effectively. But when you’ve got a lot of excess sugar in your system, it keeps bumping into proteins, ultimately getting stuck onto the protein molecules. Such proteins are now said to have become
glycated
. The glycated proteins are too big and sticky to get through small blood vessels and capillaries, including the small vessels in the kidneys, eyes, and feet, which is why so many diabetics are at risk for kidney disease, vision problems, and amputations of toes, feet, and even legs. The sugar-coated proteins become toxic and make the cell machinery run less efficiently. They damage the body and exhaust the immune system. Scientists have given these sticky proteins the acronym AGEs—which stands for
advanced glycation end products
—partially because these proteins are so involved in aging the body.
What does this have to do with cholesterol and heart disease? Actually, everything. You may recall our earlier discussion about LDL cholesterol in which we pointed out that LDL cholesterol is never a problem until it becomes damaged. (Remember, damaged LDL cholesterol of the BB gun pellet variety [pattern B] gets stuck to the artery walls, ultimately triggering the immune system reaction that causes inflammation.) We discussed one primary way in which LDL cholesterol gets damaged—through oxidative stress generated by free radicals.
Can you guess the other way it gets damaged?
Glycation.
So now you have sugar at the scene of several crimes, all related to heart disease. “High blood sugar causes the lining cells of the arteries to be inflamed, changes LDL cholesterol, and causes sugar to be attached to a variety of proteins, which changestheir normal function,” says Dwight Lundell, M.D., author of
The Cure for Heart Disease
. High blood sugar, as we’ve seen, also sends insulin levels skyrocketing, and in most people that will lead to insulin resistance, the central player in every condition we’ve examined that is intimately connected to heart disease: diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and metabolic syndrome.
Is it any surprise that we think reducing sugar is far more important than reducing fat or cholesterol?
And by the way, we’re hardly the first people to say so.
The Voice of Dissent: Introducing John Yudkin
By 1970, Ancel Keys’s research had been published and was being picked up by the media; the low-or nocholesterol brigade was gearing up for an assault on the consciousness of the American public. Then in 1972, Robert Atkins published
Diet Revolution
, which became the de facto poster child for the low-carb movement two decades later. Atkins advocated an approach completely opposite to the one promoted by Keys: He said that insulin and carbohydrates, not fat and cholesterol, were the problem in the American diet.
Because his high-fat, high-protein, low-carb diet went so dramatically against the conventional wisdom of the times, Atkins was attacked mercilessly in the press and vilified by the medical mainstream, which turned him into a pariah in the medical community. But in the same year that Atkins published his book, an English doctor named John Yudkin was making waves by politely and reasonably suggesting to the medical establishment that perhaps its emperor, while indeed cholesterol-free and low-fat, was nonetheless naked as a jaybird.
A professor of nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, University of London, Yudkin was a highly respected scientist and nutritionist who had dozens of published papers in such renowned peer-reviewed journals as
The Lancet,
the
British Medical Journal,
the
Archives of Internal Medicine,
the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
, and
Nature
.
Yudkin was typically portrayed by his detractors as a wild-eyed fanatic who blamed sugar as the cause of heart disease, but in fact he was nothing of the sort. In his 1972 book,
Sweet and Dangerous
, he was the embodiment of reason when he called for a reexamination of the data—which he considered highly
glycated
. The glycated proteins are too big and sticky to get through small blood vessels and capillaries, including the small vessels in the kidneys, eyes, and feet, which is why so many diabetics are at risk for kidney disease, vision problems, and amputations of toes, feet, and even legs. The sugar-coated proteins become toxic and make the cell machinery run less efficiently. They damage the body and exhaust the immune system. Scientists have given these sticky proteins the acronym AGEs—which stands for
advanced glycation end products
—partially because these proteins are so involved in aging the body.
What does this have to do with cholesterol and heart disease? Actually, everything. You may recall our earlier discussion about LDL cholesterol in which we pointed out that LDL cholesterol is never a problem until it becomes damaged. (Remember, damaged LDL cholesterol of the BB gun pellet variety [pattern B] gets stuck to the artery walls, ultimately triggering the immune system reaction that causes inflammation.) We discussed one primary way in which LDL cholesterol gets damaged—through oxidative stress generated by free radicals.
Can you guess the other way it gets damaged?
Glycation.
So now you have sugar at the scene of several crimes, all related to heart disease. “High blood sugar causes the lining cells of the arteries to be inflamed, changes LDL cholesterol, and causes sugar to be attached to a variety of proteins, which changestheir normal function,” says Dwight Lundell, M.D., author of
The Cure for Heart Disease
. High blood sugar, as we’ve seen, also sends insulin levels skyrocketing, and in most people that will lead to insulin resistance, the central player in every condition we’ve examined that is intimately connected to heart disease: diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and metabolic syndrome.
Is it any surprise that we think reducing sugar is far more important than reducing fat or cholesterol?
And by the way, we’re hardly the first people to say so.
The Voice of Dissent: Introducing John Yudkin
By 1970, Ancel Keys’s research had been published and was being picked up by the media; the low-or nocholesterol brigade was gearing up for an assault on the consciousness of the American public. Then in 1972, Robert Atkins published
Diet Revolution
, which became the de facto poster child for the low-carb movement two decades later. Atkins advocated an approach completely opposite to the one promoted by Keys: He said that insulin and carbohydrates, not fat and cholesterol, were the problem in the American diet.
Because his high-fat, high-protein, low-carb diet went so dramatically against the conventional wisdom of the times, Atkins was attacked mercilessly in the press and vilified by the medical mainstream, which turned him into a pariah in the medical community. But in the same year that Atkins published his book, an English doctor named John Yudkin was making waves by politely and reasonably suggesting to the medical establishment that perhaps its emperor, while indeed cholesterol-free and low-fat, was nonetheless naked as a jaybird.
A professor of nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, University of London, Yudkin was a highly respected scientist and nutritionist who had dozens of published papers in such renowned peer-reviewed journals as
The Lancet,
the
British Medical Journal,
the
Archives of Internal Medicine,
the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
, and
Nature
.
Yudkin was typically portrayed by his detractors as a wild-eyed fanatic who blamed sugar as the cause of heart disease, but in fact he was nothing of the sort. In his 1972 book,
Sweet and Dangerous
, he was the embodiment of reason when he called for a reexamination of the data—which he considered highly
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