Korean Job Discussion Forums

[KimchiNinja]

Sugar and White Carbs --> Increased Triglycerides

Increased Triglycerides --> Cognitive Impairment

Therefore, carbs make you stupid.

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Obesity and Hypertriglyceridemia Produce Cognitive Impairment

"OBESITY IS EPIDEMIC within the Western world. Studies in humans have found an association between obesity and poor cognitive performance. The mechanism(s) by which obesity results in cognitive impairment are uncer- tain. Postulated mechanisms include the effects of hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, and vascular damage to the central nervous system...

Here we determined whether triglycerides might also account for the cognitive impairments associated with obesity...

We found that cognitive impairments could be produced in mice with diet-induced obesity, reversed pharmacologically by lowering triglycerides, and induced by direct injection of triglycerides into the brain...

These findings show that triglycerides are likely one mechanism by which obesity can induce cognitive impairments."

http://endo.endojournals.org/content/149/5/2628.full.pdf

[Kuros]

There are a great many carbs that do not fall into the simple carbohydrates category.

I move to amend the OP's title to "Simple carbs make you stupid."

[berniebennybernard]

Impossible! Asians all eat a lot of carbs, and we all excel in math and the sciences!

(sarcsam)

[World Traveler]

White rice is a simple carb. I think Asians are better able to handle white rice with its high glycemic index than white people. Why? Because they grew up eating it while their bodies were developing. Also, Asians have different intestinal tracks than white people (longer, more folds...or something like that). If you are a white person, eating white rice is a bad idea. I'm warning you guys.

[Deja]

Because they ate it more? I thought the human pancreas has a limited amount of insulin it can produce in a lifetime. Thus it would not make sense to say eating more carbs earlier is better.

But Asians do tend to be more physically active, which means better insulin response, i.e. lower insulin resistance, i.e. less insulin produced for the same amount of carbs.

[World Traveler]

I notice that when white people eat white rice they get fat.

Have you seen how overweight most of the Western expats are here?

[12ax7]

[World Traveler]

Yes. Beer is a simple carb and is also unhealthy. Alcohol can mess with a person's metabolism and testosterone levels too. Yeah, I think a lot of expats here are heavy boozers, and not just the newbs.

But...white rice is a contributing factor too I think.

http://www.shape.com/healthy-eating/diet-tips/7-foods-nutritionist-would-never-eat

[KimchiNinja]

Keep in mind Koreans don't like sugar (not the way Americans do), and don't even really have desert. If you aren't eating 130lbs of sugar a year, and not much bread either, and not much milk...then some rice probably isn't enough to trigger stupidity.

That's how I explain the Korean paradox, as well as adaptation over thousands of years.

Also agree with the poster who said white rice isn't a good idea for whities. I thought otherwise and have admitted I was wrong.

[Jyang486]

[Kepler]

So are carbs and alcohol evil? Two anthropologists argue that there have been a lot of genetic adaptions among certain populations to these sources of calories since Stone Age times:

"Some of the protective changes took the form of new versions of genes involved in insulin regulation. Researchers in Iceland have found that new variants of a gene regulating blood sugar protect against diabetes. Those variants have different ages in the three populations studied (Europeans, Asians, Sub-Saharan Africans), and in each population the protective variant is as roughly as old as agriculture. Alcoholic drinks, also part of the new diet, had plenty of bad side effects, and in East Asia there are strongly selected alleles that are known to materially reduce the risk of alcoholism....

"Populations that have never farmed or haven't farmed for long, such as Australian Aborigines and many Amerindians, have characteristic health problems when exposed to western diets. The most severe such problem currently is a high incidence of Type 2 diabetes. Low physical activity certainly contributes to that problem today, but genetic vulnerability is a big part of the story: Navajo couch potatoes are far more likely to get adult-onset diabetes than German or Chinese couch potatoes....

"Most populations that are highly vulnerable to type 2 diabetes also have increased risks of alcoholism. This is no coincidence. It's not that the same biochemistry underlies both conditions, but that both stem from the same ultimate cause: limited previous exposure to agricultural diets, and thus limited adaptation to such diets.

"FAS [Fetal Alcohol Syndrome] is, however, far more common among some populations than in others: Its prevalence is almost thirty times in African American or Amerindian populations in the United States than it is among Europeans- even though the French, for example, have been known to take a drink or two."
The Ten Thousand Year Explosion

[World Traveler]

How Carbs Can Trigger Food Cravings
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/how-carbs-can-trigger-food-cravings/?src=me&ref=general

[World Traveler]

Uh oh, KimchiNinja, you're not going to like this one...
http://www.fitnea.com/11-intelligence-killing-foods-you-need-to-avoid

[KimchiNinja]

[KimchiNinja]