Its Time To Be a Nutrition Geek! The Biochemistry of Your Encounter With Food

We're learning about the endocrine system now (the collection of organs responsible for producing your hormones), and specifically, a lot about diabetes and obesity. I love it when my education brings biochemistry alive by making it relevant to our life today.

The way your biochemistry responds to an encounter with food, is down-right elegant. Many who are interested in nutrition, or have experience with low-carb diets, or who know something about diabetes have heard about insulin. Insulin is what we call a "storage hormone". As soon as you eat, and your body absorbs all of the sugars and starches that have been broken down, your body secretes insulin to signal to your muscle and liver cells to soak up all the sugar from the blood. This is so that the body can prevent damage to blood vessels and blood cells from sugars attaching to them. Now, insulin has been made out to be the bad guy by some people, because it favors the formation of body fuel stores, like fat and others. We'll leave this for another day. Whats important to know for our purposes now, is that in Diabetes, we've bombarded the body with refined carbs for so long, that the insulin producing machinery starts to conk out. This causes you to have high glucose levels, and so you have diabetic complications, like diabetic neuropathy (destruction of nerve endings in the feet), blindness (due to sugars attaching to the retina), and high blood pressure (due to sugars attaching to the lining of the blood vessels, making them harden).

So what does this have to do with how you eat? Well, it turns out, that insulin isn't JUST sensitive to the levels of carbs in your blood. Insulin levels are also mediated by a hormone called GLP1. The more GLP1, the more insulin, and the more glucose is taken out of your circulation. Now stay with me, because we are getting to the cool part. It turns out that GLP1 is secreted by the body in response to your anticipating food! Thats right, when you have that beautiful plate of say, your mom's home cooking in front of you, when you start salivating in anticipation of that scrumptious meal, your brain says to the body "OK, send out some GLP1, because we're going to have a shipment of glucose coming in, and we need insulin to make sure its not circulating all over the body wreaking havoc!" If you did not have GLP1, the insulin response isn't going to be high enough, and you end up with a situation thats similar to what a person with diabetes experiences - hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar. So why is this a big deal? Because it means that you need to be aware of your food when you eat, so that your body can utilize the food effectively. It's a beautiful illustration of how the way we live effects our well-being directly. Of course, there are tons of other reasons you should slow down and savor your meal. Digestions starts in the mouth. When you chew properly, you are giving your saliva a chance to break down your food, and make it more accessible to the stomach. The body also responds to your experience of the food by secreting the kinds of enzymes you need to digest it. Still think eating on the go is a good idea?

So back to GLP1. It turns out that my favorite hormone of the day also slows the emptying of food from the stomach into the intestine, helping you feel full and satiated, therefore preventing you from eating more! So besides helping to prevent all of those awful diabetic complications, GLP1 also helps you lose weight!

Well, if I haven't exhausted you, and you are hungry for more, here's another mind-body morsel (give me a break, sometimes bad puns are fun!). Epinephrine, better known as adrenaline also has some weight loss implications. Adrenaline is commonly known as the "fight or flight" hormone, because its what your body pumps out when you are trying to flee from danger (whether that be running from a bear, or trying not to fail an exam!). Adrenaline's effects are to increase your heart rate, increase sweating, making you nervous AND (drum-roll) excessive hunger! We know this, because when people are hypoglycemic(have low blood sugar), they have what are called "adrenergic symptoms" or symptoms that are because of adrenaline. These include all of the above. The excessive hunger in this case is your body responding to a lack of fuel. However, when the adrenaline in your system is because you are freaking out about a deadline, the effect on your body is still the same! Thats why some people eat when they are stressed. This is speculation on my part (Sorry, I wish I had the time to check this out!) but I would posit that its also why you get hungry after a meal of refined carbohydrates - like white bread, candy or sugary drinks. You generate a pretty big insulin response because your body is scrambling to catch up with the heavy load of carbs thats coming into the blood stream very quickly. This then causes you to crash and become hypoglycemic, and presto! You've got more adrenaline in your system and you are hungry all over again!

So in conclusion, next time you sit down to eat, make sure you savor your food. Its one of the biggest pleasures of life anyway, so you might as well enjoy it!