White flour contains diabetes-causing alloxan

[firefox]

The government will not warn people of the mercury in their mouth or the flouride and chlorine in their water, or the sugar in their diet. And now nobody wants to talk about white flour being bad for you. This comes from a June 2nd article at http://www.newstarget.com/008191.html

You may want to think twice before eating your next sandwich on white bread. Studies show that alloxan, the chemical that makes white flour look "clean" and "beautiful," destroys the beta cells of the pancreas. That's right; you may be devastating your pancreas and putting yourself at risk for diabetes, all for the sake of eating "beautiful" flour. Is it worth it?

Scientists have known of the alloxan-diabetes connection for years; in fact, researchers who are studying diabetes commonly use the chemical to induce the disorder in lab animals. In the research sense, giving alloxan to an animal is similar to injecting that animal with a deadly virus, as both alloxan and the virus are being used specifically to cause illness. Every day, consumers ingest foods made with alloxan-contaminated flour. Would they just as willingly consume foods tainted with a deadly virus? Unless they had a death wish, they probably would not. Unfortunately, most consumers are unaware of alloxan and its potentially fatal link to diabetes because these facts are not well publicized by the food industry.

How does alloxan cause diabetes? According to Dr. Hari Sharma's Freedom from Disease, the uric acid derivative initiates free radical damage to DNA in the beta cells of the pancreas, causing the cells to malfunction and die. When these beta cells fail to operate normally, they no longer produce enough insulin, or in other words, they cause one variety of adult-onset type 2 diabetes. Alloxan's harmful effects on the pancreas are so severe that the Textbook of Natural Medicine calls the chemical "a potent beta-cell toxin." However, even though the toxic effect of alloxan is common scientific knowledge in the research community, the FDA still allows companies to use it when processing foods we ingest.

The FDA and the white flour industry could counter-argue that, if alloxan were to cause diabetes, a higher proportion of Americans would be diabetic. After all, more consumers consume white flour on a regular basis than are actually diabetic. This point is valid, but it does not disprove the alloxan-diabetes connection. While alloxan is one cause of adult-onset type 2 diabetes, it is of course not the only cause. As the Textbook of Natural Medicine states, "current theory suggests an hereditary beta-cell predisposition to injury coupled with some defect in tissue regeneration capacity" may be a key cause. For alloxan to cause injury to an individual's beta cells, the individual must have the genetic susceptibility to injury. This is similar to the connection between high-cholesterol foods and heart disease. Eating high-cholesterol foods causes heart disease, especially in people who have family histories of heart disease. The link between alloxan and diabetes is as clear and solid as the link between cholesterol and heart disease. continues on page 2 ->

[gristy]

1. A very basic fact is wrong in this article

...causing the cells to malfunction and die. When these beta cells fail to operate normally, they no longer produce enough insulin, or in other words, they cause one variety of adult-onset type 2 diabetes.

When enough beta cells die, for whatever reason, type I diabetes is the result, not type II.

[MsTryska]

4. I'm not sure that that's a wrong fact, tho.....

I mean the article says "when these beta cells failt to operate normally" they no longer produce enough insulin.


that's about right.

[Benhurst]

2. Thanks for this post.

:hi:

[Ian David]

3. The link between cholesterol and heart disease may be getting less clear

But please do NOT use this as a reason to stop eating a low-cholesterol diet.

More studies are needed.

Do not go changing your diet just yet.

