[HN Gopher] For some Greenlanders, eating sugar is healthy
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For some Greenlanders, eating sugar is healthy
Author : tiahura
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-12-27 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (science.ku.dk)
(TXT) w3m dump (science.ku.dk)
| GlenTheMachine wrote:
| My kid has an autoimmune (not genetic) version of this. It almost
| killed him. He is 5' 10" and got down to 105 lbs, was severely
| malnourished and dehydrated. Couldn't keep food down without
| significant medical intervention. He spent a month in the
| hospital and another month in an inpatient clinic to start to
| address the resultant eating disorder.
|
| Also, without insurance, the drug to treat it (sucrase) is
| $4000/month and is available only in a liquid form that has to be
| refrigerated... and you have to take it with meals. Which means
| you have to carry a small cryo bottle with you wherever you go.
|
| Don't wish for this to happen to you.
| poizan42 wrote:
| That's an absolutely insane price for something used in food
| production. Have you looked into using food-grade sucrase
| instead? There's an article about using BioInvert 200 as a
| substitute for Sucraid here:
| https://ejhp.bmj.com/content/24/Suppl_1/A226.2
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Sounds aweful. Have you managed to find a diet that avoids the
| need for sucrase for every meal?
| GlenTheMachine wrote:
| Just about impossible in the US.
| ajuc wrote:
| If the mutation makes it so kids have diarrhea every time they
| eat sugar - it might be possible that they learn not to eat sugar
| and are healthier as a result. Some of the bad consequences of
| sweet diet are very delayed.
|
| I wonder how they controlled for that effect.
| phonypc wrote:
| That's addressed in the study. In fact, in their mouse model,
| the benefits don't show up _unless_ they are fed sucrose.
| beefman wrote:
| The paper:
| https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(21)04065-8/...
| betwixthewires wrote:
| So much wrong with this article. First, it beats around the bush
| about the point of the article for quite a while, and then
| delivers a children's storybook version of the explanation after
| a while. Which is common in articles these days.
|
| > The reason for this widespread genetic variation among
| Greenlanders is due to a diet that has stood out from that of the
| rest of the world for millennia.
|
| Greenlanders haven't existed for millennia. Greenlanders have
| existed for just _under_ a millennium.
|
| > "It is probably due to Greenlanders not having had very much
| sugar in their diet"... He adds that this has made the genetic
| variation frequent, as there has never been a need to absorb
| sugar rapidly in the bloodstream.
|
| That's not how evolution works. If this mutation gives a health
| or fitness advantage it would be selected for. It's selection
| probably ticked _up_ after the widespread availability of sugar.
|
| But on the topic in it, I think such a mutation would be great to
| have. I wonder if it exists off the island or how frequent it is.
| wnevets wrote:
| > If this mutation gives a health or fitness advantage it would
| be selected for.
|
| the more important question is if a mutation presents as a
| disadvantage for reproduction.
| podgaj wrote:
| In this case, for the Inuit, the common allele (for
| Caucasians) presents as a disadvantage.
|
| They needed this polymorphism to survive on a diet with low
| sucrose.
| dahart wrote:
| > If this mutation gives a health or fitness advantage it would
| be selected for.
|
| That's not always how evolution works, especially when you're
| talking about characteristics that (as the writer pointed out)
| were not present or used during evolutionary selection.
| Adaptations that are selected for can and frequently do have
| byproduct effects that are not selected for. There are words
| for these effects, like "vestigial", "tag-along", "spandrel",
| "byproduct", "non-adaptive trait", etc., etc.
| VLM wrote:
| As the article points out, super high carb diets make them very
| sick, but what about the effects of lower or normal (pre 1900)
| carb diets when they're not feeling sick?
|
| Given that its pretty well known that high levels of sugar in
| the gut cause gut bacteria to go wild, a very reasonable
| research hypothesis would be to figure out why their gut
| microbiome is naturally deficient, such that turbocharging it
| up with a dose of raw sugar beings their gut microbiome
| activity up to normal healthy levels.
|
| Sure dumping 2 liters of pepsi soda in their gut might cause
| all kinds of IBS like symptoms when their guts explode. But in
| the old days they just ate a couple berries once in a while, or
| at least the article claimed that.
|
| This could be something as trivial as lots of fat intake means
| lots of bile production means some probiotic bacteria that's
| sensitive to bile suffers, until they eat a tiny amount of
| sugar that lets them grow to normal levels.
