Sunday, September 27, 2009

Fructose Detox: a 12-Step Program for 'Fructose-ics'

I am in fructose detox.

I'm de-leveraging nutritionally with each passing day.


"Goodbye, fructose," is exactly what I heard the sage Dr. Davis say.

Not surprising to me, fructose toxicity yields addictive dynamics and tendencies that mimic, parallel, and resemble alcoholism.

Alcohol is quite a hepatotoxin, by the way.

Metabolically and neurologically, fructose and alcohol act in similar ways: in essence, you can get 'drunk' on that fruit punch soda you used to gulp unceasingly.

Alcoholics Anonymous (aka 'AA') has its own Primal Blueprint with respect to EtOH detox. Alcoholics are addicted to alcohol (EtOH). 'Fructose-ics' are addicted to fructose. Thank high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) proliferation in contemporary society as the primary culprit for this worrisome, debilitating trend. Think of HFCS like credit card debt: it provides a short-term 'prop' (energy / money to expend / spend) with a high cost (liver toxicity / 20% interest rates) to-be-paid down the road. Acting in this manner like debt, fructose has bankrupt our physiologies all across the globe (thanks to Dave Lull):
"These results suggest that excessive fructose intake may have a role in the worldwide epidemic of obesity and diabetes," said Dr. Richard Johnson of the University of Colorado-Denver, who studied the link between blood pressure and men.

The findings provide the latest evidence of ties between sugar-rich diets and health problems ...

In response to this escalating epidemic, adapting the AA 12-step model for alcoholism detox to fructose-ism seems potentially fruitful, at least to me:
12-Steps to Fructose Detox for Fructose-ics

1. We admitted we were powerless over fructose--that our physiologies had become unhealthy, chronically inflamed with fructose-induced 'protein cement' slavery.
2. Came to believe that Primal / Paleo / Evolutionary / Ancestral Fitness whole foods nutrition possessed battle-tested concepts and prescriptions that are far superior to our SAD (Standard American Diet) modern-day Conventional (Food Pyramid) Wisdom precepts--the statement, "We'd be wise to learn from our ancestors," helps us restore our sanity, energy, and vitality.
3. Made a decision to turn our will ('searching and acting') and our lives over to the care of bottom-up tinkering, 'listening to our bodies' more intimately, engaging in 'n=1' trial-and-error self-experimenting in the Ancestral Fitness Epistemocracy (AFE).
4. Made a searching and fearless health inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to a higher power, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our historical health lapses, missteps, and misguided frustrations resulting from misinformed 'choice architecture' and allegiance to ineffective, non-robust mythologies to live by.
6. Were entirely ready to have Primal / Paleo / Evolutionary / Ancestral Fitness empower us with platforms, grace nudges, and social scaffolding points that help us remove all these diet defects.
7. Humbly asked 'our ancestors' to remove our energy intake and expenditure shortcomings, reconnecting via Levy-flights with our old roots to nourish new, nonlinear and fractal growth.
8. Made a list of all 'negative advice' mantras that could help us stay the course.
9. Made direct action plans based on such idioms, except when to do so would injure our bodies or others'.
10. Continued to take personal inventories, and when we recognized observations that falsify the fructose detox hypothesis, promptly admitted them--open-source science in the name of Popperian Falsification demands this much.
11. Sought through reflection, intermittent fasting, high-intensity / low-duration exercise, sleep, and ancestral nutrition to stretch our physiological headrooms, to capture positive Black Swan hits that emerged from the envelope of serendipity, and to follow the results of our individualized clinical trials to their full conclusions, seeking support from the larger Ancestral Fitness Epistemocracy when we needed power and 'venture capital' to carry these steps out sustainably.
12. Having had a physiological (mental / physical) and spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other fructose-ics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

As I like to reiterate, "Physician, heal thyself."

The AFE is a spiritual place; we, the Patients of One, elect to trust our ancestral physiologies gracefully--they know more than all of us combined, especially when nurtured in the right ecological manner.

Fructose detox is a good place to start.

It's never too late to start.

I like to start at step one.
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3 comments:

  1. So does this mean not eating any fruit whatsoever? Do ALL fruits have fructose? Do any vegetables or seeds that have a sweet taste have any fructose? Coconut butter is delicious and tastes sweet (2g of sugar/serving if memory serves me correctly). Labels don't break "sugar" portions down into its components (e.g., fructose, sucrose, glucose...).

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  2. Thanks, Aaron.

    Good questions for clarification.

    Generally, if sugar is like debt, fructose is a specific type of debt. Across the board, we need less debt / sugar. Sugar / debt detox are needed to bring these levels back to manageable amounts; to the points where we can pay our monthly credit card bills, car payments, mortgages, etc. with money that we actually have in our bank accounts or our bodies can actually process, metabolize, and effectively excrete waste products from sugar consumption without causing extensive inflammation. In this context, complete elimination of debt or sugar are not necessary; achieving low levels is the goal. Sometimes, this means that, yes, you consume almost no sugar (it's nearly impossible to avoid it entirely, nor necessary) for periods of time and use no debt leverage as a consumer as well. Specifically, when trying to detox from sugar, periods of no/low fructose and hyperlipidity could be effective in facilitating a process to achieve this ultimate goal. All fruits and vegetables have fructose, but, thanks to agriculture and other reasons, some have higher fructose contents than others. Dr. Davis like cranberries, for instance. Ancestrally, I suspect fruit contained much less sugar and featured higher acidity levels. Sweet taste can originate from good fat as well. Here is a small list I found with content levels:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose_malabsorption

    In theory, an alcoholic who could reduce alcohol consumption to healthy, manageable levels would be the ultimate goal. In parallel, if fructose-ics can return to only eating fructose in moderation with, as Keith Norris likes to say, "fruit as a condiment," and good intake through vegetables, then that would be a success too.

    So, I crafted this 'program' as a way to reduce 'credit card debt' (fructose toxicity levels) back to healthy, manageable amounts. Once we self-experiment and find that 'sweet spot', we can lead much more robust lifestyles.

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  3. PS.

    Here are some good resources to aid self-experimenting in this domain (thanks to Dave Lull):

    A Google search for "fructose" on Peter's blog (Hyperlipid):

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&num=100&q=fructose+site:high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com

    Here are other listings of fructose content of fruit that are more extensive:

    http://www.thepaleodiet.com/nutritional_tools/fruits_table.html

    http://www.nutritiondata.com/foods-009011000000000000000-w.html?maxCount=78

    For vegetables see this search:

    http://www.nutritiondata.com/foods-011011000000000000000-w.html?maxCount=138

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