This Popular Drink May Be Almost as Hazardous to Your Health as Soda.

Dr. Richard Johnson is the chief of the division of kidney disease and hypertension at the University of Colorado, and author of The Sugar Fix, one of the best books on the market on the dangers of fructose.

As one of the physicians on the cutting edge of sugar metabolism research today, his focus is on how the overabundance of sugar in the American diet -- particularly fructose -- is causing obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and a number of other health problems.

The answer to the question in the headline is fruit juice. But before I explain why fruit juice may be as hazardous to your health as soda, let me first give you some background information.

Fructose has become one of my newest health passions for a number of reasons. It is really not well understood how pervasive a negative influence this sugar has on people’s health, but even more importantly, it is something that we can easily change, by influencing the food industry to replace it with something healthier.

One of the leading researchers in this field is Richard Johnson, MD, who is the chief of the division of kidney disease and hypertension at the University of Colorado. I’ve previously interviewed Dr. Johnson about his research into the health dangers of fructose, specifically how fructose causes high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes.

Here, we continue this discussion, and Dr. Johnson also shares new details of the research he’s been involved with since the last interview.

Information About Fructose From Dr. Richard Johnson (part 1 of 5)

An interesting aside is that at the end of this interview, I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that I had written some of the articles on fructose that he reviewed when he first decided to researched this topic.

It really gave me great joy to know that all the hard work and effort I have put in over the years really is making a difference, not only getting people healthy, but also motivating high integrity scientists to do the right thing.It is worth noting that Dr. Johnson actually endorses Splenda in his book, The Sugar Fix, which was written prior to us getting to know each other, but I recently sent him my book Sweet Deception, which outlines the many dangers of artificial sweeteners. He’s a true physician and was eager to review the material and update his knowledge on the subject.

There aren’t many doctors out there with this type of integrity. I really like Dr. Johnson and believe he’s an authentically well-intentioned good guy.

It is not often that a health researcher can open up my eyes to a completely novel and new risk factor for health, as he did with uric acid and fructose, and I will always be grateful to him for that and for his willingness to enlighten us in these interviews.

Uric Acid as a Marker for Fructose Toxicity!

One of the surprising facts discussed in our first interview was how detrimental the impact of fructose is on your uric acid levels. It appears as though that process is essential to the damage that fructose causes, and it’s actually an excellent marker for toxicity from fructose.

According to the latest research in this area, the safest range of uric acid is between 3 and 5.5 milligrams per deciliter, and there appears to be a steady relationship between uric acid levels and blood pressure and cardiovascular risk, even down to the range of 3 to 4 mg/dl.

Dr. Johnson suggests that the ideal uric acid level is probably around 4 mg/dl for men and 3.5 mg/dl for women.

This is actually the only major biochemical marker that I need to optimize at this point in my life, which most likely suggests that I am particularly sensitive to fructose intake and that it’s best for me to keep my levels as low as possible.

This is most likely due to genetics and would explain why most of my paternal relatives have, or have died from, diabetes. That side of the family is most likely particularly sensitive to fructose.

So I would STRONGLY encourage everyone to have their uric acid level checked to find out how sensitive you are to fructose. (I’ll discuss this strategy further, in just a moment.)

As you know, two-thirds of the US population is overweight, and most of these people likely have uric acid levels well above 5.5. Some may even be closer to 10 or above.

Dr. Johnson has developed a program to help people optimize their uric acid levels, and the key step in this program is complete elimination of fructose.

For complete articles...click on link Dr. Johnson on fructose or title of post!