High Cholesterol and Heart Disease (Suburban Myth 71)

Average LDL cholesterol in the U.S.: 131 mg/dl. Average LDL cholesterol for people with heart attacks: 134 mg/dl.*

Several people questioned my listing as a suburban myth the claim that too much animal fat and cholesterol in the diet promote atherosclerosis and heart attacks. To those who doubt that this is a myth I recommend you begin with a short article from the Skeptical Inquirer by Lewis Jones called "Risk Factor." Here is a sample:
http://www.csicop.org/sb/9503/risk.html

You might expect that any rational thinker would be able to distinguish between a correlation and a cause. Otherwise the possession of a driving license would have to count as a "risk factor" for a fatal car accident, and learning to swim would be a "risk factor" for drowning. Nevertheless, an entire health-alarm industry has fallen in love with the association game. The belief seems immune to disproof. James McCormick and Petr Skrabanek gathered together the results of all the major intervention trials, and published the resulting tables in the medical journal The Lancet (Oct. 8, 1988). The various interventions manipulated diet, smoking, blood pressure, exercise, and reducing weight, and covered 828,000 man-years. "This summary shows no experimental evidence to support the notion that intervention programs prevent coronary heart disease or reduce overall mortality. . . . Despite this considerable body of evidence, which shows no benefit for intervention, many have interpreted the results as supportive of their wishful thinking." This review, they say "provides no data to justify the time, energy, and money which are being devoted to this crusade."

One of the favorite villains right now is cholesterol. Most of the public had never heard of it before the present hit list was drawn up, but now many of them are altering their entire lifestyle and eating habits trying to avoid it. This is in spite of all the evidence showing the pointlessness of any such measures. The result produced by 115,176 man-years of observation was that "lowering cholesterol by drugs did no good and may have done harm." The same applies to altering cholesterol by diet. In Sweden, for example, coronary deaths in middle-aged men were rising while the risk factors were falling. In a number of countries, death rates for men and women are moving in opposite directions, in spite of the fact that they eat the same foods. In fact, most people with heart disease have a normal cholesterol level.

The Jones article will start you thinking about the issue. Next, I refer the reader to a lengthy article by science writer Gary Taubes that appeared in Science magazine in April 2002 ("The Soft Science of Dietary Fat"). Taubes will provide you with a bit of the history of how correlations have become the holy grail of research into cholesterol, fat, and heart disease.
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/taubes.html

A fine summary of the weaknesses of the cholesterol-to-coronary-heart-disease belief is given by Malcolm Kendrick, M.D. at http://www.thincs.org/Malcolm.choltheory.htm.

More:
http://skepdic.com/news/newsletter55.html#myth71

AGAIN, MORE STUDIES ARE NEEDED AND YOU SHOULD NOT CHANGE YOUR DIET BASED ON THE ABOVE INFORMATION WHICH IS IN NO WAY THE FINAL WORD YET.


See also:

* Low cholesterol? Don't brag yet ("...increasingly, doctors are identifying a group of people whose levels of LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, are low, but who still appear to be at increased risk for atherosclerosis, heart attack and stroke.")
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/may302005/snt103032005529.asp

* Ageing cells may lead to clogged arteries ("Cutting cholesterol from one's diet does not always prevent cardiovascular problems, says endocrinologist Clay Semenkovich of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. 'Probably the majority of people who have heart attacks have a normal cholesterol level,' he says. 'That suggests that there is something more going on.'")
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050523/full/050523-7.html

* High Cholesterol? With Children, It May Not Matter ("Even if testing were to find a cholesterol level of 240 or over, he adds, no diet study has ever demonstrated more than a negligible improvement in children's cholesterol levels.")
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/health/nutrition/31ibeg.html?

AGAIN, MORE STUDIES ARE NEEDED AND YOU SHOULD NOT CHANGE YOUR DIET BASED ON THE ABOVE INFORMATION WHICH IS IN NO WAY THE FINAL WORD YET.

[MsTryska]

5. This just goes back to a fact i learned to live with long ago.....

all white powders are dangerously addictive.

[Bread and Circus]

6. Actually, Type 2 diabetes is known to be a syndrome of insulin resistance

not one of insulin deficiency. Insulin levels can actually be raised in type 2 diabetics.

I do think that white flours and other overly processed carbs contribute to diabetes and obesity, but I am not sure it is by the mechanism the articles proposes.

[Vinca]

7. A baking tip from Type 2 Diabetesland -

substitute King Arthur White Wheat flour entirely in recipes that call for white flour and get very good results.