It was Valentine’s day yesterday and I made a HUGE mistake. I had worked all day in the northern part of Louisiana and my scheduled hotel last night was in Pearl Mississippi. I had 4 plus hours of driving that included 2 stops for charging the Tesla and grabbing dinner. A 15 hour work day floating 12 horses with a well deserved, hot and nutritious meal ahead. It was at my first attempt for dinner when I realized that EVERY MAN ON THE PLANET was taking their valentine out for dinner. I concluded that food must equal love as the sign said above a restaurant in the Newark Liberty International Airport (see the feature image of this blog).
Not one parking space could be found near any restaurant. Even the drive thru lane at Panda Express went around the building. Not judging here but Panda Express for a Valentine’s meal is setting the sights lower than maybe the date was expecting. I ended up getting a turkey and guacamole wrap with spinach, olives and brown mustard at a Subway inside a truck stop. No I didn’t get chips or cookies and I tore off ½ of the wrap.
I tried to trademark “Food ≠ Love” but I found that Dr Phil had beaten me to it with the expression “Food does not equal love.” From what I saw last night, no one is listening to Dr Phil either. Making matters worse, there are lots of people out there who look at preparing food as an art form. My son is one of those who went to culinary school, is gifted in meal preparation and has taste buds inherited from someone other than me.
Eating Is About Surviving – Period
In reality, eating food is a survival mechanism. Actually it is a set of survival mechanisms that switch on and off depending on how good or bad things are in the world we live in. For example, when things are good such as when the temperature outside suits our ability to stay warm then the food we eat will be put to use in creating the energy we need and we will not eat more than that. When the weather starts to get cold, the mechanism will change where the food we eat starts to store fat and we seem to remain hungry all the time. Through this mechanism the body ensures the addition of excess calories to store more fat to survive winter. If we ever start to live in an environment with less oxygen than expected then another mechanism is activated that also assures our survival. This, by the way, is the mechanism used by cancer cells that live in a slightly lower oxygen environment to survive and grow on sugar.
It all boils down to sugar. But with so much said about it we all become confused as to what it really is. And then it really does taste good too.
The Environment Triggers The Path
In a nutshell, when everything is good and there is little stress in life, the fuel used by us and by our horses is glucose which is burned by the mitochondria in the cell to make energy. There is a cost to this as there is with everything in life so we rest allowing our mitochondria to rebuild the materials needed to make more energy (ATP). This avoids mitochondrial exhaustion and no illnesses occur. In essence, the body adapts to the environment – both good and bad.
When the environment changes signaling that hardship is coming (winter cold and a lack of food) then a large amount of glucose is taken in that far exceeds our daily needs. This is normal. The glucose then is converted into another sugar called fructose by ripe fruits that animals eat. Both sugars have the same amount of elements (6 carbons, 6 oxygens and 12 hydrogens) but they are put together differently. This difference signals a different metabolic pathway to become activated. That signal activates the use of an enzyme called fructose kinase to break down fructose and the purpose of this triggered pathway is to 1) add body fat, 2) slow the normal mitochondrial metabolism (exhaustion) and 3) decrease the effect of the satiating hormone leptin. The result is that our horses are always hungry, out of energy and getting fatter.
Are There Other Sources Of Fructose?
In humans it is worse because in table sugar there is a 50:50 mix of glucose and fructose. When liquified, this mixed sugar has more of the fat making effects (sugar in soda or coffee, high fructose corn syrup) than if in a solid form (cookies or a candy bar). Horses usually don’t ingest fructose unless they have access to fruit such as apples. But this next part is new and important. Only recently have researchers discovered that fructose is actually made by humans and other tested animals (not tested in horses). Because this discovery has been made in various other animals I will assume that it is true in horses too. What does this assumption mean?
If horses convert excess glucose into fructose then could Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS) be caused by the excess feeding of foods high in glucose? This would include grains, hay (last summer’s grass) and summer grass. More importantly, these are being fed throughout the year signaling to the horse that hardship is up ahead and to store more fat, exhaust the mitochondria, consume the body proteins (breakdowns and disease) and be constantly hungry.
And Then There’s Uric Acid
In the animal studies when fructose is is made from excess glucose intake, one of the results found is an elevation in uric acid. This leads to inflammation of the kidneys resulting in hypertension and inflammation of the pancreatic islet cells resulting in increased insulin (diabetes). Giving a drug that inhibits fructose kinase prevents the formation of uric acid with the result of normalized blood pressure and normalized blood insulin levels. The conclusion is that glucose doesn’t cause these diseases but fructose and its survival metabolic pathway does. Sugar isn’t the problem – it is the EXCESS sugar converted into fructose that is the problem.
Fascinating to think where we are today in human research and frustrating to know where we are in horse health and its relation to nutrition. But as long as we think that food equals love then we will continue to get poor health from our horses. I think it is time to embrace this:
Food ≠ Love
PS – the future will bring more details on the role that sugar plays in mitochondrial exhaustion, chronic protein deficiency and the possibility of intermittent fasting in horses as a treatment for high insulin levels, high ACTH and EMS / obesity in our horses.