Sugar is sweet and sugar is nice; sugar is the pet name for your sweetheart, or a cute little girl; sugar is the plum fairy dancing around the room. With all these fun images in our heads, it is hard to imagine that there might be something wrong with the sugar we consume. While sugar certainly puts on a pretty face, there is a darker side to the white stuff that no one is telling you about.
Sugary Harm
While sugar is, no doubt, a natural substance (it is found in many foods that we eat every day), what is not natural is to eat the highly purified form of sugar we consume. White sugar is more than 99 percent pure sucrose and there is no place in nature where you can find such purified sugar (well, except for honey). There are health consequences to consuming this "high octane" fuel on a regular basis, let's take a look:
Addiction: Sugar addiction is real and the evidence to support sugar as a highly addictive substance is growing daily. Sugar addiction closely mimics other "serious" addictions such as alcohol, smoking and even hard drugs. The surprise is that addiction to sugar may result in more harm than all of those other addictions.
Sugar Weight: Eating sugar means added weight. This happens because our body only needs so much sugar energy at any given time. When we eat a high sugar meal, we are pouring too much energy into our bodies. This extra energy needs to go somewhere,and most of our bodies store the extra energy as fat.
Aging and Cellulite: Sugar combines with proteins in our bodies to produce advanced glycation end products (or AGEs for short). This sugar/protein combination spells trouble throughout our bodies, but when the aptly named AGEs hit the collagen and elastin in the skin, the result is older looking skin. Damaged collagen also becomes a magnet for the fatty deposits we know as cellulite.
Insulin Insensitivity: When blood sugar is high over a long period of time, the cells of our bodies become resistant to insulin. The more resistant to insulin our cells become the closer we come to becoming diabetic. While diabetes used to be a rare condition, it is now estimated that between 35 and 40 percent of us will have diabetes some time in our lives. Diabetes cuts years off of our lifespan (somewhere between 12 and 16 years by current estimates).
Toxic: Sugar is toxic to the cells of our blood vessels. Remember the AGEs and what happens when they attack collagen and elastin? AGEs also attack the proteins of our blood vessels. Damaged blood vessels mean damage throughout the body. This damage is easy to see in diabetics who have a much higher risk for kidney, heart and eye disease. Blood vessels are being harmed in people who are not diabetic, only at a slower rate.
Sugar Free Solution
Breaking free of your sugar addiction is not that easy, but a necessary step towards a healthier you. Much of the harm that sugar does can be reduced by changing the way that you eat. Simply stopping soda is a great first step, but every source of sugar that you can eliminate from your diet is a step in the right direction.
Dr. Scott Olson is a naturopathic doctor, an expert in natural medicine and the author of the book Sugarettes. Dr. Scott is issuing a 30 Sugar Free Days Challenge to anyone interested in breaking free of their sugar addiction. Find out more HERE.