|
| Could look at what gut bacteria do in stereotypical average
| humans. Gut bacteria under normal conditions do churn out some
| thiamine, folate, biotin, riboflavin, vit K, and probably stuff
| I'm not able to find from a quick search at pubmed central.
|
| I think a really good research paper would combine the article
| results with a hypothesis that greenlanders as a group suffer
| (or, archeologically suffered, or occasionally suffered, or
| their kids suffered, etc) from deficiencies in folate, biotin,
| vit K, etc, basically the list above, and turbo charging their
| gut bacteria with a dose of raw sugar makes the bacteria more
| active which brings their vit K level or whatever up to normal
| human levels such that they're healthier on average and/or
| their kids die less often etc.
|
| I didn't google up much immediately for deficiencies in
| Greenlanders. Maybe folate. Small amounts of sugar in small
| intestine would superficially seem to help with that. Folate
| deficiency really screws up pregnant women. As a hypothesis for
| a future research paper, it all kinda adds up, almost too
| neatly (conspiracy theory like). So their diet is not exactly
| folate rich, their pregnant women get all messed up, someone
| gets a mutation where their gut bacteria which produce folate
| get turbocharged by a couple berries, thus producing more
| folate in their gut, which optimistically is absorbed by their
| pregnant women, so women with that mutation have like three
| times as many living children as folate-deficient women without
| the mutatuon, it all kinda adds up.
| erk__ wrote:
| The Thule people of which the Greenlanders seem to have been
| somewhat separate for at least 4000 years, this likely focuses
| on the Greenlanders because it is made by a Danish University.
| I don't think you can say that the same is not the case for
| other arctic populations, they just have no research showing
| that yet.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| I only read the article (not the study) but I also take issue
| with the following:
|
| > Imagine being able to swap out broccoli for sweets, Ben &
| Jerry's or some other sugary treat and achieve the same health
| benefits.
|
| The study finds the genetic variation/gut bacteria metabolizes
| the sugar directly from the intestines as opposed to being
| deposited in the blood-stream and triggering insulin to remove
| it and begin either the metabolic process or storage.
|
| That is a metabolic benefit for sure and as a result could
| protect from metabolic and chronic diseases. But nothing about
| that process improves the nutritional value/health benefits of
| the sugar. Broccoli contains vitamins, minerals, and
| potentially enzymes (depending on cooking method) which the
| sugar doesn't gain.
| podgaj wrote:
| I agree with the first part of what you said.
|
| (Note: I am an amateur Nutritional Geneticist)
|
| They said:
|
| "The results demonstrate that carriers of the genetic variation
| have what is known as sucrase-isomaltase deficiency, meaning
| that they have a peculiar way of metabolizing sugar in the
| intestine. Simply put, they do not absorb ordinary sugar in the
| bloodstream the way people without the genetic variation do.
| Instead, sugar heads directly into their intestine."
|
| Ha! What? SI, the gene that they studied, ONLY exists in the
| intestine. The inability to break down sucrose leads to microbe
| imbalance that concerts the sucrose to acetate. They are using
| the word "sugar" to cover everything from sucrose to any other
| oligosaccaride. They just do not understand the science enough.
| If you read the study it is clear.
|
| And in NO way doe sthis mean that eating sugar is healthy for
| them as the title implies!!!! Look at what happens when you
| have this deficiency!
|
| https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/congenital-sucras...
| "After ingestion of sucrose or maltose, an affected child will
| typically experience stomach cramps, bloating, excess gas
| production, and diarrhea. These digestive problems can lead to
| failure to gain weight and grow at the expected rate (failure
| to thrive) and malnutrition. "
|
| So this is NOT a great mutation. There is no such thing as a
| universal "great" mutation. These genetic changes are just one
| change in a probably network of changes in the Inuit. Others
| would include genes like FADS1 and FADS2 and CPT1A.
|
| (NOTE: I have Saami heritage, who are the Inuit of Finland.)
|
| Next:
|
| "'It is probably due to Greenlanders not having had very much
| sugar in their diet. For the most part, they have eaten meat
| and fat from fish, whales, seals and reindeer. A single
| crowberry may have crept in here and there, but their diet has
| had minimal sugar content,' "
|
| Here the researchers are correct, this is not only a
| Greenlander trait, but a common trait in all Inuit, and very
| low sucrose is common in all Inuit diets.
