It’s hardly “Breaking News”; we’ve all heard it 1000 times over. Everyone knows it’s very unhealthy, not to mention potentially disease causing, to overindulge in this common food additive. But regardless of this fact, sugar, especially highly refined sugars, remain a common additive to the majority of processed foods available today. Even “non-sweet” foods like condiments often contain massive amounts of sugar.
What Sugar does in your body:
It robs your body of Essential Nutrients. Why? – Because in the first place, sugar is totally void of nutrients. We call it “empty calories” because it contains ONLY calories and little else: no fiber, no vitamins, no proteins, fats, enzymes… Empty calorie consumption results in a loss of nutrients for 2 reasons:
1) If you’re eating that much empty food, there’s less healthy, nutrient dense food being ingested, and
2) It takes a lot of energy and nutrients for your body to breakdown that sugar – these are taken from healthy cells in your body!
Calcium, Potassium, Magnesium, Sodium are a few nutrients that are used to metabolize the sugar
Consider this: That Calcium & Magnesium are leached from your bones… High sugar = Weak bones/Osteoporosis
Excess consumption may result in tooth decay (Cavities!)
For 2 key reasons:
1) Since teeth composed of minerals like calcium and magnesium, leeching of these nutrients (to help break-down the ingested sugar) means they are not staying in the bones and teeth where they are needed!
2) Sugar, particularly that eaten and drank between meals, sticks to your teeth. Bacteria love sugar, so they move in and start feeding. The bacteria and sugar together decay your teeth.
Sugars build up and toxify your cells, tissues and ultimately your whole body.
Once in the body, simple sugars are very hard to get out of your system. Not only because the body needs to borrow all of those nutrients from your other cells (making those previously healthy cells work less well), also because they are difficult to eliminate.
The accumulated wastes end up building up in your cells and then get stuck in certain body tissues. Waste products are toxic, so these hazardous products accumulate in your organs, decreasing functioning and accelerating cellular aging and death.
Blood Sugar levels become imbalanced.
Sugar is broken down in the digestive tract very quickly, being released into the blood stream from there. What happens is two-fold:
In the short term (right after drinking the slurpee): you get a sudden rush of glucose into the cells which is what’s responsible hyperactivity, feeling of euphoria and excessive energy, as well as lack of attention. The high blood glucose levels cause your pancreas to release insulin, which is responsible for getting the glucose out of the blood and into the cells. All of that glucose suddenly exiting the blood results in hypoglycemia, which can have symptoms like lethargy and fatigue, headache, moodiness, etc.
In the long term, if this up-down cycle is repeated frequently, the body becomes less able to deal with the high levels of glucose, and chronic signs of hyperglycemia (including increased thirst, hunger and excessive urination, not to mention weight loss, numbness and tingling in the feet, blurred vision, etc) can occur. This can eventually manifest in metabolic syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes, diseases that are becoming extremely prevalent in our population.
Increased frequency of bacterial infections and fungal overgrowth in the body.
Bacteria live on sugar, so when there’s plenty available in your cells, bacteria are well fed.
Not only that, but your immune cells function less well in the nutrient depleted, toxic, sugary environment that’s been created, so they’re less able to protect you from infections, cold and flu and other diseases.
Fungus also loves sugar, leading to more cases of candida, athletes foot, etc.
Even tumor causing and cancerous cells have been shown to grow and spread more quickly in sugary environments!
Some of the conditions that may be directly related to high sugar diets:
Weight Gain and Obesity
Metabolic Syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes
Hypertension (high blood pressure), High LDL-Cholesterol and Heart Disease
Mental-Emotional Imbalance, including Depression
Neurological Damage (nerve damage and death), including Alzheimer’s
Visual Deterioration
Liver Damage
Gastrointestinal Damage
Bone Fragility and Osteoporosis
Decreased Immunity and High rates of Candidiasis and Fungal infections
Cancer
Reading labels in the effort to avoid products with sugar added can be tough too because it goes under many different aliasis. So when you are looking at the ingredient list, keep an eye out, as they include:
Brown sugar, Confectioners sugar, Icing sugar, Invert sugar, Raw sugar, Turbinado sugar, White sugar
Cane crystals, juice or sugar
Corn sweetener or syrup
Crystalline fructose
Dextrose, Fructose, Glucose, Lactose, Maltose, Sucrose
Evaporated cane juice
Fruit juice concentrates
High-fructose corn syrup
Malt syrup
Molasses
Malitol, Sorbitol
Syrup
Thankfully, there are good replacements for these highly processed sugars and they’re easily obtainable in health food stores/isles. These sweeten your foods and have the benefit of all containing various amounts of minerals and vitamins. A few examples include:
Coconut palm sugar (low glycemic index coconut flower extract).
Substitute it 1:1 for regular sugar in recipes.
Date sugar (just ground up dates – a fruit!).
Honey (natural product made by bees from pollen – try to get a local, unpasteurized variety)
Maple syrup (natural tree sap)
Stevia(a herb – available as a powder or liquid, or better yet - buy a plant - pictured left - and use the leaves themselves in your tea!). It has zero calories or carbohydrates so it doesn’t affect blood sugar levels!
It’s 30-300x sweeter than sugar – so start with small amounts
Xylitol (sugar alcohol extracted from fruit & vegetable fibers)
A few (sad) statistics about sugar:
Sugar (of any kind) is the #1 food additive in Canada.
The average Canadian gets about 20 per cent of their daily calories from added sugar.
On average, Canadians consume 110 grams of sugar/day, which is about 26 teaspoons.
Highest consumption: Teenage boys aged 14 to 18, at 41 teaspoons.
Lowest consumption: Women aged 71 and over, at 20 teaspoons.
In Health
Dr Katarine Holewa, ND
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