7 Facts About Simple vs Complex Carbs - Have You Been Lied To?

Simple versus complex carbs. It should be a really simple issue but some people

just make it so complex so there's sugar and there's starch and there's fibers and

there's complex carbs so who do you listen to? Today we're going to cover all

the basics so that you get a crystal clear picture so that you understand

everything and the next time someone tries to give you some misinformation

then you won't be misled because you know how it works coming right up I'm

Dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if you

want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works

make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss

anything. So what is a carbohydrate? It is something made from carbon that is

hydrated that means it's carbon molecules that they've added water to so

if you take carbon dioxide co2 and you combine it with water that's what a

plant does and then you add some sunlight there's a process called

photosynthesis that will turn that water and that carbon dioxide into

carbohydrates and oxygen beautiful and then animals like yourself and myself

take the carbohydrates take the sugar and the starch and we use oxygen to burn

to combust that carbohydrate and we turn it into energy and we breathe out carbon

dioxide and water so it's a beautiful reaction it runs flawlessly in both

directions and it serves both plants and animals incredibly ingenious so the

thing to understand about that is that all carbohydrates are sugar this is the

formula for a sugar molecule and it is what makes up all plants plants can have

a tiny bit of protein they can a tiny bit of fat like a percent or a

few percent but the vast majority of the plant is a carbohydrate and it doesn't

matter if you call it sugar or starch or fiber it's all the same stuff that is

just put together differently but a plant is sugar the second thing that we

need to understand is that plants store energy they store their mass their bulk

as carbohydrates so a tree the wood it is carbohydrate is just sugar molecules

linked together in a certain way to make wood vegetables plants fruits grass its

leaves it's all the same stuff and the plant stores everything as a

carbohydrate humans on the other hand we can't store much carbohydrate we can

take the carbohydrate we can convert it into fat which is the preferred the

effective the efficient long term storage form of energy for humans so

that's the difference they make stuff for us we make stuff for them they store

carbohydrate we store fat and to some degree protein but very little

carbohydrate then the third thing to understand is that all these sugar

molecules they are put together in different ways they have different

configurations and that determines their properties so the basic form when nature

makes a carbohydrate of this formula c6h12o6 it puts it together in a ring so

there's six carbons and it makes a six carbon ring that's the basic formula for

all carbohydrate and in its simplest form in a single ring we call that

glucose or fructose or galactose those are the three basic rings and those are

the fundamental indivisible unit of carbohydrate it can be broken down

further when it's burn when it's metabolized but that's

the basic unit that's called a mono saccharide mono meaning single it's a

simple sugar it's small enough to be absorbed directly into the bloodstream

when you eat a food that has glucose or fructose or galactose we don't need any

enzymes we don't need to break it down further it's already in its basic

formula it's ready to go straight into the bloodstream then if we take two of

these basic units and we put them together as a pair it's called a

disaccharide and even though that's still a simple

sugar like if we combine glucose and fructose together it makes sucrose

that's table sugar so it's still a simple sugar but it's too big to be

absorbed directly into the bloodstream so we have to use an enzyme to split it

up and that takes a few seconds it's a little bit of delay between breaking it

down and absorbing it and glucose is of course this six carbon ring fructose is

a five carbon ring not that it matters tremendously but it's a little bit

different and it has that six carbon hanging off by a thread so to speak and

because of that it's the only the liver that can metabolize only the liver can

deal with fructose whereas every cell in the body can deal with glucose only the

liver can deal with fructose and we've talked about the ramifications of that

in other videos like fatty liver and insulin resistance and so forth so you

can look up videos on those topics as mammals the first thing we were exposed

to was lactose that's in milk and Mother's Milk and that has one piece

glucose and one piece one unit galactose and while we're kids we have plenty of

lacked lactase enzyme to break that down as we age especially certain populations

