Fructose, Glucose & Your Liver...

Not all sugars break down in your liver similarly.....

Fructose, Glucose & Your Liver

In Spiritual Adrenaline: A Lifestyle Plan to Strengthen & Nourish Your Recovery, I focus on liver disease given the prevalence of this disease in the addiction recovery community.   I leave treatment to medical professionals and instead focus on nutrition and lifestyle.   In Spiritual Adrenaline, there’s an entire section for people with comprised liver function, liver disease or for those looking to engage in self-care to help their liver heal.   See Ch. 3, pgs. 30-34, Ch. 9, pgs. 88-98, 122.  An October 2019 study looked at how different types of sugars breakdown in the liver.  Here’s some updated information that you can use to empower yourself on the path to health, hope and healing.

Not All Sugars Are Equal

            Traditional nutritional recommendations did not distinguish between fructose and glucose, and how each impacts your liver.   It was generally accepted that both impacted the liver in the same way.  That turns out not to be true in people consuming a high-fat, Western style diet.   In a 2019 study at Harvard Medical School, researchers fed rats a high-fat, Western style diet.   They then divided the rats into two groups:  One was fed high amounts of glucose and the other high amounts of fructose (both ate the high-fat Western style diet).  The addition of sugars was intended to mimic sugary drinks like soda.  The researchers found that large amounts of fructose disrupted liver function in ways that are detrimental, while glucose can improve liver function.  The researchers found “fructose makes the liver accumulate fat” while “adding glucose promoted the liver’s ability to burn fat, and, therefore make for a healthier metabolism”.  How can you use this cutting-edge science to benefit your long-term health in recovery, help repair damage caused by years of substance abuse and enable you to make conscious contact with your body?

The Spiritual Adrenaline Solution

            Among the recommendations in Spiritual Adrenaline is to learn nutritional basics that can help you make educated choices in what you eat.  For example, the differences between fructose, glucose and sucrose and how each impacts your body.  This is critical for people in addiction recovery given the number of people in recovery with Type 2 Diabetes and Hypoglycemia.   In Spiritual Adrenaline, recommend: avoiding juicing and explain why; provide recommendations for alternative sweeteners to make it easier to avoid refined sugar and high-fructose corn syrup; provide detailed lists of complex carbs which break down into sugars during digestion much more slowly; and, provide a 7-day detox to help wean you off refined sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and other junk carbs that increase inflammation and cause liver damage over time.    For more information on how the Spiritual Adrenaline lifestyle can benefit you, visit www.spiritualadrenaline.com.

Citation:  Softic, S., Meyer, J.G., Wang, GX, Schilling, B., Cohen, D.E., Dietary Sugars Alter Hepatic Fatty Acid Oxidation via Transcriptional and Post-translational Modifications of Mitchondrial Proteins, Cell Metabolism,  Vol.30, Issue 4, pgs 735-753, Oct. 1, 2019.