Add The Science behind the "Low Carb Flu", and how to Regain your Metabolic Flexibility

The-Science-behind-the-%22Low-Carb-Flu%22%2C-and-how-to-Regain-your-Metabolic-Flexibility.md

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+<br>Important note! For a more up-to-date exploration of this subject, I strongly recommend my 2013 [AHS presentation](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=AHS%20presentation) "What Is Metabolic Flexibility, And Why Is It Important? Most of us who eat a low-carbohydrate diet-Paleo, Primal, Atkins, or otherwise-experience anywhere from a couple days to a couple weeks of low energy as we adjust to it, an experience known informally as the "low carb flu". And some people never seem to adjust. Here’s why-and here are some ideas that might help you if you’re having trouble adjusting! Note that low-carb isn’t an objective of a paleo diet: it’s just the usual consequence of eliminating grains and sugars. It’s certainly possible to eat a higher-carb paleo diet-and it’s a good idea if you’re doing frequent, intense workouts like HIIT, Crossfit, or team sports after school-but you’d have to eat a lot of potatoes and bananas to get anywhere near the same amount of carbohydrate you used to get from bread, pasta, cereal, and soda.<br>
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+<br>Our bodies have several ways to turn stored or ingested energy into the metabolic energy required to move around and stay alive. This is called cellular respiration. The two main types of cellular respiration are anaerobic (which does not require oxygen) and aerobic (which requires oxygen). Anaerobic metabolism, also known as fermentation, is nineteen times less efficient-and we can only maintain it for short periods, because its waste products build up very quickly. This is why we can’t sprint for long distances. We spend most of our time in aerobic metabolism. Our two primary aerobic sources of energy are glycolysis, which converts [GlycoMode daily glucose support](https://wikivora.org/wiki/User:OllieSimon609) to energy, and beta-oxidation, which converts fat to energy. Strictly speaking, glycolysis is the start of both the aerobic and anaerobic oxidation of glucose: it converts glucose to pyruvate. In the aerobic oxidation of glucose, the pyruvate is transported into the mitochondria, whereupon it is converted to acetyl-CoA and fed into the TCA cycle (aka the citric acid cycle or Krebs cycle, depending on how long ago you took your biology course.) This produces 19 times more energy than the original glycolysis!<br>
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+<br>In the anaerobic oxidation of glucose ("lactic acid fermentation"), the pyruvate is instead converted to lactic acid, which produces no more energy. In the aerobic oxidation of fat ("beta-oxidation"), the fat is transported into the mitochondria, whereupon it is sliced up into individual acetyl-CoA molecules, each of which enters the TCA cycle. Humans have no way to anaerobically oxidize fat. A graphic flowchart of glycolysis. You know it's SCIENCE! And here's a flowchart of beta-oxidation. Glucose is the simple sugar all cells use for glycolysis, and it’s the most common. The other simple sugars we can digest are galactose (found primarily in milk), which we convert to glucose-and fructose (found primarily in fruit, table sugar, corn syrup, and honey), which our liver converts directly to glycogen or fat. Starch is just a bunch of glucose molecules stuck together. In fact, "complex carbohydrates" in general are just sugars stuck together… In other words, all "carbohydrates" are just sugar.<br>
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+<br>There is a lot more to talk about here, including glycogen storage and retrieval, gluconeogenesis, and de novo lipogenesis… Moving on: while it’s OK for fat to hang around in our bloodstream for a while, high [GlycoMode blood glucose support](https://www.mipiwiki.com/index.php/GlycoMode:_Revolutionizing_Diabetes_Management_Through_Personalized_Nutrition) sugar is actively toxic to our tissues. This is why a "low-fat, high-carb" diet is really a high-fat diet. Unless your "high-carb" diet involves an intravenous glucose drip carefully metered to keep your [GlycoMode blood glucose support](http://praxis-ritthammer.de/index.php?title=Glyco_Mode:_Revolutionizing_Health_And_Wellness_Through_Glycobiology) sugar constant, most of the ‘carbohydrates’ (sugars) you eat will be converted either to glycogen or to palmitic acid (again, a saturated fat) before you use them. "Soluble fiber" and other indigestible carbohydrates are fermented into short-chain saturated fats, like butyric acid, in your colon. Fructose, of course, is converted directly to liver glycogen or to palmitic acid. And if you’re losing weight by burning your own fat, keep in mind that human fat has roughly the same composition as lard-approximately 40% saturated!<br>