Article on how to increase our glucagon hormone (Fat burning hormone) with food.

warvictim

warvictim

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Hello all read this article i found on the web about Glucagon and Insulin and how do we stimulate glucagon (The fat burning hormone):

Cholesterol and Heart Disease - Dispelling the Myths - EnergyFirst

How do you lower insulin and increase glucagon through nutrition?

The key is to eat in a manner that keeps your blood sugar stable. In keeping your blood sugar stable, you control the excess release of insulin. Excess insulin is secreted every time you "over-carb." Whenever you eat sugar or processed carbohydrates, or simply too many carbohydrates for your body, (because all carbohydrates break down into blood sugar called glucose) you will have excess glucose in your blood stream, causing your blood sugar to spike. In turn, your pancreas secretes insulin. Insulin is your body's most powerful storage hormone. Insulin totally blocks your body's ability to burn fat, converts all the excess blood sugar into triglycerides (blood fats), and stores these fats in your fat cells. Glucagon is released every time you eat lean protein. Glucagon, when present in your blood steam, also lowers insulin levels. It is important to eat lean protein every single meal.

When faced with high cholesterol (over 200 total cholesterol), most patients are recommended a statin drug, along with a reduced fat/high carbohydrate diet. Lowering unhealthy fat intake decreases LDL levels. But, increasing carbohydrate content causes HDL (good cholesterol) to drop and triglycerides and total cholesterol to increase, which means increased risk of heart disease.

To control the balance of glucagon and insulin, eat a healthy balance of lean protein, good fats/oils (containing essential fats omega 3 and 6), and unprocessed carbohydrates at each meal. Avoid sugar, white flour, and other processed carbohydrates; and always combine carbohydrates with lean protein and/or good fats/oils. This slows the gastric emptying of the carbohydrates, preventing a blood sugar spike and controlling the excessive release of insulin.

Staying hydrated with pure water and avoiding caffeine and other dehydrators is also of integral importance. In addition to these nutrition guidelines, exercise regularly and follow a basic supplementation program. When you adopt these healthy lifestyle habits, you will find your cholesterol levels will return to healthy levels (180-200 total cholesterol, under 100 LDL, and over 50 HDL) within 60-90 days, without prescription medication!
 
fueledpassion

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This is an old thread that I must bring back to life. It's time people start reading good information and this is certainly truth - no bro science here.

Since glucagon and insulin act antagonistically to each other, to lower one is to increase the other. Having a balanced meal as it says above is 100% correct in avoiding high insulin levels and thus high body fat accumulation.

It's nice to see some real, usable information on this board. Kinda refreshing.

Read up everybody.
 

mr.cooper69

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This is an old thread that I must bring back to life. It's time people start reading good information and this is certainly truth - no bro science here.

Since glucagon and insulin act antagonistically to each other, to lower one is to increase the other. Having a balanced meal as it says above is 100% correct in avoiding high insulin levels and thus high body fat accumulation.

It's nice to see some real, usable information on this board. Kinda refreshing.

Read up everybody.
Actually, glucagon has nothing to do with the amplitude of insulin release and is instead a function of total insulin release in response to a meal (AUC of insulin vs time curve). Which means that the only way to increase glucagon is to drop carbs...the opposite of a "balanced" meal
 
fueledpassion

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Glucagon puts glucose back into the blood stream using gluconeogenesis when blood sugar gets on the low side. If you eat well-proportioned and smaller meals that are void of simple sugars and have plenty of protein & fiber to slow the breakdown of the meal in the intestines, your insulin levels will be much lower at any given point in time and certainly under the curve of time as well. Lower insulin levels means more hours of glucagon at play.

Eating very large meals, coupled with high simple sugar content (or refined carbs), and you have a less effective means of using your body's natural fat-metabolizing pathway, given that your body isn't starving to death. In that case, nutrient partitioning will prevent any serious fat gain since your body desperately needed the calories anyways.

