This week: weight loss, off work with stress, adrenals, hormones, grain-free alcohol options and more. Enjoy x
Struggling To Lose Weight? How Much Fruit Are You Having?
A recent article reminded me that high fructose corn syrup – endemic in the US, but in foodstuffs here too, especially fizzy drinks – is one of the key reasons for weight gain. HFCS is a mix actually between fructose and glucose and is also called isoglucose and glucose-fructose syrup.
It got me thinking about fruit consumption generally. I eat a lot myself on a restricted diet and, today, I was doing someone’s case review whose weight gain was no doubt carb related.
Cruelly, we become addicted to the sweet stuff:
It has been postulated that there is an intracellular alarm signal, alerting an organism that food may becoming scarce, and that entering a “safety mode” of fat storage is desirable. It seems very likely that fructose is that signal, leading to a cascade of cellular responses which would enhance survival in lean times.
Fructose stimulates cravings and drives foraging behaviors, ensuring as much consumption as possible.
No wonder we crave it!
Once you’ve had some sweet fruit or a soft drink like Coke etc with high fructose syrup in it (not that I have that myself), you can find yourself wanting more not long after. I do have a sweet tooth myself and enjoy my fruit throughout the day. But I am probably eating more of it than I should, maybe because I need more calories as I don’t absorb well.
Glucose and fructose are metabolised differently in the body. Glucose is metabolised quickly via the bloodstream for energy, whereas fructose is metabolised through the liver and stored as fat. I know which one I’d want more of! This piece explains a bit more:
Fructose is handled by the body in a different way to glucose as it is metabolised in the liver. As a result, blood sugar (glucose) levels do not rise as rapidly after fructose consumption compared to other simple sugars.
However, when you eat too much fructose the liver cannot process it fast enough and instead, starts to make fats that are carried in the blood and and stored as body fat. Studies have shown that the consumption of large amounts of fructose may lead to increased appetite by impairing the body’s ability to use insulin and to suppress circulating ghrelin (the appetite-stimulating hormone).
While most diabetics cannot tolerate sucrose, most can tolerate moderate amounts of fruit and fructose without loss of blood sugar control.
Look at how sugar intake has increased in the last few hundred years (at least in the US, but I wouldn’t think the UK is that far behind):
Given that sugar intake has increasedfrom about 4 pounds (per person per year) in 1750 to 160 pounds, and that fructose (the major component of high fructose corn syrup) has become something of a staple in the American diet, the metabolic pathways which might have once spared us from extinction may now be contributing to extensive morbidity and mortality.
That’s enormous, isn’t it?
So, should we be cutting down on fruit? Not necessarily. Happily, whole fruit comes with pectins and other fibres that bind the fructose and glucose so we don’t get such a massive insulin spike from it (the glucose part anyway). And that’s a good reminder why we should be eating whole foods rather than biscuits, cake, drinks and the like. Generally, if we eat fruit or sweet things with fibre and/or protein, it will not be absorbed quite so fast. That said, fructose is metabolised in the liver, differently to other sugars as we’ve said above, so you don’t want to go too mad, even with whole fruit – 2 or 3 portions a day maybe?
So, what about the glucose and fructose content of various fruits and sugar types?
I found this list that might be handy. How Much Sugar Is in Your Fruit?
People think honey is a ‘natural’ sugar, which it is, but it contains about 40% fructose. However, it is also a lot sweeter, so you can get away with using a lot less. Again, have it with fibre and protein, eg. I make a fruit ‘crumble’ out of skin-on apples and berries then sprinkle it with ground nuts and seeds. If it’s too tart, I’ll use a little honey. Note that agave syrup is very high fructose, by the way, look at this:
The reality is that most added sugars are composed of glucose and fructose in varying ratios. For example, sucrose (common table sugar) is 50% glucose and 50% fructose; the most common form of HFCS (which is produced from corn starch through industrial processing) contains 45% glucose and 55% fructose; and some types of agave nectar contain up to 90% fructose and 10% glucose.
Hope that helps. If you’re trying to lose weight, choose low GL foods as per the Belly Fat book and watch the amount of sugar, especially fructose, you are consuming.
Quote of the Week: sick leave, burnout and stress
“A healthy population is good for business and preventing long-term sickness is key to individual wellbeing, organisational growth, and the economic wellbeing of the country”.
