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Controlling Insulin With Diet IF YOU'RE NOT A DIABETIC why worry about insulin? If you're reading this magazine there's probably a good reason. There are four major anabolic hormones: testosterone, growth hormone, thyroid hormone and insulin. Your body can manufacture these hormones as well as manage their levels to create a highly anabolic environment without you going near a syringe. Insulin seems to be the least under-stood of the bunch because it has a very unique characteristic. Depending upon how it's managed, insulin can either enhance muscle building or contribute to fat storage--same hormone, drastically different results. It all depends on what you eat and when. If I'm making this sound casual, I don't mean to. Insulin regulation, function and its management is unbelievably complicated. Doctors specialize in it, universities and major drug companies endow studies on it and scientists spend a lifetime researching it. Even so, all a bodybuilder needs to do is follow a few simple rules to effectively manage this powerful hormone. INSULIN RULE #1: Food choices directly regulate insulin. Insulin's job is to remove nutrients from the blood and make them available to various tissues of the body. For example, when carbohydrates are eaten, digestion breaks them down into simple sugars (glucose) in the small intestine, then the sugars ale absorbed into the bloodstream. When this newly absorbed glucose enters the bloodstream the pancreas secretes insulin to transport the glucose to various body tissues. The amount of insulin secreted is directly related to the amount of glucose available in the blood at any one time. Different carbohydrates will elicit a different insulin response. this response is charted on a graph called the glycemic index. Simple carbohydrates such as potato, white bread, sugars, grape juice, etc., cause a rapid and high insulin response and rate high on the glycemic index. While complex carbohydrates such as yams, beans and pasta, that cause the body to produce little insulin, rate low on the glycemic index. Straight glucose rates 100 while fats rate about one. All other foods fall in between depending upon how they affect blood glucose and subsequently insulin response. INSULIN RULE #2: Consume high glycemic foods or drinks immediately after and during exercise for maximum anabolic effect. High glycemic foods quickly load the blood with glucose causing a tremendous burst of insulin. Elevated insulin levels can be anti-catabolic and anabolic because insulin enhances the transport of amino acids particularly branch chained amino acids--into muscle, preventing muscle protein breakdown. Glycogen synthesis is also dependent upon insulin to drive glucose into the muscle to further aid recovering muscle tissue. This creates the perfect anabolic environment to aid in the growth and repair of this tissue while the body recuperates from the stress of intense resistance training. To further sweeten the deal, studies show that the body's ability to absorb nutrients is significantly elevated for up to 90 minutes post exercise. Since a function of insulin is to shuttle glucose and amino acids--again, especially branch chain amino acids--into muscle tissue, elevated insulin levels from high glycemic foods post exercise can enhance protein synthesis as well as prevent muscle protein break-down. When exercising, simple muscle contractions directly utilize blood glucose for energy without the aid of insulin. Since insulin levels are sup-pressed during exercise the body can use available glucose from your sports drink for immediate energy. INSULIN RULE #3: Eat low glycemic foods before training and throughout the day. Low glycemic foods convert to glucose slowly, preventing wild fluctuations in insulin release. This results in sustained energy and prevents hypoglycemia. Glucose is the body's main energy source. Elevated insulin scavenges most of the glucose from the blood, leaving little for energy. This is what's known as hypoglycemia or "insulin crash." The body's next logical move at this point is to cause hunger pangs, signaling you to eat and replenish the energy supply, and to slowdown--even sleep to conserve what little glucose you have left. Eating small, low glycemic meals throughout the day keep insulin levels under control. This provides the perfect environment to nourish growing muscle tissue, sustain energy, as well as burn fat. INSULIN RULE #4: Beware high glycemic foods can make you fat. Rapidly elevated insulin levels during the day affect the appetite control centers in your brain via direct hormone response. Ravenous hunger pangs are the result, signaling you to eat more than you would if insulin fluctuation were kept in check. This can be the beginning of a vicious cycle that would have you eat many more calories than you expend: A tried-and-true method for maximum fat storage. The next problem you may encounter is even worse. This is where the whole thing gets dicey. As stated above, the only useful time to eat high