Misconception about fruits, sugar consumption

Written by Oladapo Ashiru - The Punch, Nigeria

Oladapo Ashiru

Ever since we started Mayr therapy in Lagos, we have seen many patients come for therapy. The majority often complained of serious arthritic pain in the joints, numbness of the hands and feet, diabetes, general body fatigue and more.

When their dietary consumption is analysed, the results point to a common factor: fructose intolerance as a result of eating too many fruits.

The patients believed they were observing healthy habits by eating plenty of oranges, water melon, apple or even fruit smoothies or cocktails.

They are usually shocked when the bioenergetics testing results indicate that such fruits are weakening and stressing many of their organs.

When we tell them that they are fructose intolerant, they are astonished to find the pain and all other problems disappear as they undergo detoxification and stay away from fruits.

We explain to them that all the sweet fruits that they are consuming have high fructose content with its attendant consequences. Indeed, the myth that fruits are good for you is not based on medical advice. It is the product of commercial marketing!

Fructose, or fruit sugar, is a simple ketonic monosaccharide found in many plants, where it is often bonded to glucose to form the disaccharide sucrose.

It is one of the three dietary monosaccharides, including glucose and galactose, that are absorbed directly into the bloodstream during digestion.

Fructose is found in honey, tree and vine fruits, most sweet fruits, flowers, berries, and most root vegetables. High fructose corn syrup is a mixture of glucose and fructose. All forms of fructose, including fruits and juices, are commonly added to foods and drinks for taste enhancement, and for browning of some foods, such as baked goods.

Fructose exists in foods either as a monosaccharide (free fructose) or as a unit of a disaccharide (sucrose). Free fructose is absorbed directly into the intestine. Then it enters the hepatic (liver) portal vein.

All three dietary monosaccharides are processed in the liver. By contrast, glucose tends to pass through the liver and can be metabolised anywhere in the body. Uptake of fructose by the liver is not regulated by insulin - the blood sugar regulating hormone.

It is well known that high fructose consumption stresses the liver and encourages formation of excessive fat and bad cholesterol. Compared with the consumption of high glucose beverages, drinking high-fructose beverages with meals results in lower circulating insulin and leptin levels and higher ghrelin levels after the meal.

Since ghrelin increases appetite, some researchers suspect that eating large amounts of fructose increases the likelihood of appetite and therefore causing weight gain.

Dr. Robert H. Lustig, a professor of paediatrics and an obesity specialist at the University of California, San Francisco raises the alarm in an article published in the New York Times.

Today we average 55 grammes per day (73 grammes for adolescents) in consumption of sugar. Sugar in the quantity that we consume it today is highly toxic and causes all sorts of serious problems.

The increase in fructose intake is worrisome, says Lustig, because it suspiciously parallels increase in the incidence of obesity, diabetes, and a new condition called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Another effect of high fructose intake is insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes.

People and food companies replace fat, often healthy fat, with sugar, almost always refined sugar. But this sort of low-fat diet-one rich in refined sugar and thus in fructose - is really a high-fat diet when you look at what the liver does to fructose, said Dr. Lustig.

You cannot metabolise fructose like most other sugars, and your cells cannot use fructose as a fuel. Instead, your liver has to dispose of all the fructose that you consume. Fructose has to be processed in a similar way to another carbohydrate, alcohol.

Your liver slowly converts fructose to triglycerides and several toxic by-products. In the same way as alcohol, fructose puts a heavy load on your liver. It is postulated that excessive fructose can cause liver cirrhosis!

Fructose reacts with proteins to form highly toxic and ageing advanced glycation end products. They hasten your ageing, damage your skin, stiffen blood vessels and cause kidney disease.

Fructose also reacts with polyunsaturated oils to form toxic products. Obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, bacterial and fungal infections are also outcomes of a high-fructose diet.

Also,most people cannot properly digest all the fructose they eat every day from an apparently normal and healthy diet.

If you eat large quantities of fruit and thinking that it is healthy, well think again. Fructose is the sugar contained in fruits in high quantities. A normal healthy adult can properly digest 25-50 grammes of fructose per day.