Slice of Chaotic Life

So today I followed up my idea from yesterday. I walked the same route as yesterday, at roughly the same brisk pace, but I brought with me a bottle with about 2 dl of Pepsi, which would contain 20 grams (0.7 ounces) of cane sugar. (This is European Pepsi – American Pepsi probably uses corn syrup, except for Pepsi Throwback – not sure how easily available that is. Corn syrup is for some reason treated differently by the body, even though the sucrose in cane sugar is a molecular fusion of glucose and fructose, the two ingredients in corn syrup.)

At 50 minutes (out of 80) I stopped and slowly drank the Pepsi, to which I had added a little water before leaving home. (It is strong and fizzy for me in its pure form.) This may have taken as much as 5 minutes, as I waited between each mouthful for my pulse to come back down. Swallowing causes my pulse to go up briefly by 20-30 bpm, I assume this is a human trait but I have never heard of it elsewhere.

When I resumed my walk, my pulse was actually marginally higher than yesterday at the same stretch, and I was breathing more deeply. But this is almost certainly because I was walking faster. The feeling of heavy feet had disappeared! So evidently the body has three different modes in this regard. 1: The muscles use their own storage of glucose. Walking fast is easy, pulse is relatively low. 2: The muscles transfer sugar from the liver. Walking fast is harder, pulse is relatively high. 3: The muscles transfer sugar from the digestive tract. Walking fast is easy, pulse is higher than in mode 1.  This implies that the feeling of heavy feet is somehow triggered by the liver, releasing some kind of signal molecules when it supplies sugar at a fairly rapid speed. I doubt the caffeine level in a full glass of Pepsi is enough to play a role, but I may want to test that some day with a non-caffeinated drink.

I don’t think you can stay in the fat-burning zone endlessly just by adding Pepsi whenever you tire. There is probably a limit. But that limit is not one I am likely to reach. There are people who actually run marathon, I don’t even walk marathon. Even last summer before the ambulance episode, I rarely walked fast for more than two hours. If the stress test on Wednesday shows that I can safely run, I may need to bring a lot more Pepsi though. ^_^