A disrupted oral microbiome caused by a high sodium diet usually leads to cavities and gum disease. Sodium can disrupt your intestinal microbiome and cause intestinal permeability (aka a leaky gut). This may lead, not only to chronic intestinal inflammation, but systemic as well.
The gut microbiome also helps to regulate your blood pressure. Therefore, a disrupted microbiome resulting from a high sodium diet may have a negative effect on your blood pressure. You see, gut bacteria produce certain chemicals that can normalize and or keep blood pressure normal. For more on dietary sodium.
● Fructose is fruit sugar and is also part of the following: honey (21-43% fructose), maple syrup (50% fructose), agave syrup (70-90% fructose), white and brown table sugar (50% fructose), high-fructose corn syrup (55% fructose) and invert sugar syrup (50% fructose). Invert sugar syrup is an added ingredient in almost all syrups. Yet, for some strange reason, it is most often not listed as an ingredient.
Fructose is useless to the body and the cause of chronic and acute inflammation. The major sources of fructose in our daily diet are sugar-sweetened beverages, fruits, UPFs and QSR foods. You can indulge in dried or fresh fruits that are part of a main course at events like birthdays, weddings, holidays etc… – avoid between events. Do not eat dried or fresh fruits separately as a snack anytime.
To my knowledge, there are two food sources of sugar that are fructose free. They are corn sugar and brown rice syrup. Both are easily accessible online. All vegetables contain fructose, but in comparison to fruits, the amount is minimal. So, vegetables are okay anytime.
Fructose can only be broken down and used by your liver cells. The breakdown of fructose stimulates the overproduction of purines by the liver cells. To dispose of excess purine molecules, liver cells will break down the purines to produce a waste product called uric acid (UA). Uric acid is then released into your bloodstream to be filtered by the kidneys and excreted in the urine.
Uric acid is released by the liver into your blood in controlled amounts. The problem starts when that controlled amount gets out of control due to excess fructose consumption. Fructose starts a chain reaction in your liver that ends in the buildup of high levels of UA in your blood.
Now, low levels of UA in your blood isn’t a bad thing. Uric acid is a powerful antioxidant and a scavenger of free radicals in our body. Free radicals cause the body to prematurely age.
High levels of uric acid in the blood produce the formation of needle-shaped crystals called urate crystals. These crystals will deposit in your joints and cause inflammation.
Urate crystals can also deposit in your cornea, sclera and iris of your eyes. Astigmatism (an abnormally shaped cornea) is the cause of nearsightedness and farsightedness. Whether in or on your joints or eyes, urate crystal may form deposits (tophi) that can cause deformities and make you susceptible to disease.
Fructose is increasingly recognized as the raw material (energy source) needed by cancer cells to generate cellular energy, via glycolysis (breakdown of simple sugars). Cancer cells can convert glucose into fructose through intra- and extracellular polyol pathways. Polyol – is a sugar alcohol, known to the average person as an artificial sweetener.
Pathway – is the Life Science Industries (LSI) uninformative way of saying; glucose to fructose is a two-step process, with the go between being a polyol – enough said! After that, fructose enters the cancer cell and produces excessive metabolites through glycolysis. Metabolites are substances made and or used when cancer cells breakdown fructose for energy via glycolysis.
The glycolysis of fructose is needed for cancer cell proliferation. Fructose is an energy source that will not be allowed to enter your normal cells. Thus, it becomes an abundant and ever-present source of energy for cancer cells. That said, restraining yourself from eating fructose will serve to drastically suppress it as a source of energy for glycolysis in cancer cells.