Fascinating Aspects of Glycobiology—Part 10 (Primary Vs Backup)

Larry A. Law

The body is an amazing machine! It is finely tuned to ensure balance between each system. There are primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary backup systems to ensure our bodies are capable of functioning optimally. They all work together through a sophisticated feedback system that regulates and balances metabolic pathways like an accelerator and brake in a car. Speeding up and slowing down our metabolism and biochemistry is how the body regulates itself to keep things in order. 

Primary System

The preferred system is always the primary system. This means that what comes through the mouth to supply the body is the primary system as depicted above. It is the most efficient and direct path. The digestive system is tailor-made to extract nutrition from the things we eat. Proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates are disassembled from the complex food matrix of food. Stomach acid breaks down protein into amino acids. Fatty acids are broken down from lipid macromolecules. Polysaccharides are broken down into monosaccharides by bacteria in the gut so they can enter the bloodstream and nourish our bodies.

Throughout the 20th century, medical science thought sugar was only good for energy production and that glucose was the only necessary sugar. The other sugars had tight beta bonds binding them together. There were no enzymes in the stomach capable of breaking down these beta bonds. Scientists thought there was no reason to include these glycobiology sugars in our diet, as they would just pass through the kidneys. They represented 'expensive urine.' It wasn't until 2007 that scientists demonstrated that while there are no stomach enzymes capable of breaking these beta-bonded sugars down into individual monosaccharides, the bacteria in our intestinal tract did! The primary system for eating sugar nutrients was validated. What the medical system had concluded as a scientific fact for years and years was not true. People had benefited from sugar nutrients for millennia.

Six of the eight sugars are shown below forming glycoprotein chains. They can be attached to the amino acid asparagine via its nitrogen atom (N-glycans) or the amino acids serine/threonine (S/T) via the oxygen atom (O-glycans). No other amino acids bind the sugar nutrients to form glycoproteins. 

Backup System

The human body does have a backup system to make these critical sugars. In times when we cannot get them in our diet or during famine, the body can keep us alive for a period of time until we can return to the primary system of eating them in our food. Our body makes the seven other glycobiology sugars from glucose using backup enzymatic methods available in the liver. It takes more energy and resources to run backup systems. If the body has to use the backup system to create needed molecules, it will return to the primary system as soon as it can because of the inefficiencies involved and the increased energy required. Anyone who has run a backup generator in place of primary electrical power, knows that it will only run for a short time before it runs out of gas. It is not designed to run like the primary system.

It takes approximately 37 enzymatic reactions to convert glucose into another sugar. What happens if you are missing an enzyme or if the process doesn't work right? It won't be the same as the real thing. So much of our diet is ultra-processed food and has the sugar nutrients stripped away. Our backup systems run all the time. Eventually, they can only limp along and eventually burn out. The backup system never gets to rest and recharge. The system can begin to fail over a number of years without you noticing. Eventually, various symptoms begin to manifest. We think we are just getting old, but we were never designed to get sick at such early ages as we see today. We were designed to live healthy until the last day of our life—not decline in a decades-long spiral of sickness and disease. Growing tiredness, lack of mental clarity, darker moods, and every disease known to mankind are the symptoms of missing glycans. Many cancers grow without causing pain. We don't realize things are not working properly until the cancer has grown large enough to raise a red flag of concern.

​A view of glycosylation (the process that adds sugars to build glycoproteins and glycolipids) is shown below. The process is depicted travelling from the endoplasmic reticulum through the various stages of the golgi apparatus. Asparagine (Asn) is the amino acid forming the base of the flag pole for the flag of sugars to be attached.
​

Hope

Early detection is not prevention. Once we know about the science of glycobiology, we can take action to minimize our risks of disease. We can strengthen our immune systems and return to vitality. Adding these sugar nutrients back into your diet through the food eaten and incorporating plant-based supplementation results in an energy increase and a sense of well-being. You can feel the difference. Your body begins to heal and repair. It takes time (about a month for every year you've been sick), but it is real. It is the work of AngiesOptionGRM.org.