How Sweet It Isn’t!

My objective in this article is to convince each of you that the sweets in your diet are toxic.  As the late Jack LaLanne, who was fit and active into his late 90s and hadn’t eaten processed sugar in over 80 years said, “If it tastes good, spit it out!”

We are told about “moderation in all things…”

• But what if something is damaging to your cells and causes aging and disease?
• Then how much cyanide should we take in every day?
• What about arsenic, lead, or mercury? What if they tasted really good, or made us feel good?
• Then what is the moderation limit?
• Would we then consume these toxins until they caused disease or death?

Yet, this is exactly how we view moderation of sweet things.

The convincing reason I take this position is because I deal with the results of toxic effects of sweeteners in the diet every day.  People who eat sweets come to me for treatment of preventable diseases.  As sugar consumption increases, so does disease.  “Addict” is how many of my patients describe themselves. In fact, in one study, rats preferred sugar and saccharine to cocaine! (1) Perhaps the addict description fits!

Sugar

In 1970, the average person ate around 30 pounds of sugar per year!  However, today the average American eats his weight in sugar every year!  This is because sugar is now added to everything.  There are no longer just sweet foods and salty foods; now even the “salty” foods are filled with sugar.  The taste of sweet gets people coming back for more and more.  Sugar sells!  But, sugar isn’t healthy — even in small amounts.

The toxicity of sugar is similar to alcohol.  When a person drinks alcohol it goes to the liver and causes damage — always.  Any chemical that causes damage to cells in the body is called a toxin, or poison.  There is no lower limit to prevent damage because every drop is toxic.  People continue to drink alcohol and don’t notice the toxic effects because the liver regenerates rather quickly.  Cirrhosis, or scarring of the liver, only happens when the amount of alcohol consumed exceeds the ability for the liver to detoxify it.

It’s easy for us to understand that alcohol is a toxin because we all know alcoholics and the damage it can cause.  What is less understood is that sugar is just as toxic.  Every little bit of sugar is addictive and toxic to the body as alcohol.  We don’t notice small amounts of sugar poison in our body because the damage is minute; nevertheless, sugar is disruptive and damaging.  When the body uses sugar for energy the by-product is inflammation caused by free radicals.  As we continue to eat sugar, or eat more of it, we may begin to notice some of the toxic effects:

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  Inflammation
• Pain
• Hypertension
• Elevated cholesterol
• Gout
• Atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries)
• Aging
• Diabetes
• Neuropathy (nerve damage)
• Metabolic syndrome
• Obesity
• Yeast (Candida)
• Caries (tooth decay)
• Arthritis
• Nephropathy (kidney failure)
• Retinopathy (blindness)

If we start thinking about it, then we may know people who have had amputations of feet, have gone blind, or are on dialysis because of eating toxic sugar.  These diseases were considered by the ancients to be the diseases of kings. Only royalty could get enough sugar to cause gout or diabetes; peasants didn’t have enough money to buy such things.  Now, just the opposite is true.  Everyone can afford sweets. In fact, sugary treats are cheaper than real food so those who have less money are more likely to be stricken with disease.

In using the word “sugar,” it should be clear that I mean all natural sweeteners including, but not limited to:

• Sucrose, or white sugar, table sugar, brown sugar, and all cane and beet sugar derivatives
• Honey
• Molasses
• Maple syrup
• Corn syrup, including high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), or corn sweetener
• Fructose
• Glucose
• Brown rice syrup
• Tapioca syrup

There are so many natural sweeteners I won’t name them all, but you get the idea.  In spite of being “natural,” these still cause problems in the body for the reasons I’ll discuss later.

Artificial sweeteners

Because people started worrying about calories, we were told that we could imbibe non-caloric sweeteners with impunity and not get the toxic ill-effects of all those calories from the sugars above.  They were wrong!

An eight-year study by Sharon P. Fowler, MPH, and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio showed, again, that diet drinks cause more weight gain than sugar.

“What didn’t surprise us was that total soft drink use was linked to overweight and obesity,” Fowler tells WebMD. “What was surprising was when we looked at people only drinking diet soft drinks, their risk of obesity was even higher.”

For regular soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

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  26% for up to 1/2 can each day
• 30.4% for 1/2 to one can each day
• 32.8% for 1 to 2 cans each day
• 47.2% for more than 2 cans each day.

For diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

• 36.5% for up to 1/2 can each day
• 37.5% for 1/2 to one can each day
• 54.5% for 1 to 2 cans each day
• 57.1% for more than 2 cans each day.

For each can of diet soft drink consumed each day, a person’s risk of obesity went up 41%. (2)

We will discuss below why the rate of obesity increases with consumption of diet soda. It’s not a mystery.  Cattle ranchers know this well.  Just prior to slaughter, ranchers fatten-up their cattle with neotame (a more potent form of aspartame).  Though neotame has no calories, it causes the cattle to put on much more fat, bringing in a higher price.

Natural sweets

We think we may be safe by getting off of the processed sugar and chemical sweeteners… but we still have natural sweets like fruit or juice.  I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but all sweet things increase the blood sugar and have effects on insulin, adrenal hormones and weight gain.

I am suggesting that everything you’ve been told about “natural” sweeteners isn’t true.  We are told that stevia, for example, is good for you.

