Re: Carbs - only part of the picture

[Susan Evans Garlinghouse <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

> Ain't necessarily so. The latest nutrition science in human marathoners is
> leaning towards carbs rather than fats or FFAs. Timing isn't difficult, and is
> much easier when working with horses competing for hours instead of minutes.
> All I can suggest is that you actually try using fast-acting carbs, just once,
> to gain a new perspective.

I won't argue with advantages of carbs, but horses do have energy
pathways that humans don't have.  Horses are halfway between being a
monogastric-highly-dependent-on-glucose animal like humans, and halfway
between being a forestomach-fermenter-couldn't-care-less-about-glucose
animal like a cow or sheep, which are totally dependent on VFAs---you
can run gallons of straight glucose into a cow and will get  almost zero
rise in blood glucose, they just take the glucose and turn it all into
volatile fatty acids.  Horses seem to be in between the two---you don't
have the reliance on glucose due to other alternate pathways, but you
can still manipulate blood glucose for enhanced performance.

Susan G