Odd sugar calculation something's not right

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  • tides57
    tides57 Posts: 27 Member
    I don't want to participate in the debate but I'll add some data from my research into my own annoying condition. I have fructose intolerance. (It's not an allergy, and it's not "Hereditary Fructose Intolerance" which needs to be caught in infancy. When I eat fructose from any source, whether it's fruit, vegetable, or High Fructose Corn Syrup, my belly swells up massively and I'm soon in immense pain.) In researching this, I learned that all sugars (glucose, glycogen, dextrose, lactose, fructose, and all the other "'oses") are simple carbohydrates, but that their molecules differ in length. So some simple sugars are simply simpler than others. (If ya follow... ;-) The longer the molecule, the further down the gut it travels before it's fully digested. Fructose, being the longest, and therefore most "complex" of the simple sugar molecules ("one of the longest," perhaps) doesn't digest until it's way, way down--below the belly button which is where the excruciating pain starts. I haven't researched this next bit much but, presumably, the sooner the sugar molecules are digested, the sooner there will be an insulin response to whatever degree is necessary. In the end, though, they are all just simple chains of the simplest type of carbohydrate. One of them in particular can be god-awful painful, many can benefit human beings who are in dire nutritional need (in danger of starvation, severe dehydration, other medical emergencies), but the majority of them are actively useful to most of us only because of the other nutrients that tend to tag along for the ride.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    Fructose and Glucose have the same Molecular Weight and are very similar in shape fructose-molecule-glucose-and-fructose-molecular-structure.jpg