Re: Water Pump Replacement (not OT)

"GysdeJongh" <jongh711@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"hemyd" <myd!!!hen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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I am puzzled - why relatively not-physically stressful work could have a
bigger effect in lowering my bg that more physically stressful work.

Hi hemyd,
glucose is used as an energy carrier by the human body.Unfortunately free
glucose is toxic so the glucose is transported at an unbelievable low
concentration which must be very precisely regulated.

Insulin is a hormone.It is a master switch.It does not transport
glucose.It is the "bossy manager" which tells the muscle cells to come
from the couch and start scooping up the glucose.

However...
Insulin also signals your body that there is energy which should be stored
for later use as glycogen but preferably as fat.Fat is the most efficient
form of energy storage because it has more calories per weight.If there is
a lot of carbohydrate than insulin signals the body to convert it to fat !

Insulin also directly signals your brain that life is beautiful.This
function of insulin is conserved in evolution and even present in the
fruitfly.The human brain has a lot of insulin receptors which provide the
brain information about the feeding status of your body.The feeding status
of your body is also "measured" by nerve signals from your intestine
(which is why bariatic surgery is working or even a plastic sleeve
http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/ADA/tb/9759 ) from your
stomag , from your liver ,etc , etc.All those signals are integrated in
your hypothalamus and than feedback to your liver (and other organs) or it
causes the release of the hormone grehlin making you so agressive for food
that you can kill a dinosaur.

Rough calculation :
6 mmol/l glucose in your blood ; 5 l blood => 6 x 5 = 30 mmol glucose
.Molecular weight of glucose = 180. So 30 mmol glucose = 30 / 1000 * 180 =
5.4 g glucose. Glucose is a carbohydrate so 4 Cal/g . Or in your blood is
a total of : 5.4 x 4 = 20 calories. You need 2000 calories per day , or
2000 /24 = 80 calories per h in total.Your large brain consumes 20% !!!!!
of your energy.Evolution pays this price because it proved to be worth ;
the dinosaur died out because humans hunted it to extinction.Speers and
cooperation made posssible by their large brains.Or your brain needs 80 x
20 / 100 = 16 cal / h

So your brain runs about 20 / 16 = 1 h on the glucose present in all your
blood...... What happens of course is that the signalling network will
restore the glucose concentration in your blood if it falls only slightly
below the set point of 6 mmol/l.That is if all is functioning
correctly..... If the signalling network is broke than it depends on where
the fault is what will happen of course....

Your brain is a very mighty and selfish organ.It will command your liver
via a direct nerve link to make glucose and dump it in your blood.If there
is no glycogen or fat than your muscle is broken down....The strange thing
is that your brain wants to run on glucose.But by "brain" most people mean
their consious brain , the nerve cells or neurons which alow them to type
things in alt.support.diabetes.Those neurons run on ketone bodies ,
lactate and beta hydroxy butyrate.The organ in your skull consists of a
lot of different cells behind the blood/brain barrier.The astrocytes there
were once considered as just the structure,now they are regarded as a sort
of nursing cells for your neurons.Glucose crosses the blood / brain
barrier by passive diffusion , is transported into the astrocytes ,
converted to ketone bodies and than handed over to the neurons for the
production of ATP, energy.... I find it comforting to know that my
contributions to asd are made by the stuff in olive oil , wallnuts and
salmon and not by rice , not even by brown rice :)

If you think hard what happens ? Do you use more energy ???
No you don't !
This question is very difficult to answer
The debate is going on
In the mean time it's like my computer it uses x watts if I just stare at
its desktop but is also uses x wats if I load Matlab and calculate the
eigen structure of a large matrix.The cpu goes from 0 to 100 % but it
still consumes x watt.Here is a recent experiment which is free if you
want to know the details :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18321731?dopt=Citation

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=18321731

Neuroimage. 2008 May 1;40(4):1460-8. Epub 2008 Feb 1.
The cortical energy needed for conscious perception.

The brain's information processing power is limited by its energy supply
but the allocation of cortical energy use between conscious and
unconscious information processing is unknown. We calculate, from
electrophysiological data in primates, that conscious perception reflects
surprisingly small local alterations in mean cortical neuronal firing rate
and energy consumption: perceiving visual stimulus movement, altered
tactile vibration frequency, or tone stream separation, changes local
cortical energy use by less than 6%. Our estimations of energy use suggest
that a "design strategy", of encoding signals using separate neurons that
increase and decrease their firing rate, serves to minimise changes of
energy use in the cortical areas mediating perception and may result in
stimulus perception failing to be detected by BOLD functional imaging.

PMCID: PMC2330065

So thinking hard to repair the water pump did not increase the energy need
for your , consious , brain.My guess : you got interested in the problem
you got more adrenalin in your blood and your body got in the flee or
fight mode to kill the dinosaur.The signalling network in your body should
have coped with all the details like the amount of glucose and insulin
needed to do the job.What happend to you depends of course on where and
what part of your signalling network is not working optimally....

hth
Gys
Thanks for the detailed explanation, Gys!

I think my problem here is that I have never researched the "mechanisms"
behind diabetes, and expected a simple answer. I have printed out your
comments and will read them thoroughly and attempt to understand them - with
the help of my more medically savvy wife Lin.

Thank you once again!

Henry.


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