glycemic foods is during and immediately after training. But, if you include fat with a high glycemic meal, all that newly liberated insulin will drive the fat right into your fat cells. That's why a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread is perhaps the most lethal combination for optimum fat storage. At well over 50 grams of fat with ultra-high glycemic grape jelly and refined white bread, this combination is tailor made to help the body do what it does best--store fat! All animal protein contains some fat, regardless of how lean. Low glycemic meals can be had quite easily simply by combining lean protein with low glycemic complex carbohydrates such as sweet potatoes, beans and pasta. The fat found in most animal protein averages down the glycemic index of the meal. This is fine as long as the complex carbohydrates you include elicit a low insulin response. As you can see the premise is quite simple; be aware that all foods are not created equal. Take advantage of the body's enhanced ability to absorb nutrients post exercise by consuming non-fat, high glycemic foods for maximum recovery and anabolic effect. Then, eat foods that stimulate a low insulin response throughout the day to maintain consistent blood glucose levels, sustain energy, prevent hypoglycemia and curb your appetite. And, since exercise sup-presses insulin, you always have the option of drinking high glycemic sports drinks during exercise for energy. You can get really technical and find a glycemic index in a food almanac and create low fat combinations that are extremely low glycemic. What may be more difficult is finding a non-fat, high glycemic combination for your post training meal that's a little more appetizing than non-fat cottage cheese and a plain baked potato. Naturally I have a suggestion... Hyper Insulin Crepes: Beat sweetener with egg whites in a mixing bowl. Add the cottage cheese and cornstarch. Mix well. Then add vanilla and cinnamon and mix to incorporate. Spray a small non-stick pan with cooking spray. Add one-sixth of the mixture (about 1/3 cup), and spread evenly by rocking the pan from side to side. Cook covered over low heat, about 3 to 4 minutes. Gently remove and place on a plate. Keep each crepe warm in a 200-degree oven while repeating the process five more times using the remaining mixture. Spread 1 tablespoon of the preserves on half of each crepe and roll it up. Servings. 6 This meal causes such an insulin burst that find myself nodding off afterwards from the crash. Nothing could be better; a nap is the perfect thing after intense training. [Back to Top | View or Print the Glycemic Index] The Glycemic Index By Rick Mendosa and Tere
Griffin Introduction: What is Glycemic Index (GI)? People with diabetes, athletes, and people who are overweight all stand to benefit from a knowledge of the glycemic index. The glycemic index is simply a ranking of foods based on their immediate effect on blood glucose (bG or blood sugar) levels. It measures how much your blood glucose increases over a period of two or three hours after a meal. For example, brown rice, which has a GI of 79, raises blood sugar more than barley, which has a GI of 49. The GI is especially useful to diabetics who want to plan their diets to minimize the incidence of high blood sugar, or spikes. It measures how fast the carbohydrate of a particular food is converted to glucose and enters the bloodstream. The lower the number the slower the action. The numbers are percentages with respect to a reference food. They are given here with respect to white bread. In other words, on the scale white bread equals 100, which is what is generally used in the United States. Multiply the GI on this scale by 0.7 to convert to the value on the scale where glucose = 100. The ultimate book about the Glycemic Index has just appeared. The G.I. Factor: The Glycemic Index Solution was published in Australia and New Zealand in April 1996 by Hodder Headline Australia Pty Ltd. One of the authors of this page has reviewed this book for the magazine Diabetes Interview and an unedited version of the review is available on-line. What is the lowest glycemic index of any food included in The G.I. Factor? For an article about it see Chana Dal, a separate link on my Web site. How is GI Determined? Basically, test foods are fed to various people, some with diabetes, others without, in portions that contain 50 grams of available carbohydrates. For example, to test boiled spaghetti, the scientists give their subjects 200 grams of spaghetti, which according to standard food composition tables provide 50 grams of carbohydrate. The scientists compare this response with the volunteer's response to a reference food. Nowadays, the reference food is usually white bread, which volunteers tolerate better than the glucose used in earlier studies. Both for the test and for the reference foods the volunteer's response over the next two or three hours in calculated. Then, they repeat the whole process on different days to reduce the effect of day-to-day variations. Next, the