Carbohydrates are the nutritional category for glucose. These are the molecules that your body breaks down to make glucose. Carbohydrates can be of two types – refined or whole. Whole carbs are unprocessed carbs and contain fibre that’s naturally found in food while refined carbs have been processed to remove their natural fibre from the food.
In an exclusive interaction OnlyMyHealth editorial team, Vipul Sandhya, Nutritionist, Personal Trainer & Founder, of Win Everyday shares why refined carbs and sugar are bad for our health. Here is what he shared with us.
In an ideal scenario, when you consume carbohydrates, it gets converted into glucose and is slowly released in the bloodstream to be used as energy, the remaining blood glucose is stored either in the liver or muscles as glycogen, or as triglycerides in the fat cells.
The natural fibre of all carbohydrates slows down the release of glucose in the blood allowing the body to manage a slow and sustained release of glucose into the blood. Refining the carbohydrate through man-made processes results in the removal of the fibre from the food, which causes a huge influx of glucose in the blood, spiking up your blood glucose levels rapidly.
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Our body isn’t designed to handle such loads of glucose concurrently, releasing insulin as a defence mechanism to drive the blood glucose into the fat cells as an attempt to bring down the blood glucose level. This sudden drop in blood glucose leads to feeling low on energy and can make you hungry again. In today’s day and age, we don’t eat just one meal of refined carbs a day, but multiple servings that keep the blood glucose high at all times. A major effect of elevated insulin levels is the increase of fat storage in your cells while simultaneously inhibiting fat loss from the cells, causing havoc and uproar from all sides.
Continuously elevated levels of insulin for a prolonged period of time can make the cells insulin resistant, i.e, a higher amount of insulin is needed to put the same amount of glucose in the cells. That is the reason refined carbohydrates and sugars are blamed for the obesity and diabetes epidemic that we are experiencing today.
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These processed foods and sugars are a major cause of the rising tooth decay in people as well, especially sugary and sweetened beverages.
As developed nations started exporting molasses, syrups, and rice to developing/underdeveloped countries that didn’t have these diseases, an alarming number of the population started to get sick, obese and diabetes rates went up. These processed foods are more inflammatory than their wholefood counterparts, creating metabolic havoc inside your body and that's the reason it's better to pass on bread, pasta, pizza, doughnuts, and sugary beverages.