like Asians tend to lose their ability to break down that

lactose very efficiently they can do well with yogurt because that already

has some of those enzymes in there if we have two glucose molecules side by side

we take two of the same thing and just hook them together

it's called maltose so these are disaccharides we need an enzyme to break

them down but there's still simple sugars now the next step would be to

link multiple units of glucose and now we usually don't differentiate we don't

call them three or four or five we just say many and it's called a poly

saccharide and there's different forms of polysaccharides but typically nature

links them up in three different ways either it puts them together in a

straight chain and then it's called amylose or we put it together in a

branched chain it's like a tree it can diverge and then it's called amylopectin

most of the bulk of starch is a amylopectin so amylose and amylopectin is

starch most of it occurs in the form of amylopectin a little bit in the form of

amylose and at first it looks like the amylose would be simpler that it would

be faster to break down because you can just chop off these things one by one

but it turns out that amylopectin is the one that's easier to chop up that

because it's branched it has a surface larger surface area it's not as tightly

packed and when the body goes to break it up the amylopectin gets gets

chopped off very very quickly the third way is to link the same glucose

molecules the same basic six carbon ring but if we twist it around instead of

putting them side-by-side we twist one of them

then it's called a beta link and that's the fourth thing to understand that we

can link them together in different units different numbers of units but

then there's two different bonds two different links if it's called an alpha

link if it's side-by-side then humans have the enzyme to break it down it's

called amylase and then it becomes food and starches or food if it's twisted

then it's called a beta link and humans do not have the enzymes to break it down

most mammals can't consume fiber can't utilize can't metabolize fiber some

animals like cows can do it indirectly because they have four stomachs that are

host to specific bacteria that can break down this beta link so that's why they

can eat grass and sawdust and things like that and turn it into energy so

fiber can be broken down by bacteria because it has a beta link fiber cannot

be broken down by humans we can never ever break down a single bond we can't

use a single molecule that's why even though this is glucose even though it's

sugar linked together we can't use it it never enters the bloodstream it has zero

