High Fructose Corn Syrup Part 4 Pathology

By now we know that:

• The production and consumption of high fructose corn syrup has sky rocketed because it’s a cheap sweetener
• That unlike sucrose, it’s metabolized totally in the liver where it turns to fat
• That it does not turn off your appetite, so you keep eating and get fat

High Fructose Corn Syrup can damage the liver:

Not only does it turn to fat, but it turns to fat much more rapidly than any other sugar. On top of that much more of it gets stored as fat. If you eat 90 calories of fructose, 30 calories get stored as fat whereas only about 1 calorie of glucose gets stored as fat. Your cells burn the glucose as a fuel out in the tissues, but they don’t directly burn fructose, so fructose fat builds up.

Besides building up in obvious places on the body, fructose fat also silently builds up in the liver.

The body handles fructose metabolism a lot like it handles alcohol, producing similar toxic by-products and similar damage to the liver. What starts out as fatty liver (most doctors don’t even recognize the cause of it) can lead to scarring of the liver and cirrhosis similar to alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver with the same deadly consequences.

Even children as young as 3 have been diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Diagnosis is only by biopsy of the liver, but elevation of the liver enzyme ALT may be seen in the blood as an indicator to test further. Children (and adults) with NALFD have a much higher incidence of the disease progressing to scarring and even death.

What’s the remedy? Stop consuming high fructose corn syrup and other sources of fructose including fruit juices. Keep whole fruit consumption minimal. Lose weight and exercise.

We must stop this obesity epidemic that’s killing the children and the adults by inducing degenerative diseases at a very early age.

For more details see Dr. Mercola’s eye opening article:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2099/12/31/why-do-millions-of-kids-in-the-us-have-liver-disease.aspx?e_cid=20110809_DNL_artTest_A2

Dr. Mercola strongly recommends limiting fructose consumption to no more than 25 grams per day. Look at the chart at the bottom of his article that gives the amount of fructose in common foods.

Pancreatic Cancer

Dr. Anthony Heaney, Associate Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, recently published an article in Cancer Research, linking high fructose consumption to the development of pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Heaney discovered pancreatic cancer cells metabolize fructose and glucose differently by using fructose to generate nucleic acids needed to build RNA and DNA. With plenty of RNA and DNA cancer cells divide and flourish.

Dr. Heaney concludes that his findings “have major significance for cancer patients, given dietary refined fructose consumption.”

Dr. Heaney’s research adds to the already known findings that cancer cells thrive on sugars.

We don’t have to be victims of cancer. We can make choices that help prevent it. Keep sugar intake low and avoid high fructose corn syrup and eat your veggies!

Kidney stones

High fructose corn syrup may induce elevated blood uric acid levels. If the uric acid crystals precipitate in the kidneys, painful stones can develop. If they precipitate in the joints the very painful condition of gout develops.

If you drink your HFCS in sodas you may get a double whammy of stones forming in your body. The high acidity of sodas upsets the calcium balance in your body, leaving “free” calcium that can collect as stones anywhere in the body (like kidney stones, gall bladder stones) or calcify your blood vessels or other tissues.

We could go on and on about the adverse and even pathologic effects of high fructose corn syrup on the body. Hopefully we’ve given you enough knowledge to make wise choices. Wisdom is knowledge applied with good judgment and I know you have good judgment and want to make wise choices for yourself and your children. So…

SOS – SOC

(Translation Save Our Selves – Save Our Children)

Many blessings to you and yours,

Dr. Jo

If you missed the preceding articles on High Fructose Corn Syrup, you can find them at:

HFCS part 1

HFCS part 2

HFCS part 3