lowers blood sugar is a good thing. So that's, think where that's coming from. it's far from always, why is the blood sugar high? Yeah. And it's not just because it's being raised in an acute instance.

By carbohydrates, which are then being effectively used. That's not why you have high fasting blood sugar. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and just to point this out, a lot of people are like, there's a lot of people talking about the problems of carbohydrates and causing diseases and things like that. If you actually look at cultures prior to modern civilization, there are cultures that have lived on high carbohydrate intakes without these diseases and that still live today eating these higher carbohydrate intakes. They're not part of society without developing these, or they're not part of civilization, they have their own society, without developing these diseases. So there's not really, like the theory doesn't hold up when you start looking at specific populations that are from different parts of the world eating high carbs and not having these problems, not having these chronic diseases. So it's it's questionable, it's very questionable, at least from my perspective, as to carbs being the source of disease.

If you look at it biochemically, if you look at what was going on with cultures in the past, there doesn't really seem to be any sort of rational basis for carbs causing disease besides correlation and association studies with insulin and high blood sugar and things like that, which you can explain through other mechanisms besides the carbs. And even then, a lot of studies show that higher carb diets are much better for insulin sensitivity and things like that. And then also it's worth mentioning that
the energy expenditure between us and those tribal populations is not different. So some people will assume that that's the reason. Oh yeah, they were saying, those are like the Katawa studies, right? I think it's the Hadza. The Hadza, yeah. One of the groups that basically they even on their ancestral lifestyle or paleo lifestyle or hunter gatherer lifestyle, whatever it is, they're still like expending about the same amount of calories as the average.

Average American, I think was the comparison or? Yeah, and they thought that the energy expenditure was going to be so different and that that would account for all these differences in health. that's, mean, part of this too has to do with the way that energy expenditure is measured where you're just like, there's no differentiation between the energy that's produced through a stress state versus through like a low stress, high metabolic state.

Which is an important distinction because you can show a marathon runner who burns the same amount of calories as some of you sitting in the house and one is through extensive, I mean, either could be through a lot of stress, but they could also be through not stress. So it's just, it's not the most relevant measurement. Calories in calories out again, we, and we went over the strategy. It's not, it's not such an, it's not a great model at least based on the current understanding of how things go. Yeah. Yeah.

So sort of going back to protein and how we should be eating it, mentioned one food that you mentioned was eggs, which are pretty notorious for dropping blood sugar very quickly. So a lot of people who start off their days with eggs are starting off with, especially without carbohydrates. But some people, unless they're very metabolically healthy, even if they're having carbs with their eggs, sometimes it doesn't go too well. So it's just worth considering the effects of the effects of protein on lowering blood sugar and how that can cause stress. And because of that, it can sometimes be beneficial to eat some carbs before you eat your protein instead of eating them at the same time. Especially in the morning when you've already depleted, you haven't fully depleted, but your blood sugar is on the lower side and you've sort of dipped into some of the adaptive hormones.

Right, right. So because you're already at a low fuel level,
It's, you're much more susceptible. I mean, your stress hormones are already elevated typically when you wake up and that's a normal physiological process in order to wake us up. And we want to decrease those stress hormones by eating carbohydrates as soon as possible, but we'll just drive that stress state even further if we don't. And oftentimes eating protein with carbs is not enough because we're already in this carb depleted state. So starting the day off with some carbs and then having a small, like at least a small amount of carbs and then having a meal that has
protein in addition to carbohydrates and fats is typically a good route to go. At least from our perspective, it makes the most sense to have all three macronutrients in the meal and not do the low carb breakfast and then slam carbs at night type of deal. Right. Right. And that could just be a glass of juice to start off the morning and then having your meal a little while later. Yeah. And a lot. Something I like, I want to point out is most people crave combinations of all three macronutrients.

Like when  people, at least in my experience, and you know, I can't speak for everybody, but when you think about a food that you want, like most people tend to think cakes, cookies, ice cream, potato chips, things like that. And usually those are combinations of almost, well actually, most of them aren't even necessarily high in protein. Most of the combinations that people crave are actually fat and carbs together with salt.

Yeah. So most of those foods, it's like a combination of sugar, starch, fat, and some salt. And it's like, you're basically with all those components, you're lowering all your stress hormones. Your fat is lowering your adrenaline. Your salt is lowering your aldosterone. Your sugar and your starch are basically lowering your cortisol, bucogon, and also adrenaline. So like you're basically, you're basically craving things to lower the adaptive hormones to keep things running the right way. And that's because most people are walking around in a high stress, low energy state.

