What does the body do with excess glucose?

A place to get your questions answered from McDougall staff dietitian, Jeff Novick, MS, RDN.

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What does the body do with excess glucose?

Postby Doug_ » Sun Jun 11, 2017 5:08 pm

Jeff, I guess I need a physiology text book because it seems difficult to find good answers to some of my curiosities via google search. If you have a decent answer to this, I'd be interested to know.

When someone eats a large but truly low-fat meal of starch, and at some point their glycogen stores fill up while there remains an excess of glucose in the blood, what, if anything, does a healthy body do to reduce the high blood glucose quickly at that point? Does the blood sugar just remain high until the muscles and organs free up space for more glycogen storage? I know when the liver is bombarded by excess fructose, it converts it to triglyceride. Is blood glucose (even just as digested starch) different in that regard?

Of course, someone eating minimally processed whole food sources of starch is probably unlikely to digest it so quickly that the body can't process it in time, but I'm talking about just plain overeating to the point that this does happen. Or, heaven forbid, they consume it as some refined source of glucose like rice syrup (dextrose/maltose) or something.
Doug_
 
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