Maybe we should stop demonizing it
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Have we underestimated the importance of this food?
Fructose is a naturally occurring sugar.
It’s present in large amounts in many fruits and in smaller amounts in other foods.
Fructose has become an added component in many processed foods in the last few decades too.
In some circles, fructose has been singled out as a possible cause of metabolic dysfunction.
These claims are largely based on poor science and weak interpretations.
I believe that fructose is actually a very beneficial source of energy for humans.
That opinion is largely based on human research which shows that fructose improves blood sugar control and other markers of metabolic health.
(Exactly the opposite of what those interpretations of animal studies propose.)
There are also other interesting lines of evidence pointing toward the importance of fructose in the human body…
…including brain scan research which shows that fructose is actually produced inside the human brain.
The human research was carried out at Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut. This paper was published in JCI Insight.
“Fructose has generated much attention as a potential driver of the US obesity and diabetes epidemics.”
One of the rather strange reasons why some people think fructose is a problem is because it causes changes in blood flow inside the brain.
“In humans, acute ingestion of fructose or glucose causes different patterns of cerebral blood flow changes in brain regions that influence eating behavior.”
But so does everything we eat.
You really need a prior bias against fructose to think that this is a problem…
Researchers believed that fructose was absorbed from general circulation into the brain.
“Because glucose enters the brain via passage across the blood-brain barrier (BBB), it is generally assumed that the central nervous system effects of fructose are mediated by peripheral fructose crossing the BBB as well.”
Some other researchers wondered whether this could be true – given that the liver tends to quickly absorb most of the fructose in circulation.
“However, because of its efficient metabolism by the liver, extrahepatic circulating levels of fructose are exceedingly low.”
These scientists wondered whether fructose does enter the brain in any significant amount from general circulation.
They also wondered whether the brain might be producing its own fructose by modifying another sugar – glucose.
They carried out some brain scans on people who had their blood sugar (glucose) artificially raised.
“To determine whether fructose can be generated from glucose in the human brain, 8 healthy subjects underwent MRI scanning to measure brain glucose and fructose levels during a 4-hour hyperglycemic clamp.”
The experiments were carried out on four women and four men in their 20s and 30s with normal BMI and no signs of metabolic issues.
Increasing blood sugar (glucose) quickly led to increased levels of glucose inside the brain.
No surprise there.
The surprising fact is that increasing blood glucose also led to an increase in fructose in the brain.
“Intracerebral fructose levels also rose over time, differing from baseline at 30 to 230 minutes.”
The researchers confirmed that fructose levels in the brain were not related to fructose levels in the blood.
“The changes in intracerebral fructose were related to changes in intracerebral glucose but not to plasma fructose levels.”
It seems that the human brain, when given the opportunity, will create fructose for itself.
“Our findings suggest endogenous CNS production of fructose and that the effects of fructose in the CNS may extend beyond its direct dietary consumption.”
The research infers that far from being a metabolic poison, fructose has beneficial effects throughout the body…
…including inside the brain, given that the brain will actually synthesize its own fructose.
You should always consult your healthcare practitioner for guidance on medical diagnosis and treatment.
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