• Yes, stevia is natural.
• Yes, stevia is a plant extract.
• Yes, stevia doesn’t have calories.
• In spite of all this, however, stevia still has the ill effects of all things sweet.

Even fruit and juice cause obesity.  Let me explain:

A 22-year-old woman who had a hormone abnormality came in because she was gaining weight on a 1000-Calorie-per-day diet.  I didn’t believe it so I had her write down everything she ate for two weeks.  When she returned, her record showed she was absolutely correct! She had both gained weight and was eating only 1000 calories per day.  However, we found that she was eating lots of fruit between her small meals, which was keeping her insulin levels high and making her hold on to fat.  Once she gave up the fruit, she started losing weight.

Even natural sweets will make you put on fat.  This happens because the hormone insulin tells your cells to burn only sugar, not fat.  Those people who are “insulin resistant” often need to give up anything that tastes sweet.  The reason for this is because there are taste buds in your intestines that detect sweetness and release insulin into your blood.

Hormones make you fat!

Your metabolism is controlled by hormones.  This is why you could have two people eating exactly the same things and one gets fatter while the other gets thinner.  How could this be if “counting calories” worked?  Well, take a look around.  Obesity is rampant, and I would like to tell you why.  It’s the hormones, primarily insulin and cortisol.

In other words, all these years we have been counting calories and getting fatter for a reason.  We were told that fat has nine calories per gram, and sugar only four so it would make sense that we should eat more sugar and less fat.  So, as people listened to this and applied it, they became fatter and fatter.  All the doctors and nutrition experts are scratching their heads and wondering, “WHY?”  Now we know.  It’s not the calories, it’s the hormones!

Let’s look at the effects of insulin:

• Insulin tells all the cells in your body to use sugar for energy.
• Insulin stops your cells from using fat for energy.
• Insulin tells the fat cells to bring in fat.
• Insulin stops the fat cells from letting go of fat.

Now, let’s look at cortisol, the stress hormone:

• Cortisol makes you more resistant to insulin.
• Cortisol raises your insulin levels, causing all of the problems above.
• Cortisol makes you resistant to leptin, so you don’t feel satiated.
• Cortisol stimulates more ghrelin so you feel hungry and crave starch, sugar, and sweets.

If you understand this and know that artificial sweeteners are hundreds to thousands of times sweeter than sugar, then you will understand why they stimulate more insulin to be produced causing more weight gain.  This is why diet drinks with no calories cause more weight gain than sugary drinks.  It’s the hormones!

Home Cures That Work!

Ok, now that you know why everything that tastes sweet causes metabolic problems, including obesity, you should stop counting calories and start changing your hormones.

Cortisol

There are several preparations designed to keep the cortisol levels down.  Most of these are herbs that are called “adaptagens” because they help the adrenal glands “adapt” to stress.  A few of these include:

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  Ginseng
• Ashwagandha
• Licorice root
• Eluthero
• Phosphatidylserine (PS)

Lowering stress is important for keeping the cortisol down.  I’m not going to go into a long diatribe about stress-reduction.  However, I will say that any stimulants increase stress hormones and may, in some people, contribute to increased cortisol:

• Caffeine
• Energy drinks
• Sugar

Insulin

I have found that the easiest way for a person to get off the obesity merry-go-round is to cut out all things sweet.  The principles of insulin secretion are approximated by the following formula:

• Every time you eat, even a little snack, you release insulin.
• If you eat carbohydrates (starch), then you release about twice as much insulin.
• If you include something sweet-tasting, then you release three times as much insulin.

Now, this isn’t exact.  Those who are insulin-resistant may release many times more, but this is a guide to help you understand why you should avoid sweets.

So, based on these principles, we could make a plan:

• Eat fewer meals, avoid snacks and fast periodically.
• Eat less starch and don’t eat any processed grains or prepared cereals.
• Avoid the taste of sweet.

Are you convinced?  Did I pop all the bubbles?  Do you understand why our nation is getting more obese and having more health problems?  If you want to have a healthy body and avoid all the diseases of aging and obesity, then you must avoid toxic sugar — and especially avoid all artificial sweeteners.

The simple way to look at this, and the way I personally do it, is to cut-out all processed sugars, starches, and artificial sweeteners (including Stevia).  This is what Jack LaLanne did as well.  Drink only water.  If you crave something sweet, eat fruit that is in season, which also has lots of nutrients and fiber.  Avoid juice that you don’t make yourself.  But, be careful, too much fruit can make you as fat as any other sweet thing.

I found that getting off of sweet things has increased my enjoyment of foods.  Things that I didn’t expect, such as being able to taste the sweetness of a raw almond, or a carrot.  I get a good cherry and find it better than candy.  Every cherry has a slightly different flavor – try getting that from Skittles or M&M’s!

Do you notice the toxic effect of sugar on your body?

More Articles You Might Enjoy:

• Taking Back Your Life From Adrenal Fatigue
  
• 10 Myths That Obese People Believe And How To Overcome Them
  
• Make Your Water More Nutritious and Delicious!
  

 

 

Sources:
(1)  Ahmed SH, Guillem K, Vandaele Y. Sugar addiction: pushing the drug-sugar analogy to the limit. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2013 May 27. 2013
(2)  http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20050613/drink-more-diet-soda-gain-more-weight