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25452324/
|
| And this absolutely is a fitness example. For people with the
| common allele, the lack of sucrose in the diet leads to lower
| levels of acetate and these people would die off leaving the
| survivors with the less common allele to flourish.
| phonypc wrote:
| > _And in NO way doe sthis mean that eating sugar is healthy
| for them as the title implies!!!!_
|
| That's actually exactly what the study concludes. They say
| children do experience those symptoms, but adapt as adults
| and are better off for it.
| podgaj wrote:
| The study does not conclude that at all. They only
| concluded they might be able to trick some people to make
| money off a a drug they will make.
|
| Limitations: We hypothesize that the healthier metabolic
| profile observed in homozygous c.273_274delAG carriers was
| mediated by acetate produced by gut bacteria; however, we
| lack data to firmly verify this hypothesis.
|
| Impact: Our results suggest that sucrase-isomaltase
| constitutes a promising drug target for improvement of
| metabolic health, and in a broader perspective add to the
| debate about the health effects of sugar consumption.
|
| You know, it could be that these people are healthier
| because they avoid sugar because sugar makes them feel like
| crap when they get overloaded with aceatate.
|
| There is no evidence that higher levels of acetate are
| better for people. Because if that as so drinking would be
| healthy for everyone.
|
| https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article-
| abstract/23/2/123/96...
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.20.212597v1
| ....
| phonypc wrote:
| > _You know, it could be that these people are healthier
| because they avoid sugar because sugar makes them feel
| like crap when they get overloaded with aceatate._
|
| They address that hypothesis and dismiss it. It's beyond
| my understanding to assess their methods, but don't
| pretend they didn't even mention it.
| VLM wrote:
| > Greenlanders haven't existed for millennia. Greenlanders have
| existed for just under a millennium.
|
| I got google-y for fun and every scientific paper title implies
| its inuit greenlanders whom have the mutation, not the euro
| greenlanders, and greenland is about 90% inuit. The picture of
| the prof looks like he's a euro greenlander looks like Denmark
| heritage to me but who knows (and it doesn't matter much
| anyway).
|
| wikipedia says the inuit greenlanders have been chillin on the
| island for near 5000 years now.
|
| I would imagine due to intermarriage, if the euro greenlanders
| are outnumbered 10 to 1, that quite a few euro greenlanders
| have the mutation, but the paper titles all seem to imply inuit
| greenlanders only.
|
| The wikipedia article implies the archeological inuit
| greenlander diet was mostly carnivore. That's actually pretty
| healthy as long as they eat enough organ meats but not too much
| (particularly liver)
| jeromegv wrote:
| I don't know where you're looking on Wikipedia, but Inuit
| Greenlanders arrived in 1200 AD
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenlandic_Inuit
|
| It's also common knowledge, Inuit/Thule were pretty much the
| last ones that migrated from Asia across Bering. They
| displaced previous indigenous people that had been there for
| few thousand years before (at least in Canada).
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| They arrived _in Greenland_ during the last millennium.
| Paleo-Inuit peoples have been in the Americas for probably
| around 5000 years. The previous indigenous people you 're
| talking about were earlier branches of the same "family".
| Moreover, this particular mutation is known to be common in
| Arctic peoples as a whole, not just Greenlandic Inuit.
| ijlx wrote:
| Greenland may have been inhabited for 5000 years, but that
| does not mean they share a genetic heritage back that long.
|
| The Thule people, from whom modern indigenous Greenlanders
| descend, originated around 1000 CE in Alaska.
| dEnigma wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the Inuit diets in Alaska and Greenland are
| pretty similar though, at least in terms of macronutrients
| (i.e. a lot of fat).
| podgaj wrote:
| The diets are the same and the Alaskan Inuit also carry
| the SI deficiency alleles.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25452324/
| teekert wrote:
| And then that part about the gut biome "learning how to make
| energy out of sugar", facepalm. How can you write this, it's
| really bad indeed. Oh and swap broccoli for sweets oh
| Greenlanders, like not being able to take up sugar efficiently
| equates to not needing anything of nutritional value.
| opportune wrote:
| It doesn't have to do with Greenland specifically but the Inuit
| lifestyle in general which is thousands of years old. Inuit
| settlement in Greenland may be more recent but people have
| practiced the Inuit lifestyle (and its almost 100% animal
| content) for much longer.