I completely disagree with the idea of "no carbs" for anything longer than a few days at a time and even then it must be carefully manipulated with proteins and amino acids in order to prevent muscle wasting and degredation of the thyroid hormone, which is something I think no bodybuilder would appreciate.

I don't know what your idea of "balanced" is, but from my experience it means a ratio of carbs: protein of somewhere around 1:1 or maybe 1.5 for the ectomorphs.

Another thing I don't agree with you on is that somehow you get the same total effect and amount of insulin in the blood stream by having a very rapid breakdown of food (100% carbs) versus having a very slow breakdown of food (40% carbs, 40% protein, 20% fats). I derived that assumption by your statement "glucagon has nothing to do with the amplitude of insulin release and is instead a function of total insulin release in response to a meal (AUC of insulin vs time curve)."

The higher your blood sugar, the higher the insulin levels. Sure, your glucose levels probably average out to be the same, but not your insulin levels. Glucagon responds based on a lack of blood sugar or a low blood sugar so if your body never has huge peaks in blood sugar then theoretically your body will call on glucagon more often to supply blood sugar via fat metabolism. That's all I was saying.

And, in order to get that effect from your meal you need protein and fiber in the meal to achieve the low insulin repsonse. Hence, my suggestion for a balanced meal.

They are antagonistic to each other because insulin is taking sugar out of the blood while glucagon is putting it in. Neither respond directly to each other but rather they both respond based on the amount of sugar in the blood. Sugar in the blood is directly affected by how long it takes to break down the meal.

If you avoid sugar spikes, you avoid the possibility of fat gain due to surges in insulin levels. And because you have lower glucose levels across the curve of time, you also have more opportunity to need glucagon to metabolize fat into glucose.
 

mr.cooper69

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I am well aware how glucagon works. The point you are missing in the relevance of the load on insulinogenic macronutrients. If I eat 60g sugar, I got an insulin spike as sugar rapidly enters the bloodstream, but it's all rapidly absorbed so the spike is short-lived. If I ingest low GI carbs, I get a lower insulin spike than the sugar, but the spike lasts longer. In the end, the amount of insulin your body releases is titrated to the amount of glucose + insulin "amplifiers" you eat, regardless of how slowly or quickly they digest. Simply put, macronutrient totals are of far more importance than the kind of carb you eat.
 
Jiigzz

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I've posted ad nauseum on this topic but suffice to say that total macronutrient intake is the most important factor is determining weight loss. You can manipulate high carb-low carb (and also the types of carbs) to any extent however, so long as protein intake remains the same between the groups, a high carb diet and a low carb diet yield the same fat loss and weight loss.

The Law of Thermodynamics plays a role here; whilst it can be disupted as to whether or not it applys directly to the body, a caloric deficit implies weight loss whereas a caloric excess implies weight gain.

In any case, glycogen is stored glucose (stimulated for release by glucagon) and doesn't require mobilisation of FFA to be used (thus not making it a "fat loss hormone").
 

criticalbench

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Good info here!
 
fueledpassion

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Then how does that conflict with the initial idea that I supported with having a "balanced" diet? I basically suggested using fiber and protein in larger proportions to avoid fat gain. Granted, I also didn't say avoid carbs either. I just said to balance to carb/protein ratio in favor of protein a bit more.

I know for a fact that method allows me to get much leaner and quicker, too. However, it is assuming that I am training frequently and performing cardio on a regular basis.
 
fueledpassion

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In light of that post, where I suppose I differ from most in my "old school" of thought is that certain foods have different metabolic pathways. Not just comparing fats to carbs to protein but also looking at different types of each macro nutrient.

Examples that I am referring to are:

MCT's vs LCT's
table sugar vs brown rice
whey protein vs chicken breast

As you can see, these macros can have very different metabolic consequences in the body. I do agree that total weight loss/gain will be the same assuming that your calories are the same. What I have found based on both research AND experience is that body composition is heavily dependent on the type of carbs, fats & proteins eaten. So while a 2000 calorie diet may equal X amount of total body mass, it certainly doesn't mean that the % lean mass vs % fat will be the same!

