Fructose & Sugar are the number one dietary problem for psoriasis.
Fructose (fruit sugar) is in many fruits and veggies. Table sugar (sucrose) is half fructose, half glucose. High fructose corn syrup and fructose crystals are usually above 70% fructose.
Your body can only handle small amounts of Fructose. After that it starts getting stored as fat and interfering with your metabolic signaling. Long term, this leads to metabolic syndrome and a host of health problems, one of which is flaring up psoriasis.
Here are the problems when over-consuming Fructose:
- It readily stores as fat in your liver, causing fatty liver
- It readily stores as fat in adipose tissue, causing body fat
- It blocks leptin hormone signaling, so you don't feel full
- Fatty liver and adipose tissue cause inflammation signaling, irritating your organs
- Excess adipose tissue sends additional hunger signaling, so you feel even more hungry
- It builds a tolerance in your dopamine pleasure signaling like a drug, so you feel less pleasure from increasing amounts
- It causes insulin resistance preventing glucose uptake into cells, leading to high blood sugar and pre-diabetes
- It causes glucose intolerance, so that high blood sugar causes increased inflammation
- Eventually it leads to full blown metabolic syndrome, and a host of the diseases of civilization
Once fructose causes excess stored fat and glucose intolerance, then glucose carbs also become a problem. Then there is constant inflammation keeping the psoriasis irritated, and eating glucose-carbs or liver glucose production can cause a big psoriasis flare-up. This is a situation that takes several months of strict low-carb diet and daily metabolic exercise to reverse.
Fructose does not raise your blood sugar like glucose. It metabolizes more similarly to a fat, but it's not stable, like most fats. Your body can only handle small amounts of fructose before it starts storing it as fat, in a sort of emergency procedure. Here is how fructose metabolism goes:
- It goes straight to your liver
- First it's converted to fill your liver glycogen (stored glucose)
- Then it is metabolized for energy
- Some stores as liver triglyceride vacuoles (liver fat)
- Excess is stored in adipose tissue (body fat)
It stores as fat like no other nutrient. This may have been helpful to ancient people for storing fat before the winter. But it is not useful to modern people trying to avoid body fat and and metabolic problems.
The only good time to eat fructose is if you want to restore your liver glycogen quickly after cardio, to recover faster. If you eat more than you can store as liver glycogen, then it starts storing as fat and interfering with metabolic signaling.
Fructose inside raw fruits and veggies doesn't get to your liver quite as fast as fructose syrup dissolved in a drink. The glycemic index measures glucose raising your blood sugar, but fructose has a similar slowdown is its locked up in dietary fibre or cell walls. Sweet drinks are the most harmful source of fructose, and it is deceptive how much they contain.
Nutrition labels do not tell you how much fructose is in what your eating. It says ''sugars'' which could be made of any combination of the 3 dietary simple sugars:
- Fructose (fruit sugar)
- Glucose (starch sugar / blood sugar)
- Galactose (milk sugar)
''Sugars'' on a nutrition label are generally are at least 50% fructose—if it's not milk (glucose + galactose molecule, lactose) or malt (glucose + glucose molecule). All the other carbs that are not fiber, are generally larger glucose structures, such as starches. You have to research food online to see how much fructose you are getting.
I had pre-diabetes with glucose intolerance, which took me six months to reverse. I avoid most fructose in my diet: no sweets or sugary drinks, very limited sweet fruit, and moderated amounts of lower fructose fruits and veggies.
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