So that's, mean, it's a night and day difference as far as cravings go, desires, hunger between eating the foods that actually support you metabolically, eating enough of them, whether it's eating enough carbs or just eating enough food and calories as a whole. I mean, we both experienced it just through our low calorie days to our low carb days, all of that, the insane amount of hunger and cravings and restriction and food obsession.

Jay
Where we would go on basically binges because we were binging. we were. mean, the whole carb cycling thing now is and like the car backloading and all these other like random bodybuilding techniques are essentially binging and and they're like binging periods. They're plans, binging periods. And essentially we were sort of following those protocols because we not on purpose, but because we were just so hungry for carbs for because we were like we were limiting them or they were restricting them or controlling them and things like that. And there was a reason that we wanted them. Yeah. So, and again, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. I was just going to say that increasing your carbon take the, so many people think that they're addicted to sugar or addicted to carbs is when they eat them. Because when they eat them, they want more. And in reality, that's true until you get to the point where you've actually, where your body actually has enough fuel and then you don't have that anymore. And even if like, there's a lot of evidence against the whole idea of being addicted to sugar. And maybe we'll talk about that in more detail another time. the, an important point here is that when you're giving your body what it needs, you don't have those same insane cravings or addiction type responses. And instead you, and you don't have to have that same obsession with food. You don't have to go through every single day feeling like you're waiting for the next meal or all that you want is carbs in any source. And anytime you see anything that has carbs or it's just a calorie.

Like, you can't control yourself. Yeah, yeah. It's like the typical idea of like having cupcakes or cookies or donuts like out at a table and the whole time they're there, you're just resisting and thinking about how badly you want them. Like that doesn't have to be there. Well, I mean, find it funny now too, because well, like when you and I would go out, people would have garbage food, garbage food, know, processed food, cookies, cupcakes, things like that, filled with vegetable oil, whatever else out there.

We wouldn't have a problem being, no, we're not interested because we had just eaten a meal before that consisted of about a hundred grams of carbs, probably 30 grams of fat and probably 30 to 40 grams of protein and salted to taste. And it was sugar and starch and saturated fat sources. So when we look at that, it's like, yeah, you know, I'm already satiated. Like I don't have a craving for it. I don't have a desire for it. Like it's not really calling me at all because I've met those needs already. And it's about meeting the need. It's not necessarily like the craving is there for a reason. the problem people run into with the weight gain with the cravings is that you fulfill them with the wrong types of foods. it's because it's not, basically as far as it goes, the modern paradigm tends to look at things as calories in calories out only, and that it's all about the calories in and of themselves and not about the foods.

And I guess the paradigm that we're sort of putting forward is it's not really about the calories in calories out. It's more about the foods. It's more about what foods you're eating and then the calories and calories out can essentially adjust itself. You know, I mean, I was having a conversation with somebody the other day and they're saying, they're saying I was describing the diet and they were saying, so basically you eat however much you want diet. And I was like, yeah, I don't really like, I eat as much as I want. Like I'm never a point where I'm like, I'm so hungry. Like, and I can't have any food left for the day.

Like I don't have any food left for the day. Like I can't eat anymore. I've met my caloric limit. It's more like, I've eaten as much as I want and I can't eat anymore. And this is like where my calories filled in because the food satiates me. There's not, there's not going to be a point where I'm going to overeat because I couldn't like, I don't want to overeat. It would be like forcing myself to overeat. And that's sort of the place where, where you're at when you start to figure out what foods work for you. And, you don't have to like the, the whole idea of the calories and macros. The reason we put those out there is just as basic guidelines to help people sort of like
you know, find their way through the mud a little bit. You know, you're out there trudging through the mud.

We want to give you some sort of goalpost to start with it at least that you can, you have some sort of direction. it's not because those things are the be all to end all answer. It's just, those are quantifiable metrics that we can easily sort of talk about between each other. It doesn't come down to calories at the end of the day. It's not something that I don't think either you and I are sitting here like, Hmm. well, We've already eaten our 3000 calories for the day. So, and it's nine o'clock. So, uh, but I'm really hungry. So I can't eat anything else. So what do I do? and we've been hungry. Yeah. I mean, we won and, it's, it's so foreign to us now, but we lived at for years and years, just like most people do. Uh, and it's such a night and day difference. Just it, it's hard to put into words, but, but we, we both have lived through that.

