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How is sugar prioritized in the body?

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rga

rga

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Say I've been in keto for a few weeks. My body has adapted to less than 30 grams of carbohydrates a day. Those 30 grams, along with ketones from broken down fat, are being used to power my brain. Muscles are being powered from ketones alone. Then I eat a potato, or a bowl of oatmeal, or even some simple sugars, and introduce a flood of sugar into the body. I want to know how that sugar is processed, and what it's used for. Since all my muscles are probably glycogen starved, is the sugar rushed into the muscles first? Does the brain use what it can first before the rest of the body has access to it? Is it split equally between these and other things that can use glucose as fuel? I'm curious.
 
There isn't really a basic answer to this question. Your entire body is currently starved for carbohydrate, except that which it makes via gluconeogenesis from amino acids. Therefore the broken down saccharides will go down every pathway imaginable - literally dozens if not hundreds of ways. The muscles, at rest, are built fairly well to run off of fat (I think ~80% fat oxidation, 20% carbohydrate metabolism at rest in normal situations). Carbohydrate isn't just used for energy, but can also be used to create certain compounds within the body for maintenance (glycoproteins, glycoaminoglycans, and many more). So literally, because you're in a starved state for carbohydrate, if you eat a potato, the simple broken down constituents will go down every pathway.
 
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