If it were just about calories in/calories out, then we'd all be eating ice cream and candy bars all day long and not have any different results than eating a high protein and fibrous diet.

Jiigzz, I'm not saying you are one of these guys (because you are not), but I love it when I see someone who is an advocate of "calories in, calories out" but is very unwilling to try out their own philosophy by eating the same amount of calories in junk food rather than wholesome, fibrous and healthy foods. It's comical.
 
JudoJosh

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Oy vey
 
Jiigzz

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In light of that post, where I suppose I differ from most in my "old school" of thought is that certain foods have different metabolic pathways. Not just comparing fats to carbs to protein but also looking at different types of each macro nutrient.

Examples that I am referring to are:

MCT's vs LCT's
table sugar vs brown rice
whey protein vs chicken breast

As you can see, these macros can have very different metabolic consequences in the body. I do agree that total weight loss/gain will be the same assuming that your calories are the same. What I have found based on both research AND experience is that body composition is heavily dependent on the type of carbs, fats & proteins eaten. So while a 2000 calorie diet may equal X amount of total body mass, it certainly doesn't mean that the % lean mass vs % fat will be the same!

If it were just about calories in/calories out, then we'd all be eating ice cream and candy bars all day long and not have any different results than eating a high protein and fibrous diet.

Jiigzz, I'm not saying you are one of these guys (because you are not), but I love it when I see someone who is an advocate of "calories in, calories out" but is very unwilling to try out their own philosophy by eating the same amount of calories in junk food rather than wholesome, fibrous and healthy foods. It's comical.
Macronutrient composition has very little to do with body composition if protein is kept constant. Theoretically you could eat a candy bars all day long provided it fit into your macronutrient intake for the day (BB people preach this in IIFYM constantly). I myself do not advocate for this and I in no way think that IIFYM is an excuse to exercise poor dietary habits, however it does work.

I have been at both ends of the spectrum; spending a lot of time on fast food and calorie dense snacks and also now, at the opposite end, planning diets around micronutrients as a bid to enhance my overall health, and know of many others whom also fall into this category, yet have very little variances in body composition. I constantly see and work with people who are under the premise that certain foods are healthy (and who are in the normal weight range) when they are not (yet it doesn't affect their body composition). Ergo, healthy is a subjective term and depends on the level of knowledge around a particular food (case and point being fat).

Fat is often perceived to be the enemy and deemed that eating it will result in unwanted fat gain; as a result, a lot of people habitually avoid it. Worse still is when they correlate fat loss to the decreased fat intake despite the fact that they have actually entered a caloric deficit.

In the above example you compare table sugar to brown rice; brown rice to me is not healthy. Nor do I see it as being a healthy alternative to white rice yet people assume it is because it contains the outer husk.
 
fueledpassion

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The example of brown rice was not absolute, just an example of something the doesn't give me a sugar crash 30 minutes after eating it. You can pretend you saw "white rice" in that statement instead. Either way, I feel the argument is still clear.
 
Jiigzz

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The example of brown rice was not absolute, just an example of something the doesn't give me a sugar crash 30 minutes after eating it. You can pretend you saw "white rice" in that statement instead. Either way, I feel the argument is still clear.
I see and I understand your argument however, it has been well studied that sugar intakes are not the sole cause of obesity, nor does sugar correlate to any more weight gain simply because more insulin is present in bolus.

Consider my country for exmple, they are debating on whether or not to introduce a sugar tax and tax products which contain a vast majority of their marconutrients as sugar and serve no other purpose. As you can imagine, Coca Cola wasn't having a bar of it and can prove that sugar does not correlate to obesity when consumed within the realms of a persons macros.

Anywho, the OP doesn't make sense as Glucagon is not a fat burning hormone; it just signals liver glycogen to move into the blood stream to maintain blood sugar.
 

criticalbench

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You guys just think to much! I just eat, sleep, workout, and grow :p

Mike
 

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