So it's, it's something, it's a very different experience. I do want to stipulate a couple of things. One was just that in addition to it being kind of against the calorie in calorie out model, there are a lot of the like common nutrition recommendations do go beyond that. mean, they talk about most of it is anti-carb right now. I'm sure that'll fluctuate at some point because most of it's just based on marketing and whatever else, but the
a lot of it is anti-carb and we are acknowledging that there's a difference in the way that all of the different macronutrients are metabolized and all that. We're just not anti-carb and pointing out that a lot of the issues with carbs are not the carbs themselves, they're other components. So you were talking about individuality and finding foods that work for you. And I did want to mention that yes, there is a lot of individuality based on physiological principles. So it's based on where your gut function is at.

Where your nutrient status is at, how well you're metabolizing these different foods. We're not saying that some people it's really healthy to be on a keto diet and other people a vegan diet is healthy and other people it's a high carb diet. We're definitely not saying that. Yeah, we both agree that there are universal principles that govern our physiology and are very directly influenced by the nutrition that we're getting. so while there is variation within those like within the specifics of how the principles all apply the same way, but there's still individuality based on how your environment is and how your internal and external environment are. So there is variation in what might work for you at a particular time versus another time or variation between you and another person, but it's not on a large level. This is kind of small scale, certain foods versus other types of foods, amounts of carbs in a meal, meal frequency, things like that. But we're not talking on the larger level where, oh yeah, you might do better on a vegan diet or a ketogenic diet or a carnivore diet. Those are, we would say, just misinformation or problems that are being attributed to the wrong idea or wrong thing. Basically the principles, because they are principles and they aren't, and principles generally aren't specific, like they're not very specific in application. They have sort of a broad application across different paradigms.

There's a spectrum of possibilities that you can use within those, using those principles, using those variables. And so the idea is that you can, there's different sort of, there's different sort of applications of those principles within the spectrum, whether the general spectrum is still is like within a particular sphere. It's not going to be these ridiculous, like these ridiculous polarities, you know?

The spectrum doesn't allow for that. more like it's more everything's more towards the center around around certain points. And it's based in the at least the arguments at least from my perspective. Our arguments are based on what reading the research understanding the physiology on different levels on understanding it from a digestive level. What's going on in the digestive system in comparison to humans and chimps and rats and mice from the studies that we're looking at and then looking at well what has worked for us. What does it actually work.

And then also, what did people do in the past? What is the historical data on these types of things? then what is sort of like a, there's an element of looking at things from an evolutionary perspective as well. Not necessarily genetic, but looking at a progression and things like that from our closest ancestors and things along those lines. And then certain adaptations that we have in comparison to our closest ancestors, which all of these things are valuable in and of themselves.

It's just, in order to have a complete picture, think you have to take all the variables into consideration. And that's essentially what we're trying to do here. And that's why we have sort of like, we've narrowed things down into a particular perspective. And prior to modern civilization, a lot of this stuff was already known. A lot of this stuff was known through trial and error and people figuring things out and basically passing it on to the next generation and recording things and going from there. And it's only that
It's only when people started, when they started putting out guidelines like the food pyramid and things like that, that we started losing these past historical ways of doing things. And we started getting these ridiculous dietary iterations where it's like, I'm only gonna, I'm never gonna eat animal products or I'm never gonna eat plant products or I'm not gonna have any carbs or I'm not gonna have any fats where it's just like swung back and forth on the scale because with using research with these abstract concepts.

Jay
And not. Yeah. mean, and the reason why those things are, we would say incorrect is not because they swing from one end to the other. mean, there's nothing inherently wrong with saying one type of food is, is not ideal for our physiology. Like we've talked about grains and seeds in that way. We've talked about saturated fats in that way a little bit. So we're not going off some principle of everything needs to be balanced and everything in moderation. And the issue is when you take one macronutrient or micronutrient and have too much of it.

well, it's based on physiological principles and in addition to things like experience, both our experiences and then the experiences of people we've worked with. yeah. So, just to, just to kind of go off of that. Yeah. Yeah. and then in addition, just another factor that's drastically affected people's ideas of what's healthy is, is all the marketing, all of the, interaction with our food supply or intervention with our food supply.