“Mental illness accounts for 50% of all sick leave cases at an estimated cost to UK businesses of around £56 billion a year. At the individual level, 88% of UK employees have experienced burnout in their careers. This creates a work culture that perpetuates absenteeism, affects productivity, and leads to an economy where 17.1 million working days are lost anxiety, stress, and depression.
Whoa. That is enormous – 50% of all sick leave cases are mental health/burnout. Just this week I had a case of that – a chap signed off sick with anxiety and stress. How sad. For him. But also for the workplace, his employers, the country, the economy.
What do we do about it? Obviously, there’s a huge plethora of actions that could and should be taken. From my functional medicine perspective, I would wonder what the biochemistry might be behind it. For example, are people’s adrenals strong enough to cope? Are hormone drops not helping? I bet both of those are pretty high up the list and would probably be where I’d start investigating to see if I could help.
Adrenals: a clue might be just not feeling like you are coping with everyday life as much as you were and you’ve no idea what changed or why that’s happened. I hear that often. Are you waking up anxious in the night or first thing, mind whirring? Or do you struggle to get up/wake up? Are you feeling depressed, flat or craving sugar/caffeine mid-afternoon, the classic adrenal drop time? Check the Adrenal Fatigue factsheet out for more on this. It can be pretty easily tested and solved, trust me.
Quick tip: to start supporting your adrenals, consider this kind of thing. The protocol in the Adrenal Plan is a lot more comprehensive, but it’s a good base. If you can’t sleep well, this kind of thing might be useful too.
Obviously, when I’m suggesting stuff, you are not my patient and I don’t have your full case, so please do discuss this with your chosen health professionals. These are ideas to start you off.
Hormones: Not unrelated to adrenals is the issue of hormones dropping. In men, testosterone starts to drop from about 35 – an insidious but significant slow drop in stamina, recovery and coping ability. Irritability, anger and becoming more tearful or emotional shows up as oestrogen dominance sets in because there’s no longer enough testosterone to offset it. A big clue is poorer recovery after doing stuff like exercise or even just day to day activity. It is not ‘normal’ as you get older; it’s a hormone drop.
Quick tip: test free testosterone levels, not total, which doesn’t give you a proper picture. Ask your GP or men’s health tests are here if you need me.
Adrenals are involved in the hormone issue too because, as we age and testes and ovaries start to wane, the adrenals take over much of our hormone production. If your adrenals are knackered, as above, they won’t produce enough. So, part of restoring hormone levels is to support your adrenal function, do you see?
In women, oestrogen falls off a cliff pretty much anywhere from around 45, sometimes earlier, sometimes later. I think mine started at around 40 and only started to level out at 56. Trust my body to do it for longer than usual!
There’s no gradual decline here. The most common symptom women look out for are hot flushes, and they often don’t realise that their new where-the-heck-did-that-come-from anxiety, fears and phobias are hormone related. I have seen it so much. And even I wasn’t ready for it myself! It’s quite shocking how much mood and brain function is affected, and it can go On. For. Years. It’s only when you start levelling out again that you realise what was going on. By that time, there has been a LOT of unnecessary suffering.
Quick tip: don’t just be fobbed off that ‘it’s your hormones’. Ask to be tested properly so that you can target specifically what you need to feel better. Men are tested automatically, given correct dosages of bioidentical TRT and monitored/dosage tweaked as needed. Women are hardly ever tested, are just given standard non-bioidentical HRT (which may not fit their actual hormone pattern and have more safety concerns), are not monitored and are left on it for years, often unnecessarily.
Honestly, it makes me spit.
Women’s health tests are here if you need me.
So, if you are feeling more stressed and anxious than you were, start by checking and correcting your adrenals and hormones. It’s not always – or in fact often – about neurotransmitters in my clinical experience. Of course, environment, relationships, money, sheer amount of work etc are going to be part of it, but don’t underestimate what could be affecting how you cope with whatever is going on biochemically.
I truly hope you find my Purehealth newsletters useful. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe here, like and share on your socials; it really helps others get life-changing info they may need x
TGF safe alcohol
Quick subscriber question today for you. G asks what can she drink that is grain and dairy free if she wants a treat or is going to an event?
