Fructose

But it's all to do with this vicious cycle between insulin and insulin resistance.

Fructose, carbohydrates, wheat, they all play into the high insulin diet that we all eat.

And that's one of the reasons that we're getting the obesity crisis, the diabetes crisis, is because we have a very high insulin sort of a diet.

Processing is what's really bad because it strips out the fat and strips out the fiber.

And the three most prominent sugars start with the two prominent monosaccharides, and that is glucose and fructose.

Glucose is in nearly every fruit and vegetable we consume.

Fructose is also in every fruit, and in tiny, tiny amounts, and in vegetable.

Together, they combine to make the third most prominent naturally occurring sugar, sucrose.

Sucrose is also in nearly every fruit, but in smaller quantities than fructose and glucose, and it's in sugarcane and sugar beets.

Lactates go up in subjects consuming fructose.

But when all those pathways are saturated, then the fat-making pathway is upregulated, and that's where we get the problem.

Fructose then gets turned into fatty acids that are incorporated into triglycerides, and those triglycerides have two major fates.

And the thing with fructose is as well, when you look at it biochemically, we've got to look at some of the things that it converts into.

So first one, let's look at fru-1,6-bisphosphate.

What's the literature on that currently? Well, okay, this is animal studies so far, but this relates to the Warburg effect in cancer oncology where you go, okay, Fructose or fru-1,6-bisphosphate couples glycolytic flux and therefore allows for oncogenesis via the RAS or MAPK pathway.

And you go, ah, so this is literally Otto Warburg's work all over again, but with fructose this time, not just glucose, exogenous carbohydrates like glucose.

So you go, wow, okay.

It was really interesting where she was actually gathering together some disparate strands of knowledge in one respect and Like lactose intolerance was known.

Fructose was known as a bit of a culprit as well from a food perspective.

And there's just general awareness about things like onions and garlic and some of those carbohydrates challenge people's digestive system.

And so...

I think that's always a good idea.

Here specifically, they were very worried about Fructose and specifically the very modified form of fructose that is often used to sweeten foods because it's so powerfully.

And this is called high fructose corn syrup.

So I would be careful about that.

I'm your host, Casey Ruff, and today we have another amazing guest to introduce to you now.

Chris Mearns is the founder of Live3Health and the creator of the Fructose Model, a systems-based approach focused on how fructose metabolism may influence cellular energetics and contribute to chronic metabolic dysfunction.

He is a primary author involved in the development of scientific literature advancing a broader model of metabolic health.

His work integrates findings across biochemistry, physiology, and clinical research, with particular attention to fructokinase activity, uric acid signaling, mitochondrial function, and cellular energy dynamics.

It also explores how this perspective may help reconcile existing models of metabolism while connecting survival pathways to the progression of chronic disease.

Chris is known for bridging the gap between scientific research and real-world application.

Through podcast appearances and on his YouTube channel, which is at The Fructose Model, he translates complex metabolic science into clear, usable insights for both general audiences and health professionals.

Chris Mearns, what an absolute honor it is to welcome you to Balanced Body Radio.

It's primarily fuel.

Fructose is sending this signal primarily.

And so it kind of makes sense why you would pair them together in nature, where if you would have a fuel and a conserving signal delivered along with it, it would help the organism to survive longer, right? It's like...

Hey, I've got fuel and I want to hang on to that.

Now it's maybe important to think about how fructose is influencing the brain.

So let's wheel it back.

Fructose does not seem to cross the blood-brain barrier, but there's fructose in the brain.

That's been very well studied.

Fruct- uh, but let me say a few more things, though.

Fructose also increases the secretion of apolipoprotein B containing VLDL from the liver.

So we've already gone past the chylomicrons, remember? That...

Why, why and how that occurs is essentially a bypass of mitochondrial control over glycolysis, because fructose does not move through glycolysis like just glucose does, obviously.

Fructose is metabolized via fructolysis.

I'll give you a little pathway soon.

Little because it's basically just a branch point over major carbohydrate metabolism.