"Tell your doctor his chemistry is wrong, cholesterol and fat are not made from sugar..."

Really? You mean I have it all wrong?

This was a statement said to me by a patient who told his sister to check out my videos (or book, he wasn't sure which one she saw or read); and that was her comment back to him. I would have no problem if this statement was uttered by a layperson, but it turns out she happens to be a pediatrician. This frightened me because as a pediatrician she obviously sees children and if she does not understand the basics of biochemistry she cannot tell the parents the correct way their children should be eating.

Does this scare anyone? It scares the crap out of me and is the reason I so titled my book the way I did.

We have a childhood obesity pandemic, we are seeing diseases we only saw in adults now in children under 10; and this will never change until we start teaching our medical students the correct biochemical approach to eating. We doctors are not the solution, we are the problem and are making it worse.

As I am writing this my Nurse Practitioner saw what I was writing and stated "Well, that makes for an interesting debate?" But I propose that there is no debate. I am dealing with the facts of nutritional biochemistry. It's like debating that 1+1 is not 2, it could be 3 or even 4. Any doctor, nutritionist, or dietitian who thinks that cholesterol and fat production does not start with simple sugars (glucose, fructose) has forgotten their basic foundational biochemistry, period.

You see, it starts with a process called glycolysis which yields a molecule called Acetyl Co A. Turns out, Acetyl CoA is a pivotal biomolecule and can be the starting point for both cholestrol and fat production. Anybody reading this can type in 'glycolysis' in any search box and see the pathway yourself.Then type in Acetyl CoA and see what hits you get. Then review the pathway for cholesterol synthesis and notice what molecule starts the whole process. That's right, Acetyl CoA.

A few weeks ago a good friend of mine Greg e-mailed me because he got into a discussion with a biochemist who told him that cholesterol and fat production does not start with simple sugars. The biochemist, being skeptical not cynical, told Greg he would do a little research and get back to him with his results. After he did his research he notified Greg and stated that he, the biochemist, was wrong and that Greg was indeed correct. The glaringly obvious point is that here's a biochemist who wasn't trained the correct way, even though he studied all the pathways, it just wasn't tied together for him; he had to do that for himself after his 'official' training.

Make no mistake about it, cholesterol and fat production starts with simple sugars. If you do not understand or want to debate me, you are part of the problem, not the solution and you should not be educating people on the correct way to eat!

dr jim 'the shock doc'