area under the response curve for the test food is expressed as a percent of the mean value for the reference food for the same subject. Finally, these percentages from each subject are averaged together to obtain the GI for that food. For more information, see Wolever, Thomas M.S. et al. "The Glycemic Index: Methodology and Clinical Implications," listed in the bibliography below. Are there Other Important Diet Considerations? The Glycemic Index should not be your only criterion when selecting what to eat. It is most useful when deciding which high-carbohydrate foods to eat. But first you need to decide the composition of your diet in terms of carbohydrate, fat, and protein. Generally, foods high in fat and protein have lower Glycemic Indexes than foods high in carbohydrate. Don't let that fool you. These foods appear in a falsely favorable light, according to The G.I. Factor. Most people have many other excellent reasons to minimize fat and protein in our diet. The problem is that even among the complex carbohydrates not all are created equal. Some break down quickly during digestion and can raise blood glucose to dangerous levels. These are the foods that have higher Glycemic Indexes. Other carbohydrates break down more slowly, releasing glucose gradually into our blood streams and are said to have lower Glycemic Indexes. Before the development of the Glycemic Index, scientists assumed that our bodies absorbed and digested simple sugars quickly, producing rapid increases in our blood glucose levels. This was the basis of the advise to avoid sugar, a proscription recently relaxed by the American Diabetes Association and others. Contrariwise, the experts thought that our bodies absorbed starches such as rice and potatoes slowly, causing only small rises in blood glucose. Clinical trials of the Glycemic Index have also proven that assumption to be false. In addition, glucose response to a particular food is somewhat individual. Also, combinations of foods can produce unexpected results. In addition, the way a food is prepared can have an effect on the GI. So it is probably a good idea to carefully watch your own bG after eating foods you have questions about and determine if they have high or low GI for you. So, the idea of Glycemic Index is a very useful one, but these numbers should be used as broad, general guidelines. If you find a specific food produces an unexpected result, either high or low, take note of it and incorporate that into your meal planning. Also note that the numbers vary from study to study. This may be due to variations in the individuals in a particular study or different methods of preparation. Differences from The G.I. Factor The G.I. Factor lists values for both reference foods (white bread or glucose) as well as much other data that is omitted here. It lists whether the subjects are insulin dependent or non-insulin dependent diabetics or non-diabetics, the number of subjects, the reference food, the time period of the test (whether two or three hours), and the source of the study. The G.I. Factor has 573 separate entries. But that's not 573 different foods. They are the results of 573 studies of the responses of volunteers fed 50 grams of one food or another or of mixed meals. Several of the studies are of similar foods prepared differently. In the lists here, when more than one study of a specified food has been made, only the mean of those studies is listed below. However, The G.I. Factor lists both the mean and the results of the individual studies. This Web page condenses this information into listings for about 300 foods. This is a substantial increase from the 103 listings that Tere Griffin and I laboriously collected when we first published this information in 1994 and which was included here until the revision of November 3, 1996. [Back to Top | View or Print the Glycemic Index] SUGARS, INSULIN, APPETITE AND BODY FAT The Glycemic Index Connection Of all the questions we answer on a daily basis, the one we hear most often is,"Why do so many of your drinks contain fructose?" Simply put, most of the foods you consume were not designed for your optimal benefit, such as being alert and focused, while feeling full with the fewest calories possible. By contrast, all of Smart Basics high-performance drinks have been scientifically designed with a detailed knowledge of nutritional biochemistry and metabolism to provide the best possible nutrition for attaining specific human goals. The nutritional specifications are rationally planned for your benefit, using information at the molecular level about how the human body use nutrients to accomplish tasks. If you have a sweet tooth, you'll appreciate that almost all of our drinks contain fructose, a natural fruit sugar that burns slowly in your body to provide long-lasting energy, unlike ordinary table sugar. You'd rather just eat an orange? When you consider that the sugar content of an orange is only about 30% fructose, along with 50% sucrose (ordinary table sugar) and 20% glucose (grape sugar), it's clear that