As I understand it honey is mostly fructose rather than glucose. Table sugar is half fructose and half glucose.

Fructose is processed in the body differently. It is directly processed by the liver. It does not raise the blood sugar level as badly as glucose but it is much worse at causeing fatty liver because most of the fructose gets stored as fat in the liver.

The big problem with conventional diabetes treatment is they treat it as a blood sugar disease. Keep the blood sugar low we are told and we will be ok. But that is not true. The root cause of the disease is really a problem of insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia. Excessive insulin needed to keep the blood sugar low. By focusing only on the blood sugar level it ignores the other problems created by chronic high insulin levels. Like obesity and fatty liver disease. High fructose consumption exacerbates diabetes because it causes insulin resistance in the liver.

So while the honey may not spike his blood sugar levels as much as sugar or even bread, it is doing damage to his liver and internal organs because of the fat it creates in and around these organs. Fructose in excessive amounts can be more damaging to the health than excessive glucose even though it does not raise blood sugar levels excessively.

If a person is relatively thin and trim but has a bit of a pot belly and expanded belt line, they probably have a fatty liver. Excessive fructose essentially is processed by the liver in a similar manner as alcohol and will cause the same problem as excessive alcohol consumption. One is called Fatty Liver Disease. Excessive fructose leads to NAFLD, Non Alcohol Fatty Liver Disease.

A tiny bit once a day in his coffee is probably not a killer. But consuming lots of fruit and honey by a diabetic is not doing them any good. If he is already getting eye degradation, imagine what is happening with his internal organs that he can't see. Bananas, apples, all the high sugar/fructose fruit is not a healthy option for diabetics. And likely not for healthy people if over consumed. Evolutionarily we did not have high sugar fruits or honey year round. We may have gorged on it during the fall (and became temporarily insulin resistant to gain fat for winter) but we did not have 365 day access to fruits and honey like we do today in modern grocery stores. And fruits of today are bred to be excessively sweet, very high in fructose.

At least that is my understanding. But don't listen to me, listen to doctors that know.

Dr Jason Fung, the problem with fructose.

Around the middle of his talk Fetke gets to a short version of the metabolism of fructose and says we have only known of this mechanism since 2010. So any textbooks written before then are wrong.

Gary Fetke on fruit and fructose

Dr Gary Fetke is an especially outspoken critic of fructose.

John

Here is one in an interview style where he talks about the seasonality of fruit being at the same time as we evolutionarily would have had high levels of sun exposure and vitamin D. The high levels of vitamin D would have helped offset the oxidation caused by the high fructose levels. The audio is not too good and I have a hard time catching all of what he says, but the interview style lets him go into the nooks and crannies of the research he has done on the subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS-SijKMAdA

John

I had to look it up. I thought it was higher in fructose than glucose. It is but only by a little bit.

Basically there is little difference between honey, table sugar and high fructose corn syrup. A few percentage points one way or the other, but basically the same as far as the body is concerned. I also did not realize that HFCS comes in two different versions.

Honey: The main sugars are fructose 38%, glucose 31%, maltose 7%, sucrose 1.3%, other sugars 1.5%.

HFCS: 55% and 42% fructose versions. Though I do not know how prevalent the 42% version is.

Table sugar is half fructose and half glucose.

Fruits are broken down into varying amounts of fructose vs glucose, depending on the fruit.

Or like the one article says, sugar is sugar is sugar.

Fructose is the one component that if excess is consumed is hard on the liver. At least most complex carbohydrates are just broken down into glucose molecules.

John

I have heard multiple doctors say that we only have about the equivalent of one teaspoon of sugar circulating in our blood at any time. Anything more than that consumed has to be dealt with and changed into some other form that will not cause harm by raising blood levels too high (most that is not needed for immediate energy gets stored as fat if insulin levels are high). That kind of puts it into perspective when a person starts considering how many teaspoons of sugar are in common foods like a slice of bread.

https://davidduke.com/how-many-teaspoons-of-sugar-in-two-thin-slices-of-whole-wheat-bread/

"How many teaspoons of sugar are in two thin slices of supposedly healthy whole grain bread?

Hold onto your hat. Ten (10) teaspoons of sugar.

Now how many teaspoons of sugar are in that very sweet tasting snickers bar?

8.5 teaspoons of sugar."

I used to love Snickers bars but knew they were bad for me. But once in a great while I would have one (if I was in a store and felt my blood sugar going low that was a go to solution). Check my sugar level and it would not be as bad as I expected. Well once a person considers how much "sugar" is in two slices of bread, no wonder the sugar spike in my blood for a Snickers bar was no worse than eating a sandwich. That is the thing about knowledge. Once a person understands something the pieces start falling into place about why things happen. Once I actually understood my diabetes starting about 14 or 15 months ago, it became much easier to manage. I thought I knew about it pretty well before that time (I had learned to manage my insulin injections over many years). But I did not understand the root cause of the diabetes (consumption of excess carbohydrates and eating too often over a long period of time causing insulin resistance). Once I understood the root cause of the disease, I was able to reverse the disease. Knowledge is power. Or at least once the knowledge is applied it becomes powerful.

How many teaspoons of sugar...

John

Think hormones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDyBZ0pRR_4

Artificial sweeteners not so good either.

John

If we take sugar and sugary drinks out of the diet? And nothing else? Well this study was done with obese kids, but I suspect it would apply to adults too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vRhQJxMWuE&t=5s

John

yep,

We usually miss the obvious!

Glycemic index is the key here. The higher the index of the food, the faster it will raise your BG.

Pure honey has a typical ranking of 58 on the scale. But some varieties are even lower. The glycemic index of honey depends on how much fructose is in that particular batch. Honeys that contain 35 to 45 percent fructose, for example, score around 35 to 48 on the glycemic index. White table sugar, also known as sucrose, is higher, with a glycemic index between 58 and 65.
https://www.livestrong.com/article/270875-honey-vs-sugar-glycemic-index/

The fructose does not raise the blood sugar level because it goes to the liver to be processed, mostly into fat. Excess consumption of fructose will cause the same condition as excess alcohol (alcohol is also exclusively processes by the liver), fatty liver.

Blood glucose has been the focus on managing diabetes and the glycemic index is part of that focus. But the root cause of the metabolic problem is insulin resistance and fructose is a big contributor to making the liver insulin resistant. Insulin resistance can vary in its severity in different parts of the body. Most recently it is believed insulin resistance in the brain is related to Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. Some now refer to it as type III diabetes.

Lot of new research on the subject in the last ten to twenty years. A lot of the medical community is that far behind on nutrition information. Some of the pathways have only been discovered recently. Textbooks written earlier do not reflect the new information.

John

I put this up above but will put it here also because it has some great information about fructose. The whole video is outstanding, but go to minute 13 and listen for just a few minutes to get the bottom line on fructose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2nfiNjcKx8

John