SUGAR ADDICTION AND WHAT IT DOES TO YOU
These days conventional wisdom says that the healthiest diet is
plant-based (think The China Study), removes all red meat, and
minimizes animal products.
I disagree.
According to Westin Price (a dentist who researched traditional
diets around the world in the 1930s), the real culprits for Western diseases
are white flour, sugar, and processed vegetable fats. Traditional diets
ranging from almost entirely plant based to almost entirely animal based all
produced healthy populations; it was not until the Western processed foods
listed above infiltrated those societies that their health began to decline.
What Counts as Sugar?
The glycemic index is a measure of how quickly
a particular food turns to sugar in the body. (Glucose is assigned a
glycemic index of 100, and everything else is assigned a number relative to
that.) At the top of the glycemic index list are all things white, especially
processed white flour (including white bread, pancakes, and pastries), most
processed white grains (including white rice, instant oatmeal, popcorn, and
most cereals), and white potatoes, especially potato products (including french
fries, potato chips, and instant mashed potatoes).
Why is Sugar so Bad?
Think of sugar as quick energy. It can get converted into the
currency your body uses for energy very quickly. But your blood can only
accommodate a few tablespoons of sugar at a time. Here’s why.
Picture table sugar – it’s granular and it has relatively rough
edges. If you have too much sugar in your bloodstream over a period of
time, those rough edges nick the walls of your blood vessels and cause
damage. When that happens, your body has to patch up the damage with a
“band-aid,” so that it can heal. The “band-aid” is called LDL (aka “bad”
cholesterol). The more extensive the damage, the more cholesterol you
need to form an adequate band-aid. But with continued high intake of sugar,
over time that LDL plug gets bigger and bigger. Eventually it may impede
blood flow, or the plug can become unstable and break off, traveling to some
other part of the body until it encounters a blood vessel too small to
accommodate it. (This is cardiovascular disease – and it
can lead to heart attacks and strokes.) That’s problem #1 with
too much sugar. (Note that the LDL isn’t the cause of the problem.
Sugar is the real culprit.)
So your body tries to get rid of excess sugar from the
bloodstream in order to minimize this process. Sugar has to get inside
the cells in order to get out of the blood.
Sugar can’t just rush into the cells though – it has to have the
“key “to get in. The key is insulin, and it gets
produced from the pancreas in response to high sugar in the bloodstream.
This works great for awhile… but problems come in when this cycle is
repeated too often, too long. Like a drug addict needing a bigger dose to
achieve the same high, the body will start to require more and more insulin to
keep up with your sugar intake. Eventually, the pancreas can’t keep up with the
demand. This leads to Insulin Resistance and Diabetes. That’s
problem #2 with too much sugar.
Once the sugar gets inside the cells, it can’t be stored in its
present form – it has to be converted from “quick” energy into “potential”
energy — fat (or more precisely, triglycerides.) So sugar also leads
to obesity. That’s problem #3 with too much sugar.
Other prevalent Western diseases include cancer (and
cancer cells consume sugar as energy before the rest of the body, so eating
sugar will feed cancer cells), dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (the link between these and sugar is becoming clearer), IBS (sugar
feeds several of the dysbiotic flora contributing to gas, bloating, and
constipation), and many more.
Why do we eat so much sugar?
Sugar is an addiction, just like alcohol, smoking, and
drugs. This study found that sugar produces
a chemical in the brain called enkephalins, which work much like
opiates (including heroin, morphine, and oxycontin) – that is, they stimulate
the release of dopamine. Most other addictions do the same thing:
dopamine is the neurotransmitter in the brain linked to pleasure and reward.
Are you addicted?
Here’s a few questions to ask yourself in order to find out.
- Do you use sugar and foods that
act like sugar (with a high glycemic index) to make you feel better after
a bad day?
- Do you crave sugar or high
glycemic index foods?
- Do you think lower glycemic index
foods taste bland, and feel the need to add sweetener?
- Have you ever tried to avoid sugar
and found that either you couldn’t, or once you tasted something sweet you
felt compelled to consume all of it?
- Do you use sugar, and foods that
act like sugar, as a reward for yourself?
If you answered yes to several of the questions above, you are
far from alone! Although it is not an easy habit to break (they never
are), it is one of the very best choices that you can make for your health.
READ ALSO: 5 Diet To Follow If You Want To Be Stronger
SOURCE:www.drlaurendeville.com
DR. APPIAH
Dr. Appiah is a Natural Health Therapist (Naturopath) who engages the natural healing agents given by God to save lives. EAT FOOD AS MEDICINE! EAT TO LIVE, DON'T LIVE TO EAT!! FOR BOOKINGS AND MORE: WANT TO ADVERTISE YOUR PRODUCTS? WANT A PERSONAL(CERTIFIED) NATURAL MEDICINE PRACTITIONER? REACH ME DIRECTLY ON WHATSAPP +233245643615 appiahinok@gmail.com
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