Question About Carbs

Dear Lynn: Only simple carbohydrates and acid forming foods need to be avoided, not carbohydrates across the board. Check the glycemic index of foods below 50. The higher ones 51 to 100 should be avoided.

There are simple carbohydrates and there are complex carbohydrates as measured on a glycemic index. You won't avoid all carbohydrates, you merely be choosy about what kinds of carbohydrates. The ones to avoid are the simple carbohydrates.

In other words there are good carbohydrates and there are bad carbohydrates, just like good cholesterol (HDL) and bad cholesterol, good fats and bad fats. But the bad and the good is not black and white. For example you need a lot of minerals in balance, but obviously some minerals are toxic generally and should be avoided, such as mercury, cadmium, and lead.

On the glycemic index, you will generally choose those that have minimum effect on blood sugar. Therefore, the foods that have low glycemic index are desireable, since it needs a lot of time for the body to break them into simple sugars.

The ones that is most dangerous to us are the simple carbohydrates, such as sugar, fructose, glucose, for example. Those are high glycemic index which is between 51 to 100. Pure sugar is about 100. Therefore those that affect your blood sugar the most should be avoided. However for whole fruits there are some differences as their glycemic index could be low or high depending on the sugar content.

It is quite possible to actually loose weight just eating complex carbohydrates. There was a book out called "The Rice Diet" which was developed in 1939 and consisted basically of eating rice, low fat and low salt. Actually though, common table salt is acid forming. The pH is about 5, while sea salt is about 8. Taking too much sea salt and baking soda can lead to diarrhea. So sodium retention do not occur in any event when what you are taking has an alkalinity where its pH is 8 or above.

Asians have been eating rice for centuries and obesity is still low, until of course they switched to western fast food, such as fried chickens, french fries and avoided eating local dishes. Of course, some people are fat even when the were a child, but that may not be the genes either. Since baby vaccinations contains, besides mercury and aluminum, is the monosodium glutamate. In laboratory rats of weanlings, if you inject them with monosodium glutamate the rat will always be obese. So practically speaking, vaccination with MSG may cause obesity by destroying the appetite center in your brain, the hypothalamus, which they do and that's why there's food binge whenever you eat potato chips and other processed food. Most processed food have them and it helps with their sales and market share a lot. One of the best selling fast food, at least in Thailand is the fried chicken, and they also have the highest amounts of monosodium glutamate added. So to reduce weight, avoid all MSG food.

Fruit juices causes the blood sugar to go up quite fast, and should be avoided. When you take them, it causes the blood sugar to go up in spikes after you eat and this can readily be seen by urinary sugar using Brix, or on a microscope looking at the blood. If you do this, you will find that too much simple carbohydrates is not good, too much fats in general is not good, being the most important ones.

On the other hand whole fruits are high in fibers which luckily fibers act as buffers that causes the body to absorb sugar rather slowly and hence is acceptable depending on the sweetness or the sugar content of the fruits. Obviously, fruits that are less sweet such as guava, apples, for example are o.k. while fruits that are very sweet such as pineapples should be avoided. So in event you ate something sweet one easy tip is to drink plenty of water to dilute the sugar so the sugar spikes is minimized into your blood. How much water to drink to dilute them, for me is simple since I have a brix refractometer. However, if you don't have it, there is a way to calculate. The body has 20 grams of reserved sugar. A human has approximately 5 liters of blood. So the sugar concentration is about 20/5000 x 100 = 0.4%. To be fair, let's just say about 0.5% sugar concentration to keep things simple. This is only a ball park figure.

Therefore in event you are drinking coke with 10 grams of sugar, you need to drink about 2.5 liters of water so that body's blood sugar is not affected, or you walk for 7.5 minutes necessary to burn the 10 grams of sugar out. I would much prefer not to cause the body to spike the sugar, than burn them, it still causes havoc to the body. So a reasonable amount of sugar that I think is safe is when you add sufficient dilution to about 0.5% concentration, roughly speaking! If you are wondering about me, if I were to eat something sweet I will keep drinking the water until the sweet after taste or sweet tongue disappear to make sure the blood sugar is effected minimally. Therefore when eating don't horde, if you do, reducing weight is difficult because biochemical mess occurs everytime you eat. To prevent that, whenever you eat, drink plenty of water before, during and after. I can present all the calculations to determine how much water to drink at a meal, but I think this would merely confuse you. Just keep things simple first.

In general eating fruits along with vegetables will buffer the body or reduce the body to uptake sugar reducing the sugar spikes in the blood. Vegetable fibers kind of act like a sponge when the body tries to absorb sugar. It is the same when you add food thickeners to all your drinks to lower sugar uptake such as agar, apple pectin, gelatin, for example.

However, weight loss requires somewhat of a three dimensional chess. You need to avoid the high glycemic index food, but at the same time avoid acid forming foods being just as equally important. Acid forming foods do have high glycemic index, but acid forming foods are also are high in halogens, low on alkaline metals. One example is white flour. A good flour should be whole wheat flour, but still they are somewhat acid forming still.

Avoiding them, and strict dietary controls are obviously difficult, but you can avoid certain obvious ones, such as fried food, french fries, fried chicken, excess fats, cola, and fruit juices.

Also supplementing with baking soda, apple cider vinegar to further keep the pH in control are most important, at least for me. The second most important once the pH is in control is the drinking enough water and getting a good balance of electrolytes.

However in a weight loss, just concentrate on the basics:

1. Avoid sugar generally
2. Avoid fried food
3. Take baking soda and apple cider vinegar
4. Achieve the targeted urinary pH of 7.0
5. Drink plenty of water
6. Avoid all MSG food, which means processed foods, which obviously means fast foods.
7. Be careful of vaccinations with MSG added.

Doing those you should generally be sufficient. One other thing that helps is granulated powdered lecithin one tablespoon, and try to add food thickeners to protect changes in blood sugar spikes that generally occur after eating. The most important ones to consider are the sugars and the fats. There are others, but the topic here is beyond this email discussion.

Ted