For ages, I could only drink RO water, but happily now I can indulge if I want to :). I go for wine – grapes. Or cava/champagne, which is fermented in the bottle. Definitely not prosecco which has all sorts added to it. Or try potato vodka. Or 100% cactus tequila. Nom nom. I’ve not tried the latter two as I’m happy with my wine and sparkles. Any other options you can recommend?
And finally… following on from my piece last week about being hungry all the time, I came across this fab Japanese word: kuchisabishii, which means ‘lonely mouth.’ It’s for when you’re not hungry, but you eat because your mouth is lonely! Stress/comfort eating, something to do with your hands, that sort of thing. Susie Dent described it as “boredom eating, or the making of frequent visits to the fridge in the hope of finding something new to munch on.” Hands up who knows that feeling?! I often have lonely mouth! Fab new word. I shall try to get it into a sentence.
Talking of body parts (hey, great link, Micki!), I’ve hurt myself again! Honestly, I am starting to worry about negative energy or something in this new flat! We’ve been here 9 months and this is the fourth accident now. P falls off ladders, smashes hip and wrist, injures spine. I slip in the ensuite bathroom, skid across the floor into a wooden divider thing and break my toe. Then, I slip on the other bathroom tiles, fall out of the bath and karate chop the bath rack, fracturing more places in the same foot. Then today, we were moving a very heavy chest of drawers, which attacked my other foot and ripped the big toe nail almost off. Painful! Honestly, you can’t make it up. Meantime, any tips on almost-ripped off big toenails welcome please – never had that before, thankfully. Currently soaked in salt water, doused in teatree to stop infection and wrapped in gauze held together with gaffa tape! I am NOT best pleased.
I have done quite a lot on feng shui over the years as part of my interior design hobby, I even taught some workshops on it once – very fun. I will start to feng shui this flat or get someone in, I think! I do know the previous owners weren’t that happy here because of various issues. I need to maybe get that negative energy shifted. I’m not that much a believer of eg. sage smudge sticks, crystals and the like. But I will if I have to. It’s such a beautiful place and I’m not leaving it!
Of course, I had to look up any emotional meanings behind accidents on the feet – all about not feeling grounded or settled of course, but also not being able to move forward in life as you’d want to. They represent how we feel about the direction of our life path. This last one does in fact resonate as I have tons of ideas to take the clinic forward and do other stuff but feel this illness is holding me back from doing them. I’m sick of the restrictions, frankly. And I know many of you get that. I wish you didn’t. Big toe meaning was also interesting: represents a strong dislike of the direction in which something important is going. Breaking bones represents: wishing for a troubling situation to change but unable or unwilling to do anything to make the change happen.
Maybe hurting both feet, making it difficult to walk is a sign to just stop, settle and feel more grounded for now. After the last few years of rental and moving house turmoil, I can believe that! When I was a remedial massage specialist, I always used to ask people what the injury was trying to tell them if it kept happening or refused to heal, what was it stopping them doing or making them do more. Then take the hint. #takeownadviceforachange 😉
PS. I do know accidents happen in new places, you’ve just moved, getting used to places, doing DIY etc, but I do find the spiritual and emotional meanings quite interesting sometimes if the same things recur!
Flowers always cheer me up so I have been enjoying looking for something a bit different to soften the front door – blue plastic with stained glass, put in by the previous owners at HUGE (stupid?) cost. I’ve seen the receipt. So I daren’t change it. Yet. I like a wreath and made a foraged one for Winter, but I rather fancy a basket of flowers instead for Summer maybe. This kind of thing from Etsy, possibly, but with real flowers.
Dunelm does a nice cheap basket – you can always remove the artificial hydrangea, pop some eco florist foam, a tiny container with water or a florist frog in and add your own flowers.
Anyway, they have cheered me up no end. I’m off for lunch now – salad with lots of bits in usually. I vary the proteins round, mostly fish and nuts but today I have left over beef from Sunday dinner. I’ll share some pics of my salads next time for you, if I remember before eating it!
For more witterings from me, don’t forget to catch up on my more frequent little Notes here.
That’s it for this issue, folks!
I truly hope you find my Purehealth newsletters useful. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe here, like and share on your socials; it really helps others get life-changing info they may need x
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Issue 14, May 2025