Let’s say you eat a bowl of dal rice.
You loved it, and you got two extra bowls…
And you’re REALLY full.
B : Within 30 minutes, your body might start a process that could lead to a heart attack 15 years from now in your arteries.
Here’s how the journey looks.
Stop 1 - Your Stomach and Small Intestine (The Breakdown)
Your digestive system breaks down that rice into glucose
This glucose gets absorbed through your intestinal wall and floods into your bloodstream.
Your blood sugar spikes.
Your body now has to deal with this sugar surge somehow.
This is where the journey toward your arteries begins.
Stop 2 - Your Liver (The VLDL Factory)
Your liver converts glucose into glycogen. But it can only store a limited amount of glycogen. The rest goes into your skeletal muscles
BUT, When glucose floods your liver, like what happens if you just ate a big bowl of rice, it has to convert way more than your liver can store.
Now, one way to increase your glycogen stores is by building more muscle mass. And we don’t mean that you need to look like a bodybuilder. You just need to make sure you’re training hard enough to keep your muscles strong.
We talk about this more in our article mentioned below.
Required Reading → How Your Muscles Help Improve Insulin Sensitivity
So, now your liver converts the excess glucose into fat.
This happens due to De novo lipogenesis (DNL). It’s the pathway which is upregulated when glycogen stores are full and carb intake is high.
DNL is limited in healthy humans but becomes more active in insulin-resistant, overfed, or sedentary people
Now, your liver then packages this newly-made fat into particles called VLDL (Very Low-Density Lipoprotein).
Think of VLDL as delivery trucks loaded with fat, heading out into your bloodstream to drop off their cargo throughout your body.
Stop 3 - Your Bloodstream (VLDL Becomes LDL)
These VLDL particles travel through your blood, delivering fat to your tissues.
As they drop off their fat cargo, they become smaller and denser.
Now they're LDL particles (Low-Density Lipoprotein).
These LDL particles are like the empty delivery trucks after they've dropped off most of their load.
But they're still carrying something important - cholesterol.
Stop 4 - Cholesterol + Protein Players (LDL-C, ApoB, and Lp(a))
Each LDL particle carries cholesterol - this is what we call LDL-C (LDL cholesterol).
Each LDL particle also has a protein called ApoB stuck to its surface.
ApoB is the dangerous part. It's like a key that allows LDL particles to penetrate your artery walls.
High carb intake also increases something called Lp(a) , which is an especially sticky type of lipoprotein that's much harder for your body to remove from your arteries. High Lp(a) levels are mostly genetic, but if you eat a bad diet, it can influence downstream effects.
More carbs = more VLDL = more LDL = more ApoB particles = more potential artery damage.
Stop 5 - Inflammation Response
When your blood sugar spikes repeatedly from eating too many carbs, your body treats this as a threat.
Chronic high blood sugar triggers inflammation throughout your body.
This inflammation makes your artery walls more vulnerable to damage.
It's like having an ongoing alarm system that never shuts off.
The inflammation also makes those LDL particles more likely to get oxidized, (basically, they become rancid and toxic.)
This sets up the perfect storm for artery damage.
Stop 6 - Your Artery Walls (Where Plaque Begins)
Those small, dense LDL particles, especially the oxidized ones, can now penetrate your artery walls.
Once inside the artery wall, they trigger your immune system.
White blood cells rush in to clean up these "foreign invaders." But they get overwhelmed and stuck.
Your body tries to contain the damage by building a protective cap over the mess.
This plaque is a mixture of cholesterol, immune cells, and scar tissue.
The chronic inflammation from repeated carb spikes makes this process happen faster and makes the plaques more unstable.
Stop 7 - Your Heart (The Final Destination)
Over time, plaque builds up and narrows your arteries.
And because of that, less blood can flow to your heart muscle.
But what’s next is the scary part.
Those inflamed, unstable plaques can rupture suddenly.
When a plaque ruptures, it causes a blood clot that can completely block blood flow to your heart.
This leads to a heart attack.
Now What Do You Do?
This process is not triggered every time you eat carbohydrates,
But, as you eat excess carbohydrates over a period of time, this process gets triggered.
Your body converts those carbs into the particles that build arterial plaque.
The inflammation from repeated blood sugar spikes makes the whole process worse and more dangerous.
Now, you don’t have to avoid carbs completely.
You just need to understand what happens when you eat too many, too often.
Your heart pays the price for every extra bowl of rice, every extra roti, every sugary snack.
But now you know the journey. And knowing the journey helps you make smarter choices about what you put on your plate.
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