impact on blood sugar and that's why cellulose also known as fiber just

provides bulk and it's a good thing it provides it improves the motility it

gives a bulk to our waste the fifth thing that we have to understand is

glycemic index and this is where a lot of people are confused they talk about

sugar is bad complex carbs are good and it's not that simple because at first it

looks like these complex carbs the starches so amylose can be hundreds or

thousands of units linked together in a long long long long chain so it seems

like it would take a long time to chop up

that chain but that's not the case it goes pretty quick amylopectin can be ten

thousands or even a hundred thousand units but it's really fluffy and the

enzyme can get at it from many many different direction and the enzyme is

really fast and we have amylase there's something called salivary amylase

meaning most of the amylase in the body you make in the mouth so that you can

start breaking this down instantly the moment to take a bite of something

starchy then you start breaking it down into its smaller components so the

longer you hold something starchy in the mouth the more you break that break it

down into sugar and it increases the sweetness of the food the longer you

keep it in the mouth and this is why the glycemic index the the speed with which

the food gets into the bloodstream as sugar and increase its blood sugar is

about the same for table sugar and for bread it varies a little bit depending

on how coarsely ground the flour is and how much fiber is in there but pretty

much wheat bread and table sugar have the same glycemic index they're both

around seventy and officially a high glycemic index would be everything over

seventy and a medium would be 55 to 70 and a low glycemic index would be less

than 55 but that's a very distorted scale that's based on the assumption

that the only thing humans can eat a lot of is grain that's based on the food

pyramid that we have to eat 8 to 11 servings of grain and starches every day

but of course that's why we have this diabetes and obesity epidemic the the

scale should not be low below below 55 in my opinion if we abandon the idea

that we have to our food on grain and starches and sugar

then I think a healthier scale would be high would be anything above 40 which

means pretty much every grain there is would be a high glycemic index which is

really what how it works a low glycemic index would be something below 10 but of

course that would exclude every form of grain and starch because there's nothing

that gets down there the glycemic index does not change much between

carbohydrates there's slight differences but pretty much all carbohydrates all

sugars all carbohydrates all starches get chopped into sugar within minutes so

a complex carb is not very different it's just minutes away from becoming

sugar and that's why the glycemic index is not very different for between

carbohydrates the sixth thing we have to understand is after this glycemic index

when we eat high glycemic food then that increases the blood sugar get absorbed

quickly in the bloodstream blood sugar goes up we have a very limited ability

to use the blood sugar and to store the blood sugar so here's what happens in

the bloodstream your body wants somewhere between 80 to a hundred

milligrams of glucose if you just had a meal you might allow it up to 120 but it

should be within a very narrow range and in a previous video I said that's

equivalent about a teaspoon or five grams of sugar and a very clever viewer

pointed out to me that since the blood is about 40% solid meaning red blood

cells and the sugar is dissolved in the liquid portion it's actually even less

than that so the circulating portion of blood sugar is more like 3 grams just

over half a teaspoon and anything above that that we can't use in the next few

minutes has to be moved out the bloodstream and into the cell and

that's what insulin does so insulin takes all the excess and that's the red

portion here so we want to keep things in the middle range here and if we eat

mostly fat and protein and leafy greens then we will stay in that range once we

start eating sugar and carbs and starches and breads and tubers and

processed food a blood sugar Rises very quickly anything above that level is an

emergency it is toxic to the body the body will ring its alarm bells and it

will start to get rid it would do everything it can to get that blood

sugar out of the blood and into the cells and now the cells are happy to

take some of it but it can only take so much and if we ate once or twice a day

then we could put some of the carbohydrates in storage we can store it

as glycogen and then when we don't eat for a while if we don't eat for a half a

day or a day or even two then we will pull out the glycogen again and use it

and we get ready for the next meal but ever since humans discovered grain

started cultivating grain and started making it available at all times of the

day and humans started eating three times a day with snacks on top now we

push the blood sugar into the cell and the cell can use some of it but before

it had a chance to use it up and to burn through that glycogen here comes another

batch and when we eat three to six times a day

the cell never has a chance and it starts to get too much and the only

thing it can do at this point is to convert that glycogen into fat that's

what insulin does it's a storage hormone and like I said plants are they store

everything as carbohydrate humans can't do that we can burn carbohydrates but we

can only store fat and if we eat carbohydrates too frequently then we

have to convert the excess to fat and we never get a chance

to retrieve it we never get a chance to use it for energy because there's always

more stuff coming and the seventh fact you need to know is have a rough idea of

what foods have carbohydrates so based on what we talked about you already

understand that animal foods because animals can't store carbohydrate if you

eat animals food you're not getting any carbohydrates fat and meat oils even if

they're there plant oils like avocado oil or coconut oil or extra virgin olive

oil they only have the fat portions so there's no carbohydrate in that but meat

and fatty meat and organ meats they have and and cheese they are naturally free

of of carbohydrates then there's things that are low in carbohydrates and those

are things like dairy. Milk if you drink a lot of milk that has a quite a bit of

lactose but if you just have like a half a cup or a cup then it still considered

a low carbohydrate non starchy vegetables are very very good because

they have no starch the plant the leafy green is still a plant it's still almost

a hundred percent carbohydrate but it only has like one or two percent of

glucose fructose and sucrose in it that's why it doesn't taste very sweet

if you juice it it tastes a little bit sweet that's the sugar in there but most

of what the plant is is fiber leafy greens are mostly fiber and

therefore you're only getting a trickle of sugar you could eat eat a mountain of

green leafy vegetables and only get like a teaspoon of sugar so it's it's there's

a very small amount and it's absorbed very very slowly in the medium carb

category we have things like fruit fruit tastes sweet so it has more sugar

then leafy greens and non starchy vegetables and berries like raspberry

blueberry strawberry blackberry they are lower in sugar whereas tropical fruits

like banana and pineapple and mango are higher in sugar and then we have all the

high carbohydrate foods those are things like grains and tubers potato sweet

potato rutabaga etc and any food that has been processed to remove fiber and

to concentrate the sugar so these are foods that the majority of the food is

starch or sugar and like we said it makes really very little difference if

it's pure sugar or pure starch because the starch is only minutes away from

being chopped into sugar and now we know that it's all the same stuff it's all

just little rings of sugar that can be hooked up in sets of two or three or

five or ten thousand but the end result is the same it's all sugar and the more

frequently you eat the less of it you can tolerate because you tend to

increase blood sugar you store it and you never get a chance to burn through

it if you have developed insulin resistance now you have a lesser

tolerance so now you need to back off both on the amount of carbohydrates and

the frequency of the meals so now you know better about carbohydrates when

someone tries to tell you that table sugar doesn't have fructose in it you

know better when someone tries to tell you that bread is okay because it's a

complex carbohydrate that pasta is good for you because it's a complex

carbohydrate now you know better if you want to learn more about exercise and

insulin resistance and diabetes and weight loss and stress we have a whole

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keep this information coming your way I'll see you in the next video thanks

for watching