Do We Need Carbs To Survive? - Dr Ekberg

Do we need carbs to survive? Coming right up. I am Dr. Ekberg with Wellness

For Life and if you'd like to truly master health by understanding how the

body really works make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell

so that you don't miss anything one of the most common questions that I get is

how much carbs do I need don't we have to eat carbs don't we need carbohydrates

for blood sugar doesn't the brain need glucose and sugar to function the answer

to all those questions is no we don't the simplest way of answering that is to

say that there are essential amino acids there are essential fatty acids but

there are no essential carbohydrates so we need amino acids to make proteins

we need essential fatty acids for membranes and hormone precursors but

carbs we can do without there is no essential carbohydrate so

that's the short answer but then don't we need carbohydrates for

energy and again the answer is no the preferred source of fuel for energy is

actually fat most of the body parts run best on fat but what about the brain

doesn't the brain have to have glucose for blood sugar yes the brain uses some

glucose but high blood sugar is actually very dangerous it's very toxic to the

brain and that's why the body is so concerned with getting rid of it with

insulin so anytime the blood sugar gets too high the body pumps out a ton of

insulin to get the blood sugar down because high blood sugar makes the brain

degenerate faster so the brain prefers really really stable blood sugar and if

you cut back on the carbs significantly the body switches to another fuel source

called ketones and all of us actually make a little bit

Ketones especially in the morning when we haven't eaten when we fasted all

night so all of us know how to use ketones in the brain and if you get on

to a ketogenic diet you don't have to get very far into ketosis a very

moderate level of nutritional ketosis actually means your brain is burning

more than 50% of the fuel from ketones rather than glucose so the brain also

has alternative fuel sources and whatever little glucose that it needs

that it can't get from ketones the body can very readily make from other sources

primarily protein so there is absolutely no need to have carbohydrates in the

diet for survival another important organ we know is the heart it's a muscle

and it's preferred source of fuel it runs almost exclusively on fat and

saturated fat at that so if you don't eat enough fat then your body has to

make the saturated fat and just has to go through that extra motion your

muscles you've probably heard that the best way to burn fat is to do low

intensity exercise such as walking because when you keep your heart rate

below 120 and you're doing truly aerobic exercise meaning you don't pant and you

can keep a regular conversation going then you're burning mostly fat for fuel

so under normal circumstances fat is the preferred fuel for almost every organ in

the body including the brain so even if you don't have to have carbohydrates

that doesn't mean that you can never have any we just want to understand

which carbohydrates are a little bit better and which ones are quite a bit

worse and the reason that you're white might want to eat some carbs is not that

you need them for energy or for any fuel purpose it's that some carbohydrates

such as vegetables contain a lot of benefit

so vitamins and minerals and fiber and we get them in the best possible form

there in the vegetables they're presented to us in a form that our body

can use the best so vegetables even if you're on a low-carb diet you can eat

unlimited amounts of green leafy vegetables and water rich vegetables

then once you want to stay away from are the ones that start getting more starchy

like beans and legumes and corns and the ones that you really want to stay away

from are the grains and refined starches especially white table sugar which is

the worst of all because it has absolutely no nutritional value all it

does is it raises your blood sugar and your body has to fight to get rid of it

basically so vegetables are a great food source

because they contain a very high nutritive value for the amount of energy

that they provide and the opposite holds true the other end of the spectrum is

sugar that has no nutritive value and bread and grains that have very very

slight nutrition value and of course in this country we have a problem with that

because a very significant portion of the food consumed is white sugar and

white flour as a matter of fact if you take white sugar white flour and

processed vegetable oils that all three are devoid or very very low in nutrients

they make up about 70% of all the calories consumed in this country so

from that perspective if you wanted to give an award to the absolute worst food

then I would have to say that'd be the donut so eat some carbs focus on the

vegetables and eat overall a very low amount of carbs they are not essential

we do not need them for survive some carbs have a good nutritional value

others you want to stay away from if you enjoy this kind of content please share

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way thanks for watching