If you want to raise a rat's blood pressure, you feed the animal sugar, not salt, at least in some biology labs. According to the American Heart Association and an article in Medical News Today, “Men’s Blood Pressure Increased by High Sugar Diet,” a high-fructose diet raises blood pressure in men, while a drug used to treat gout seems to protect against the blood pressure increase, according to research reported at the American Heart Association's 63rd High Blood Pressure Research Conference. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded the study.
We live in a global society where most people are driven to consume foods by the taste of those edibles and any eating habits learned from early childhood, including what foods are actually available and affordable. It usually takes a preschool-age child eight exposures to a food before the child will try it. But seniors usually eat foods that don't give them digestive issues or that simply taste good or have been recommended by an expert to benefit health.
The results of a 2010 American Heart Association and National Institutes of Health study showed that only two weeks on a high-fructose diet raises blood pressure in men. The study also revealed that a drug used to treat gout seems to protect against that blood pressure increase and some aspects of metabolic syndrome.
Fructose, one of several dietary sugars, makes up about half of all the sugar molecules in table sugar and in high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener often used in packaged products because it's relatively cheap and has a long shelf life. Glucose makes up the other half. Fructose is the only common sugar known to increase uric acid levels.
In the USA, the average daily consumption of high fructose corn syrup is about 50 grams per person in the United States. With respect to total mercury exposure, it may be necessary to account for this source of mercury in the diet of children and sensitive populations. Read the abstract of the study, "Mercury from chlor-alkali plants: measured concentrations in food product sugar."
Walk into any health food store and pick up a nondairy frozen dessert. Maybe instead of cow's milk, it's made from soy milk or coconut milk. Check out with what the treat is sweetened. Chances are perhaps the coconut milk frozen dessert is sweetened with agave syrup which is high in fructose. Are you worried about fructose-triggered hypertension?
Stevia is under-advertised unless it's mixed with various types of sugars instead of being pure stevia
Perhaps you're growing stevia in a planter in your yard or on your window sill to be used as a sweetener for tea, or pureed to make frozen desserts, puddings, or cookies and cakes. How about using sweet coconut water from a fresh coconut? And maybe the soy-based frozen dessert you buy commercially is sweetened with brown rice syrup. Some brands of frozen desserts are made with almond or coconut milk or liquefied grains and sweetened with agave syrup or fructose. The problem with a lot of the agave syrups is that they are full of fructose. See the articles, "Shocking! This 'Tequila' Sweetener is Far Worse than High Fructose " and "AgaveFactsVSFiction-Wholesome Sweeteners." Also see, "Discovery Health "Is Agave Worse Than High Fructose Corn Syrup?"" and the Web MD site, "The Truth About Agave."
Notice the newer frozen desserts on the market that taste more like real ice cream but are made with coconut milk with its medium chain saturated fatty acids. (Animal protein and animal fat-related products have long-chain fatty acids.) But when you look on the labels of some of the newer types of frozen desserts made from grains or coconut milk, the sweetener used sometimes is agave syrup or fructose.
Each type of sweetener in any given nondairy dessert or milk substitute beverage may be sweetened with a different type of sweetener. What does it mean to you regarding how the sweeteners affect your body?
Mainstream supermarkets with frozen desserts may also carry newer frozen dessert products sweetened with fructose. Other frozen dessert products are sweetened with brown rice syrup or evaporated cane juice. Organic ice cream may still be made with organic cow's milk and cream and organic sugar. But why sweeten a nondairy alternative to ice cream with fructose instead of stevia or fruit juice concentrate?
Now look at the various nondairy drinks that look like milk substitutes
The almond milks, hemp milks, soy milks...all might contain evaporated cane juice, whereas the nondairy frozen desserts could be sweetened with fructose. Some carry added vitamins such as vitamin D2 instead of vitamin D3, which you'd want. What effects on your body does agave syrup or fructose have that may be different from desserts sweetened with stevia or fruit juice concentrate?
See the articles, Raw Agave Syrup Nectar: Not as healthy as you may think. Nutrition, and also check out the article, Agave syrup's benefits are in debate - Los Angeles Times. Agave syrup is mainly fructose and glucose though ratios vary from 56% to 92% fructose depending on the agave variety.
If you eat too much fructose, you may get high blood pressure. But instead of lowering your consumption of fructose, there's a drug made to lower high blood pressure caused by eating too much fructose from beverages and foods sweetened with lots of fructose. See the article, "Medical News: Allopurinol Lowers Fructose-Triggered Hypertension."
What can you do to help your health before you reach the stage where you are on the road to taking drugs to solve a problem that could have been solved by eating less foods loaded with fructose? Also see the Jan. 26, 2009 article, "Much High Fructose Corn Syrup Contaminated With Mercury, New Study."
That study revealed according to the article, "Mercury was found in nearly 50 percent of tested samples of commercial high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), according to the article published January 26, 2009 in the scientific journal, Environmental Health. A separate study by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) detected mercury in nearly one-third of 55 popular brandname food and beverage products where HFCS is the first or second highest labeled ingredient-including products by Quaker, Hershey's, Kraft and Smucker's."
Also see the article, " Mercury from chlor-alkali plants: measured concentrations in food product sugar." A pilot study was conducted to determine whether high fructose corn syrup contains mercury, a toxic metal historically used as an anti-microbial.
See the study in Alternative Medicine Review, June, 2009 by R. Dufault, LeBlanc B., Schnoll R. This article by lead researcher Renee Dufault, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientist, along with several co-authors well known to environmental medicine, was recently published in the online journal, Environmental Health.
Mercury cell chlor-alkali products are used to produce thousands of other products including food ingredients such as citric acid, sodium benzoate, and high fructose corn syrup, the article reports. High fructose corn syrup is used in food products to enhance shelf life. A pilot study was conducted to determine if high fructose corn syrup contains mercury, a toxic metal historically used as an anti-microbial agent.
High fructose corn syrup samples were collected from three different manufacturers and analyzed for total mercury. The samples were found to contain levels of mercury ranging from below a detection limit of 0.005 to 0.570 micrograms mercury per gram of high fructose corn syrup. The big picture is check out your research and see how credible the sources are that validate any studies or articles. Think for yourself and question everything when it comes to what's in your foods and skin care products.
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