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Okay, not entirely, but you’ll see what I mean very soon.

Fat causes diabetes, not sugar. Adult-onset Diabetes occurs when the body’s insulin cannot effectively take sugar out of the bloodstream. The culprit is not the sugar. Even if you have a lot of it, that shouldn’t impede the insulin’s effect. Granted, a lot of sugar means a lot of work for the insulin, but that’s what insulin is made for. Sugar in blood means that insulin has to work. That’s its job. Insulin doing its job isn’t what makes people sick. Its insulin not being able to effectively do its job that makes people sick. So what prevents insulin from doing its job properly? Fat.

When consumed, fat coats the entire body on the inside, and it will stay in the body for up to 48 hours after consumption. When our blood stream is coated in fat, it means that insulin will have a tough time grabbing onto the sugar and filtering it out of the blood. The fat just gets in the way. Because of this, insulin has to work harder and harder to get the sugar out. This overworks the pancreas, the organ that creates insulin.

So, while insulin may have to work harder when there is more sugar in the blood, this is not the problem because that is insulin’s job. The problem occurs when fat gets in the way of insulin doing its job. Then, no matter how little sugar enters the blood, insulin will have to be mass produced just to get a little bit done, thus overworking the pancreas. Obviously, when the blood sugar cannot be moved out, it spikes. Then, when the fat dissapates and insulin can do its job, clearly there would be a drastic drop in blood sugar because then there would be too much insulin for too little sugar. This creates all sorts of imbalances that can have severe detrimental effects on the body.

All fat is not bad, however. We should not consume more than 10% of our calories a day from fat, and it should also be in the proper ratios of Omega 6 – 3 (linoleic acid-linolenic acid). Omega 6 is a flammatory fat, which helps the body inflame and clot. This is important when we are injured but is detrimental in excessive quantities. When omega 6 fat overwhelms the diet, heart disease becomes evident, as well as virtually all other diseases that plague modern society. However, it is also not good to get too much omega 3 fat, which is anti-inflammatory. This makes sure that things run smoothly and don’t clot up. As you can see, too much of this can be very bad if you get a bad cut. You simply would bleed out without the ability of your blood to clot.

The answer, then, as mentioned above, is to get these in the proper ratio (1:1). But this is only the half of it. It is not enough to simply have the right ratio, but we must also not consume too much. Consuming the wrong ratio leads to imbalances of our body’s flammatory responses. Consuming too much leads to complications with our blood sugar (diabetes). Therefore, the answer is to both consume the proper ratio of fats and to consume less than 10% of our total calories from fat.

You may be thinking: How can I possibly do that? I have to count so much stuff! How much fat is in my food, how many calories, what types of fat… how laborious! But not to worry, it’s much simpler than that. You see, there are foods on this planet that contain exactly the right amount and ratio of fat, and you don’t have to worry about much of anything while eating them. What are these wonderful foods?

They are: Fruits and Vegetables!!! Fruits and leafy green vegetables contain not only the perfect ratio and amount of fats when eaten properly, but provide the body with everything else it needs as well (these other areas will be looked upon in following blogs). As long as one is careful to not overeat fatty fruits, and to not undereat overall (and, of course, to stick with organic produce!), then you will be well on your way to overall, lasting health.

For more information, consult the sources.

Sources: The 80/10/10 Diet, by Douglas Graham

Lia Cross

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