Improving your nutrition

One of the nutritionally linked problems is carbohydrate sensitivity. A friend, Carolyn Berdanier, coined the phrase. It goes like this. The small intestine sends an extra signal to the pancreas that there is too much glucose coming, so gobs of insulin are secreted. The excess insulin produces extra lipids and reduces the high affinity insulin receptors, the latter which increases the need for insulin. The high blood lipids cause a slow accumulation of lipids (and other lesions) in the arteries of the heart and in some cases, the kidneys.

Another carbohydrate-related problem has to do with the digestion of starch. Think of starch as a string on which are beads of glucoses. This kind of straight chain starch is called amylose. Another kind of starch has branches of glucoses linked together off the straight chain. This is called amylo pectin. (Stay with me, we are almost there).

Starch is digested by an enzyme called amylase. Amylase attaches to the end of a glucose chain. The more branched a starch molecule is the more amylases can attach producing more glucose molecules per unit time. Large amounts of glucose damages the arterial walls by crosslinking proteins. In the case of amylose (or less branched starch), more of the starch goes to the large intestine where it is treated like fiber and chewed up by bacteria.

So, if we can slow the digestion of starch, we can slow the glucose inflow.

How do we do that?

One way to do that is by treating potatoes ( a branched chain starch source) by cooking it 12 minutes in the Instant Pot. Instant Pot is not a Colorado cigarette, but a high pressure cooker.

Take 4 potatoes, add 1 cup water and cook for 12 minutes at high pressure. Release the pressure, let the potatoes cool and put them in the refrigerator for several hours. Warm to serve. This treatment produces more straight chain amylose.