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