The White Death

Sugar….It’s a dirty word these days, especially if you’re creating a healthy life style, although the food industry will tell you otherwise. They have long sought to demonize fat and make sugar god. Then you have nutritionists and health gurus speaking in the other ear saying to avoid it at all cost. I understand that it can get confusing.

One of the goals at The Chosen Weeds, is to provide you with information that helps you make the right decisions for you. It wasn’t until I really got into studying how foods affects the body that I started questioning what sugar was actually doing to my body. Now don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy a good piece of chocolate, but knowing and understanding how my body uniquely reacts to foods like wheat, grains, fruits, and sugar certainly makes me think twice about what I put into my body.

So what does sugar do in the body?

Before we go any further we have to clarify what sugar is exactly.

Sugar is all forms of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are in things from wood, to grass, to bread, to fruits and veggies. There are three types of carbohydrates.

Monosaccharides=single sugars: The two we are all most familiar with are glucose and fructose. Glucose is the main energy source in the body. Fructose is a relative of glucose but much more diabolical. To learn more about fructose click here, and a study showing that it may cause liver damage

Disaccharides=dual sugars: we are most familiar with table sugar. This is a molecule with glucose and fructose together.

Polysaccharides=many sugars: there are two types: indigestible and digestible carbohydrates. Indigestible carbohydrates are what we know as fiber (both soluble and insoluble). Digestible are the starches like rice, potatoes, corn, flours, etc.

Mark Sisson, of Mark’s Daily Apple, goes over a few of the different forms of sugar in his blog post: The definitive Guide to Sugar

The average American eats 150 pounds of added sugar (mostly disaccharides, i.e. table sugar) each year on a per capita basis, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). That’s a heck of a lot of sugar. Take a look at the chart “Hidden Menace,” below, and ask yourself, “How many teaspoons am I eating in a day?”

Carbohydrates, specifically glucose, are necessary for optimum function in the body, but we don’t need NEARLY as much as the average American consumes. In fact, the body will make its own glucose when necessary. According to Dr. Sarah Ballantyne of paleomom.com, the total grams of sugar that the typical person eats is sometimes as much as 500g/day! The body is better served to run on fat and provide JUST enough carbohydrates for tissues that are truly dependent on glucose, like neural cells [4]. Also, the brain doesn’t need an abundance of glucose like we have been lead to believe. It only needs about 120g of glucose/day [2].

Want more info on glucose and the brain? Read this PDF.

The body MUST convert all carbohydrates into the usable form of glucose. It is important to keep in mind that no matter what form of carbohydrate you eat, it ALL gets broken down into single molecules. The body cannot use it otherwise. The problems come when more sugars are consumed than is needed for immediate use or by consuming large doses of fructose:

“When this happens, a cascade of hormones are stimulated so that the extra sugar can be converted into glycogen or fat for storage. First, the amount of sugar in your blood rises. This sugar reacts with other components of your blood to produce Advanced Glycation End products, which cause oxidative damage to your tissues and increase inflammation in your body. High blood sugar can be life threatening and cause permanent brain damage, so your body has a mechanism to deal with this: the hormone insulin. Insulin helps shuttle glucose into your cells (and when glucose is really high, insulin helps get glucose to into your liver cells to be converted into fat for storage). When your blood sugar levels are chronically high, your cells can become insulin resistant, leading to more insulin production. This is what eventually leads to type II diabetes. Chronically high insulin levels have also been shown to dramatically increase the risk of some cancers. Some other hormones are stimulated as well, like leptin, a hunger hormone… yes, eating sugar makes you hungrier [3].”

If it were just insulin involved, the solution would be much simpler, however, the body is complex. There are a series of hormones that react and interact with each other. It is these hormones and the genetic expression of said hormones (this expression is controlled by your gut bacteria-but that is a discussion for another day) that vary from person to person. This partially determines why some people are able to stay thin (doesn’t me necessarily healthy though) while others seem to gain weight and experience a myriad of health problems.

A host of problems arise including:

Type II diabetes
Increase risk of cancer
Increased risk of heart disease
Oxidative damage of tissues
Inflammation
Decreased libido
Liver damage

And this is just the short list.
To top this all off, sugar is addictive. You think about it, you crave it, and maybe you even sneak it. The more you eat, the more your body asks for it. Then there is high fructose corn syrup, the bottomless pit of sugars. Sugar not only creates a physical addiction, but also an emotional addiction. Why is that? Basically, your brain reacts to sugar the same way it reacts to heroin. Yes, heroin!

“Sugar stimulates brain pathways just as an opioid would, and sugar has been found to be habit-forming in people. Cravings induced by sugar are comparable to those induced by addictive drugs like cocaine and nicotine. And although other food components may also be pleasurable, sugar may be uniquely addictive in the food world. For instance, functional M.R.I. tests involving milkshakes demonstrate that it’s the sugar, not the fat that people crave [5]”- James DiNicolantonio, a cardiovascular research scientist at St. Luke’s Mid-America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri

Watch this video to explore this further:

The Skinny on Obesity

So you want to cut back and/or eliminate sugars….Great! But where to start?

The answer is to eat REAL foods that feed and fuel your body. Sugar cravings could be a message that you not feeding your body in other ways. Lack of sleep, stress, dehydration, caffeine crashes and plain hunger go hand in hand with sugar cravings, so really start paying attention to what you need. Here are some tips to help get you started today.

Keep your carbohydrates between 50-150/day. This, according to Mark Sisson of the Primal Blueprint, seems to be the “sweet spot” for fat loss. Some people will need more carbohydrates to function. Don’t be afraid to play with the numbers, higher or lower but stay between 50-150/day. I don’t want you to get obsessed with numbers but understanding what works best for YOUR body will help you down the path toward success. Pay attention to your cravings and energy levels as you play with the numbers. You need to live with it, try it, tweak it and adjust it based on your unique circumstances.
Prepare your own foods.
Consume high quality fats, proteins, and fiber.
Avoid artificial sweeteners which just increase your craving for sweets.
Avoid added sugars (read the labels. There are at least 60 different names for sugars. Food manufactures are tricky devils and will even add sugar to salsa, salad dressings, nut butters, and canned tomato sauce). “Fat free,” “Low fat,” and “Reduced fat,” is often code words for added sugar to products.
Avoid refined foods and grains (corn, wheat, oats, rye, barley, etc.)
Eat tons of non-starchy veggies and a few starchy (sweet potatoes, turnips, etc) and SOME fruit.

Most of all……Learn to enjoy your food!

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