| arbitrage wrote:
| > If this mutation gives a health or fitness advantage it would
| be selected for.
|
| This is not always the case. Be wary of assigning intent to a
| stochastic process like evolution. It's about probability, not
| certainty.
|
| See: vagus nerve
| phonypc wrote:
| > _Greenlanders haven 't existed for millennia. Greenlanders
| have existed for just under a millennium._
|
| That sentence is saying the diet is millennia old. The diet and
| genetic variation are also common to other Inuit populations.
| phdelightful wrote:
| Yeah it even starts with something not backed up by the study
| it's reporting on:
|
| "Imagine being able to swap out broccoli for sweets, Ben &
| Jerry's or some other sugary treat and achieve the same health
| benefits. This is fact not fantasy for about two to three
| percent of the Greenlandic population"
|
| The study does not say sweets confer the same health benefits
| as broccoli!
| phonypc wrote:
| It kinda does, partially and indirectly. The study indicates
| it's not a matter of them eating less sucrose, the benefits
| actually don't show up in the absence of sucrose in the diet.
| It essentially acts like soluble fibre.
|
| Of course the micro-nutrients that would be in the broccoli
| don't materialize out of nowhere.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| I can't but help remember the Harvard study paid for by the sugar
| industry to blame fat:
|
| The documents show that a trade group called the Sugar Research
| Foundation, known today as the Sugar Association, paid three
| Harvard scientists the equivalent of about $50,000 in today's
| dollars to publish a 1967 review of research on sugar, fat and
| heart disease. The studies used in the review were handpicked by
| the sugar group, and the article, which was published in the
| prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, minimized the link
| between sugar and heart health and cast aspersions on the role of
| saturated fat.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in...
| waffle_maniac wrote:
| Despite that it's unlikely to have had any effect on the
| American diet as Americans do not base their diet on anything
| other than their taste receptors.
| vmception wrote:
| out of curiosity, why is that particular study and publication
| weighed more heavily than... perhaps any other topic.
|
| to me, this is like finding any random "coffee is good/bad for
| you" of which there are thousands that conflict, and saying
| "Aha! This particular one shaped the course of humanity for the
| last half a century due to a major conflict of interest and
| prestigious publication!"
|
| were there just so many fewer studies in the 1960s? was there
| further collusion and influence with Congress and the FDA? did
| the sugar trade group fly airplanes and drop food pyramid
| pamphlets everywhere letting everyone know liberation was
| coming?
|
| From your article:
|
| > After the review was published, the debate about sugar and
| heart disease died down, while low-fat diets gained the
| endorsement of many health authorities, Dr. Glantz said.
|
| so everyone just went along with it?
|
| well, I've seen bad studies get headlines on Buzzfeed and stick
| in the collective conscious based on the headline alone, so
| stranger things have happened
| grover35 wrote:
| I've been very confused in the last couple decades about who
| the experts truly are. On one hand you have government
| agencies that hire "experts", and on the other hand you have
| the New York Times, Hacker News, Reddit, and CNN. There was a
| time when we thought the government was best to listen to,
| but now with the murder of George Floyd and the election of
| QAnoner Donald Trump and neoliberal Joe Biden I'm not so sure
| that they have our best interests in mind. Plus demonizing
| the press is textbook fascism.
|
| In my view the real experts are writing for the New York
| Times, tirelessly searching for contradictions and ulterior
| motives in science so that the public may know the truth.
| Time and time again the press has shown that the real health
| foods are bacon, pork, and butter, and that we must avoid
| heart-disease causing foods such as rice, potatoes, fruit and
| carrots.
| vmception wrote:
| Careful, with that level of cognitive dissonance you might
| accidentally slip up and say "both sides"
| grover35 wrote:
| Continue eating your oats and berries, QAnoner. The
| science speaks for itself.
| vmception wrote:
| Whoosh, so the joke was that the
| centrists/independents/unaffiliated are perceiving things
| accurately but are ostracized by a polarized populace in
| every forum.
|
| But its less beneficial for me to say that directly
| because then others would rather debate how both sides
| are different instead of acknowledging the overlapping
| areas of concern where they are the same.
|
| Good luck with your approach of random non-sequiturs and
| false positives.
| [deleted]
| grover35 wrote:
| Based
| dahart wrote:
| Doesn't the linked article explain the answer to your
| questions? I'm not sure I understand the snarky skepticism.