Trying to encourage people to eat certain foods for all sorts of non-health reasons. Yeah. I mean, if your country's main production is grains and vegetable oil, then obviously from an economic standpoint, it would make sense to promote that as the ideal food sources. Those are the healthiest, right? There must be, and then in another country, it's whatever they produce. Yeah. I mean, that is an important topic in regards to all this stuff in general, that the basis...

The basis of a lot of our recommendations are based on optimizing profits and optimizing humans or, or function of our recommendations, the recommendations that we are. Yeah. Like the, the general, the general recommendations that you, that you get from the government or from the, or from news sources or things like that, or a lot of them tend to be industry generated and private interest generated. And that private interest is not in your, or in my experience is not in our interest.

It's not, it's in their private interests, they have an agenda. And that it influences the research too. It's why experience is really important. It's also why understanding the research and context is really important because it's very easy to draw whatever conclusion you'd like from a study if you'd like to draw that certain conclusion, it's easy to find support for it as opposed to looking at what actually happened and what that means. Even beyond that, I think it's important.

Jay
I don't know how many research articles that I've read that the abstract is not the same as the information in the article. What is written and most, cause I mean to start, most people aren't going to read research in my experience. Most, I don't see most people reading research and then the people who are reading research are just reading abstracts. But when you only read and a lot of times I've read an abstract and then I'm like, this article looks interested based on the title. I read the abstract. doesn't match with the title.

And then I go through the entire article, look at all the data that they have in the results section, and they're abstract, doesn't match the results, and neither do their conclusions. And it's sort of just like, the levels you have to go through to understand everything and break it down, you need the context, but a lot of people aren't even going as far into reading it. And a lot of the...

A lot of the, I think, interest and industry and consensus is driving conclusions and things like that coming out of studies and whatnot. I'm looking at studies talking about the effects of different fatty acids on different markers in blood and stuff like that. And the abstract is giving you, and the abstracting conclusion is giving you a completely different interpretation of the results than what's actually at the results. Or like the way studies, the way the study is set up, you know, you're talking about
we put these people on a high saturated fat diet. And then it's like, yeah, we use lard and mix of corn oil. And then it's like, well, there's more polyunsaturated fats in this diet than there is saturated. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's only talking about the research that is published when a lot of times, research will be, you know, studies will be completed and they won't publish on it. They don't get the results that they want, or if they find no results, like no, like no statistical significance, which is still an important result.

A very important result. A lot of times that doesn't get published. There's a lot of issues with the way that research is conducted. Yeah. And it's starting to come to the surface a lot more now. I mean, it hasn't really hit mainstream yet. I don't know if it will, even if it, yeah, don't know. Who knows? Hopefully. Yeah. So yeah, it's important to, and that's why it's important. mean, we are, we are essentially functioning as filters and trying to take the information and our experiences and distill things down into points for everybody.

Jay
And that's why we have these conversations because I think it's easier for us to talk about it and break it down. But I still think it's important for people to sort of take a look at what we're saying and take a look at research themselves and sort of like their own experiences and things like that. Because I often have a lot of people that they think, well, you've talked about starch not being ideal, but it's like I feel good with starch and I've been working out and stuff like that. And I'm just like, there's different contexts.

If starch is working for you, if you're eating white rice and you're feeling good with it and you're doing well, you're healthy and you're doing your workouts and you also do well with fruit juice and things like that, there may not necessarily be a reason to get rid of it just because just on principle. All right. I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. That was part two of a three part series on blood sugar regulation. And in the next episode, we're going to be talking about the details of the different sugar containing foods.

Which ones are ideal, how they affect blood sugar. And we'll also talk through some of the misconceptions there about fruit and table sugar and corn syrup, which ones are ideal, which ones we want to avoid. And we'll also talk through some specific recommendations as far as how many carbohydrates we want to be eating and when and how basically how we should structure that throughout the day. So definitely tune in for that one. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash podcast and you can find any of the links to articles or studies that we reference throughout the episode. And if you are struggling with any low energy symptoms, you're struggling to get your blood sugar under control, you're dealing with any chronic health conditions, make sure to head over to jfeldmanwellness.com/energy and sign up for a free mini course on energy balance. And that will help guide you through the different things that you can do in order to get your energy back. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you did enjoy today's episode, please leave a review or like us wherever you're listening, it really makes a huge difference in helping us reach more people and help them get their energy back. And I will talk to you on the next episode.