Saturday, December 13, 2008

Gary Taubes explains it so well

Watched his lecture at Berkeley again.

At the hour point, he cuts to the chase. Fat storage happens because of alpha glycerol phosphate, which is needed to bin fatty acids into triglycerides. AGP (my abbrev.) comes from burning glucose and nore is available to store fat when insulin levels are high. Want to store less fat? Keep insulin levels in the blood low. Take in less glucose.

Yalow and Berson in 1965 say "Insulin is the principal regulator of fat metabolism". Gary talks about how emaciated type I diabetics can be, as they no longer produce their own insulin. They have nothing to drive fat accumulation with. When treated with insulin therapy, Dr. Best (yes, that Dr. Best) describes how they develop adipose deposits in the stomach where the insulin is injected.

My husband and I started the South Beach Diet in late September 08. My husband has lost 25 pounds and his blood profile has improved so much his doctor is ecstatic. My husband's triglycerides are WAY down from where they were. The doctor had recommended South Beach. I have lost 17 pounds. Don't you hate men who always win in the weight loss game? My profile is improving as well. LDL and HDL levels close to normal.

It's the insulin, stupid.

1 comment:

TedHutchinson said...

More recent Gary Taubes Lecture

I prefer this newer version of the talk. For a start there are more jokes and it's a bit slicker (he was trying to do a 1hr 15min lecture in 45mins) but also because there is the option of Thumbnails you can move back and forth through the slides to make sure you understand exactly what he is saying.
Slide 48 in particular.
I was sort of under the impression that Taubes rather equated the damaging effects of Fructose with carbohydrates in general but here if we listen carefully we hear him say "Fructose is the carbohydrate converted most efficiently into glycerol-3-phosphate, which is why it's one of several reasons fructose is considered the most lipogenic carbohydrate Indeed It might be 90% of the problem.