Food That Heal On FLOW: Carbohydrates Athletic Performance

Hi, this is Dr. Steve Gangemi. In this second part of food groups that heal, I want to discuss carbohydrates. So carbohydrates are pretty much the majority of people’s diets. There’s good carbs, and there’s bad carbs. So we have our good carbohydrates, these are ones that occur naturally in nature. We have our fruits, our vegetables, our grains, such as, you know, wheat and corn. We have our tubers, which are potatoes, sweet potatoes, things that grow underground primarily, and these carbohydrates tend to be higher in sugar levels than the typical vegetables that we associate with, like green leafy vegetables. Fruits, obviously very high in antioxidants with vegetables.

So vegetables are probably the foods that we should be eating the most amount of during the day, regardless of how hard we’re training. Followed by fruits, depending on your training levels. Again, the harder you’re training, the more glycogen or stored sugar levels you’re burning up, the higher your intensity. Then you need to replace these, and you can do that with fruit, you can do that with some whole grains. But unfortunately a lot of these grains end up being refined and can cause health problems if they’re used too often and too frequently.

So the bad carbs are the carbohydrates that have typically been refined from their whole grains, or from their natural source. So we take, say, sugar cane in its natural source, again not that you want to eat too much of it. But then we make high fructose corn syrup, or we basically bleach the sugars and use them in many products such as sodas and all the sweets and treats that many people eat throughout the day. These end up disturbing hormonal levels, give you high insulin levels, will cause you to be fatigued throughout the day and not perform optimally, both mentally and physically.

Then we have all the whole grains that are also in the refined sources…it’s very hard to get a whole grain wheat product today…even though a lot of products talk about how they are whole grain, they’re really refined. They came from whole grains, and then when we put them through a refining process, we strip away all the vitamins and minerals out of them. We strip away the fiber, we bleach them, we process them, and then we like to put synthetic vitamins back in there, which is a huge problem, because those vitamins aren’t the same in their synthetic form than they were in the natural source.

So if you see where it’s like bleached white flours, if you see, well, really any white flours to that extent, or white sugars, try and stay away from them as best you can. It doesn’t mean you should never eat pizza, or a pasta, or anything like that. But you want to limit these foods to the best of your ability, including obviously the white sugars. And you see a lot of high fructose corn syrup, which is more plentiful in America than it is in other countries.

So remember, when you think about carbohydrates, think about a lot of vegetables, think about some fruit during the day. It’s not several pieces of fruit during the day, but you know, one or two, more if you’re working out hard, less of you’re not, and they’re whole-source. Not fruit juice, even concentrated fruit juice that might only be from the fruit itself. It’s a stall, a high sugar level, a high fructose level rush at that time when you consume that. Think about grains in their whole natural source if you can get them, or rice, corn if it’s not modified, genetically modified. Think about potatoes, sweet potatoes, those sorts of products, depending on your exercise intensity level throughout the day. But ideally less is more when it comes to most of the starchy carbohydrates.
 

Dr. Stephen Gangemi "Sock Doc"

I'm a board-certified chiropractic physician and clinical nutritionist with a passion for true natural health care. I implement dietary & nutritional therapies, exercise & movement practices, and lifestyle changes along with manual therapy techniques to help the body heal and prevent illness and injuries.