this combination makes for a good natural antifreeze for the orange, but it's a poor carbohydrate system when you desire long-lasting energy and carbohydrate hunger control. Ordinary table sugar (cane or beet sugar, sucrose) and grape sugar (glucose) are absorbed from your digestive tract relatively quickly, causing your pancreas to release a lot of insulin, the natural hormone required to metabolize the sudden big surge in your blood sugar levels. The average amount that your blood sugar rises after you eat a given amount of a particular carbohydrate is called that carbohydrate's glycemic index. The natural fruit sugar fructose has one of the lowest glycemic indexes of any food - with a rating of only 20, compared to 31 for skimmed milk, 59 for sucrose (ordinary table sugar), 92 for carrots, and 98 for an equal weight of baked russet potato. This means that 1 ounce of fructose raises your blood sugar only about 1/3 as much as an ounce of sucrose, and it releases only about 1/3 as much insulin. And a baked potato raises your blood sugar almost 5 times higher than a comparable amount of fructose! Substituting low glycemic index carbohydrates, especially when you're choosing snacks, can improve your blood sugar regulation, reduce your insulin release, aid your weight loss program, and keep going stronger, longer. The following table can be used as an aid when out shopping or choosing your low glycemic foods. High glycemic index carbohydrates can cause major problems for your body's fat control program. First, your elevated insulin level makes the sugar that you don't promptly burn enter your fat storage cells where it is converted to stored body fat. Your genes are preparing you to survive a famine, but in a country with plenty of food this famine life insurance can make you fat. Second, all that insulin can make so much sugar leave your blood stream that you become hypoglycemic two or three hours later (your blood sugar falls below normal). When this happens, your brain and body functions are not up to par, and you will crave more carbohydrates, and you may feel irritable. If the carbohydrates that you then eat release another big dose of insulin, the same vicious cycle repeats itself again and again every few hours. This is precisely what happens to cattle when they are fattened in a feedlot. In fact, doses of insulin can make experimental animals hyperphagic (eat abnormally large amounts of food), and hyperobese. Some scientists have even called insulin a "hunger hormone." Dr. Judith Rodin conducted an experiment with three groups of people who were either given a 192 calorie fructose drink, (glycemic index = 20, low insulin release fruit sugar) or a 192 calorie glucose drink, (glycemic index = 100, high insulin release grape sugar) or a plain water drink. Two hours later they ate as much of a delicious buffet as they wished. The people who got the fructose drink ate an average of 476 calories less than the people who got the glucose drink. That 476 calories per day is a difference of 23 pounds of body fat per year - without dieting, hunger, or exercise! In fact, the people who got the fructose drink ate fewer calories - including the calories in the fructose - than the people who got the plain water! (This improved blood sugar control is why many physicians advise many of the diabetic patients to replace other carbohydrates in their diet with fructose.) Note that the so-called "high fructose" corn syrup used to sweeten most soft drinks contains only 42% or 55% fructose; most of the rest is glucose and the overall result, in terms of insulin released, is about on a par with table sugar (sucrose). When you eat, especially when snacking, try to substitute low glycemic index foods for an equal number of calories of high glycemic index foods. You can often find low glycemic index foods that are sweeter and that you like better than the foods that many unscientific diet books recommend. You will probably be surprised to learn that carrots have a glycemic index over four times as high as fructose, and that fruit sugar fructose has one of the lowest glycemic indexes of any food measured so far. Sweet Fructose Facts: 1.In a cold tart fruit drink, fructose is 70% sweeter than table sugar, calorie per calorie, so you have more sweet satisfaction per calorie. 2.Fructose releases only about a third as much insulin as table sugar, so fewer of those calories are stored as body fat. 3.The smaller amount of insulin released by fructose also means that it will keep your blood sugar at an optimum level longer to help prevent reactive hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and carbohydrate craving, and give you long lasting energy. 4.Fructose can reduce your appetite for carbohydrates, and actually make you want to eat less. The reduction in subsequent carbohydrate craving due to better blood sugar control (no reactive hypoglycemia) can make a big difference in how much you want to eat later. [Back to Top | View or Print the Glycemic Index]
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