The ONLY Sugar That Won't Raise Your Blood Sugar

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2023

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, we’re going to talk about the only type of sugar that won’t raise your blood sugar: fructose.

Fructose doesn’t increase your blood sugar levels, at least initially. Fructose is often recommended to diabetics because it doesn’t increase blood sugar levels, but there is another side of this that’s important to look at.

Fructose follows a different biochemical pathway than glucose. Glucose is absorbed by all of the cells, but fructose is only absorbed by the liver. What’s not absorbed can end up in the colon, where your microbes consume it, which can lead to digestive problems.

Fructose absorbed in the liver can be converted to glucose and stored as glycogen. When glycogen is stored in the liver, the body will start making triglycerides and cholesterol. Fructose can potentially lead to a fatty liver very quickly, which can then lead to insulin resistance and diabetes.

Even though fructose is low on the glycemic index and won’t directly raise your blood sugar, it can indirectly raise your blood sugar and lead to various health problems.

The good news is that there are keto-friendly alternative sugars that you can consume.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today I'm going to talk about the only sugar that won't raise your blood sugar.
0:06.2	Now I see you're getting pretty excited about this, but before you get too excited, let me explain.
0:11.2	Sugar is classified in a certain way. You have something called a monosaccharide and you have disaccharides. So let's just talk about those first. So a monosaccharide is like one individual sugar molecule like glucose that would be a monosaccharide
0:27.0	mono meaning one saccharide means sugar and you also have another monosaccharide called fructose. And if you combine these different monosaccharides together, you have different types of sugar. For example, table sugar is about 50% fructoseos and 50% glucose.
0:45.5	And then you have honey, which is 30% fructose
0:50.4	and 70% glucose glucose.
0:53.0	Then you have other sugars like lactose, that's like milk sugar.
0:57.0	That would be glucose plus another type of monosaccharide called galactose.
1:02.0	And then you have something called high fructose corn syrup because it's a combination of glucose and fructose could range anywhere between 55 to 90 percent fructose. And then you have a gava nectar, which is combined of glucose and
1:16.3	fructose. And fructose in agobinecter is about 85%, okay, so it's a lot of fructose. Then you have fruit. Fruit is a combination of glucose plus fructose, but the fructose and fruit can vary between 1% and 30%. Now you're probably saying like what would be 1%? Well, it could be like
1:37.0	avocados that would be considered a fruit or maybe olets that would be considered a fruit. Very low sweetness, right? Very low fructose. What's interesting
1:46.2	about fructose is that it's the only sugar that does not activate the beta cells, that's the cells in the pancreas that release insulin.
1:57.6	It does not increase your blood sugars, at least initially. when you think about it, when you go to the doctor to get your blood sugar tested,
2:07.7	they're not going to be checking how much fructose that's in the blood,
2:11.2	they're going to be checking how much glucose is in the blood.
2:14.9	Two completely different monosoccharides, and fructose as a sugar is like twice as sweet as
2:22.1	table sugar.
2:23.4	And this is another reason why manufacturing companies might be putting
2:27.2	fructose in our food because it's just sweeter.
2:29.9	If you take artificial sweeteners, you're talking about a factor of like 10,000 to 100,000 times sweeter than sugar.
2:37.8	So that's why you need just a tiny bit.
2:40.3	And humans lack the enzyme to convert fructose into glucose.
	...

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