Blended excerpts from Potential Within A Guide to Nutritional Empowerment
Authored by Franco Cavaleri ISBN 0-9731701-0-7
Original post: May 25, 2011
This article is composed of multiple excerpts to result in tone and content shifts and reference numbering that may be out of order.
Some of the BNHR philosophies 650 references
We’ve already discussed the timing of food and the glycemic influence on the body. A high-glycemic-index food can be consumed without the same negative impact after a period of exercise. Most of us choose to eat carbohydrate-rich foods just before exercise. That doesn’t support health or performance.
When you raise blood-sugar levels before exercise, your body will respond with an insulin secretion. Insulin is a hormone that pushes nutrients into your cells, storing them, limiting the availability of fats for oxidation during exercise, and more likely inducing hypoglycemia earlier during the training session (40).
Studies have shown that every meal that spikes blood-glucose levels can cause the body’s stress hormones (catecholamines) to be secreted. The original spike increases catecholamine levels immediately (41). Then the sugar low that often occurs because of this extreme high causes more catecholamines to be released. If you throw exercise into this poorly designed formula, more stress is imposed on the body and a more rapid sugar depletion is induced. The result is an even more intense secretion of catecholamines, more catabolism of healthy tissue, and more disease.
In fact, studies as recent as 2002 confirm that the glucose load in the blood amplifies the cortisol secretions promoted by psychosocial stress as well as other strains such as smoking to compound the physiological consequences (42). Lower the glycemic index of your food intake and the stress that our fast-paced society has imposed on us can be better tolerated.
Carbohydrates should be avoided as much as 90 minutes prior to a workout in order to allow your body to burn fat during the exercise period….
Contrary to what many people advocate, the carbohydrates eaten just before or after exercise aren’t used as efficiently to fuel muscles the way stored glycogen is (43). Your body will replenish glycogen, both in the liver and muscles, as soon as it gets a supply of dietary carbohydrates. The sooner after work the better. Keep in mind that liver glycogen is essential for maximum health of this organ. If liver glycogen is depleted and this state persists, the organ’s function can be severely compromised. This means impaired body detoxification, amino-acid synthesis, gluconeogenesis, hormone regulation, and an increased risk of disease (44, 45).
Take advantage of that post-work (heavy labor) or post-workout window as much as possible to restore the nutrient status of the body. Other studies have indicated that obese individuals have damaged glycogen-synthase systems (46, 47). This enzyme system, as we’ve seen, helps restore muscle glycogen after depletion has taken place….
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