Glycemic index, what is it and how it relates to health and fitness?
June 25th, 2007What is the glycemic index? The glycemic index is a rating of the foods we eat and how they affect our blood sugar levels or how quickly they are digested into glucose. The quickest being glucose and the slowest (there are many “slowest”) being nuts. Many of us consume food without thinking twice about what we are putting into our bodies. A better understanding of how quickly foods are digested and released into our blood stream will allow us to make better, healthier choices when we eat.
Let’s take a basic look at what happens to food when we eat it. As food is eaten and ends up in the stomach, many enzymes are released to break down/digest the different macro nutrients within that food. Carbohydrates are digested by amylase, fats by lipase, and protein by protease. Our main concern with this article is the digestion of carbohydrates and the eventual release of sugar into our blood stream. As carbohydrates/saccharides are digested, whether fast or slow, there is glucose being released into our bloodstream. The faster the digestion the more sugar is released at one time, sometimes causing the legendary “sugar high” we hear so many talk about. Regardless of how much sugar is released the body’s response to that is the following: as sugar levels rise, insulin is released and some of the sugar is stored as glycogen in the skeletal muscle and the excess is sent to the liver where it is stored and once the stores are full in the liver, glucose is converted into fatty acids and released once again into the blood. Fatty acids are then stored where? Correct, as body fat! Can you see the dilemma? If we consume too much sugar or high glycemic foods (fast digesting) we get the sugar spike and in return the insulin release but only a small fraction of sugar is stored in muscle or the liver and the rest as fat. Some may be used as energy as well but overall body fat is the end result.
Another problem is that we will still have all of that insulin circulating around and it keeps the sugar levels falling which tells our bodies to release cortisol which is an enzyme that causes the liver to release some of its stored glucose back into the bloodstream. This release causes the blood sugar levels to go back up towards normal but by this time I’m sure most of us have eaten more which results in more sugar in the blood……can you see a pattern? In the end we get fat from what we eat and when we eat.
The fatty acids released from the liver are stored as body-fat but also in and around our body’s organs. This fat storage results in an increase in blood pressure, possibly cholesterol, and a decreased metabolism. All of these results are not good and if you want to maintain a healthy, long life we not only need to work out but we also need to eat smarter. On the go fitness is here to help you with both.Words of caution on a label (sugar wise):
High fructose corn syrup, sucrose, maltose, dextrose, galactose, glucose, ribose, deoxyribose, etc.
Recommended website: Gilisting
