06 Mar A spoonful of sugar helps the healthiness go down.
Hi my name is Claire and I’m a sugarholic. I’ve been (almost) clean for about three years but every day is a new battle.
I’ve eliminated a lot of different foods in my life but sugar was (and continues to be) the hardest. Surely something that tastes this good can’t be that bad for you? Even the word feels good when you roll it around in your mouth!
So why is it so hard? Firstly there is the unavoidable fact that beating a sugar addiction is not too disimilar an experience to coming off of hard drugs but there is also the problem that it goes by so many different names: glucose, fructose,sucrose, maltodextrin, lactose, the list is endless! But above and beyond all of that is the emotional connection we have to it. Sugar is used to celebrate all the good things that happen in our lives we have birthday cakes, big tins of choccies at Christmas, Easter eggs, ice creams on a sunny day, wedding cakes and christening cakes not to mention when we were little and fell over we were given the odd bit of chocolate or sweeties to make it all better.
The problem is that sugar NEVER makes it all better. It has been said by many in the nutritional field that if sugar had been a recent discovery it would be a classified drug because of the damage it causes. This list is only the tip of the meringue like iceberg!
- Sugar is by far the leading cause of cavities in teeth, bleeding gums, failure of bone structure, and loss of teeth.
- Sugar is the main cause of diabetes.
- It is a significant contributory cause of heart disease, mental illness, depression, senility, hypertension, cancer. (check out beating the blues through diet )
- It stresses the endocrine system and its individual glands such as the adrenal glands, pancreas and liver.
- Increases overgrowth of candida yeast organism
- Increases chronic fatigue
- Increases PMS symptoms
- Increases hyperactivity in children
- Increases panic anxiety and irritability
- Can cause weight gain due to constantly high insulin levels, which causes the body to store excess carbs as fat.
It’s food for thought isn’t it?
As a kinesiologist I regularly recommend that people reduce or remove sugar to improve their health. The common response I get from my clients (after they look at me like I am an alien) is “but I dont take sugar in my tea”. If only it were that simple. Once you examine the “foods” in any supermarket more closely and start reading labels, you will find just about everything contains sugar. Most foods are loaded with it – from cereals, to soups, to ketchup, to hotdogs. Some cereals are as much as 50% sugar. Part of the problem is that we have become desensitised to the taste of it so we don’t notice it.
But there is hope in the form of some great substitutes but PLEASE don’t swop onto artificial sweeteners they are terrible for your health!
Instead try using Agave Nectar in your tea on your porridge and in your cooking (available from detoxyourworld), or Xylitol granules (highernature) Both of these are naturally occurring unprocessed sugars that keep your blood sugar nice and stable and don’t have the associated problems of processed sugar.
So for now it’s back to the daily battle but after three years it’s now so much easier because here’s the good news…. the less you have it , the more your body rebalances itself and the less you want it. So Mr Tate and Mr Lyle you can keep your white stuff because these days my adrenals and I are just as satisfied with a big juicy medjool date.
Enjoy!
Claire x