| Is it surprising that a scientific article with prestigious
| names attached has greater plausibility and weight than your
| example of "random" studies? Harvard backed studies as a rule
| seem to enjoy more support and media mentions than, say,
| University of Phoenix, no? There are examples of journal
| papers that are weighed more heavily than most, especially
| when the writing resonates with people emotionally. I can
| think of well known papers people talk about here on HN all
| the time as if they're true, but aren't.
|
| Are you sure there thousands of primary-source coffee studies
| that make conclusions and judgements about whether it's good
| or bad for you? Are you perhaps conflating blog spam and
| articles for scientific papers? There are lots and lots of
| articles, but not as many primary sources.
| arbitrage wrote:
| Mid- to late-century capitalists used it as a foundational
| argument in their advertising. The impact of that one study
| was amplified many times over.
|
| People tend to chose what they want to believe first, then
| build a framework around that to support the decisions they
| wanted to do anyway.
| klipt wrote:
| > "Younger carriers of the variation experience negative
| consequences due to their different type of sugar absorption. For
| them, consuming sugar causes diarrhea, abdominal pain and
| bloating. Our guess is that as they age, their gut bacteria
| gradually get used to sugar and learn how to convert it into
| energy"
|
| Sounds basically like lactose intolerance, but to sucrose instead
| of lactose.
|
| Which raises the question, if gut bacteria can solve the
| symptoms, why don't we have probiotics to solve lactose
| intolerance too?
| grardb wrote:
| I don't have an answer to that question, but it's worth noting
| that lactose intolerance isn't a problem that needs solving,
| but rather the natural state of things for most humans on the
| planet and most (if not all) other mammals. There's no need for
| us to consume lactose after we've finished breastfeeding.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Milk is in a lot of delicious things.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| You've clearly never had a good goat cheese and thyme ice
| cream!
|
| I kid but lactose intolerance does really hurt a lot of the
| food selection people are used to. Sure you can live off
| soylent or whatever but most people enjoy a wide variety of
| food including dairy.
| foob wrote:
| Lactase is the main way that people digest lactose and it's
| produced by human intestinal epithelial cells rather than
| bacteria. It seems plausible that a bacteria to digest lactose
| could serve a similar role, but I don't think that's how people
| typically digest it.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| Fecal transplants should work.
| godot wrote:
| This is super anecdotal and personal, but that quote sounds
| exactly like me. I'm Asian and didn't come from Greenland.
| Consuming sugar usually causes me those things, especially in
| high dose (like eating a slice of cake). Fortunately I don't
| like cake or most sweet things in general, but if I do eat
| them, I can only very eat very little or I would feel all of
| those (diarrhea, abdominal pain, bloating). I'm also in my late
| 30s and borderline underweight (5'8" and 125 lbs). I have not
| grown out of this sucrose intolerance over the years.
| podgaj wrote:
| "Our guess is that as they age"
|
| They are guessing and they are wrong. Higher levels of acetate
| are just as bad as lower levels of acetate. You know what also
| raises acetate levels? The metabolism of Alcohol.
|
| The Inuit need a different diet. They do not "get used to"
| these sugars.
|
| And why should someone who is lactose intolerant eat lactose?
| We have been getting around this for years by making yogurt and
| cheese.
| phonypc wrote:
| That explanation doesn't really make sense, and a different
| one[1] appears in the paper itself. People who lack the enzymes
| to digest a sugar experience gastrointestinal distress
| _because_ bacteria in the lower GI tract eat the sugar that
| wouldn 't otherwise make it to them, producing gas in the
| process.
|
| [1]> _This discrepancy between adults and children, may be due
| to the maturation and growth of the small intestine, increasing
| the capacity to absorb luminal fluid with increasing age, and
| to dietary adaptation caused by symptoms in childhood._
| vorpalhex wrote:
| We don't have probiotics but you can buy the lactase enzyme in
| pills and take it with lactose containing foods and avoid
| symptoms (as long as you dose right and eat quickly). My wife
| who is very lactose intolerant can still enjoy ice cream and
| queso.
|
| I do have a friend who had a severe gastrointestinal issue and
| basically went through having his bacteria "reset" for a lack
| of a better term. It was pretty terrible and he was unable to
| eat most things before and during, but now is back to a pretty
| normal diet with some modifications. He was on very aggressive
| antibiotics followed by months long probiotic treatments.
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(page generated 2021-12-27 23:02 UTC)