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SUGAR: THE SWEET THIEF OF LIFE
There's no doubt that Americans are addicted to sugar. We consume an average of 150 lbs. per person per year. (Appleton, p.10) For many of us, that means we eat our own weight in sugar every year! So it might be helpful to find out what that means - what sugar really is, what food value it has, and what problems it causes. The sugar industry is big: billion per year. As with any other billion dollar business, there's bound to be a ton of information that will support such an empire anywhere you look - the media, bookstores, advertising, etc. Boats like this don't like to be rocked. On the other side is a group claiming that white sugar is poison, a harmful drug, barely differing from cocaine, etc. Some claims are true; others are unreferenced opinion, often bordering on hysteria. For our purposes, we'll focus on what we really can verify about sugar, and hopefully avoid the errors of disinformation on both sides of the fence. WHAT IS SUGAR? That's easy - it's that white stuff in the sugar bowl. Refined white cane sugar is only one type, however. There's also brown sugar, raw sugar, fruit sugar, corn sugar, milk sugar, beet sugar, alcohol, monosaccharides, disaccharides and polysaccharides. All these are also sugar. Start with white sugar. It is made by refining sugar cane, a process involving many chemicals. Or from beets, whose refinement also involves synthetic chemicals, and charcoal. The big problem is that the finished product contains none of the nutrients, vitamins, or minerals of the original plant. White sugar is a simple carbohydrate, which means a fractionated, artificial, devitalized by-product of the original plant. The original plant was a complex carbohydrate, which means it contained all the properties of a whole food: vitamins, minerals, enzymes. Refined sugar from beets and cane is sucrose. Up to the mid 1970s, sucrose was the primary sugar consumed by Americans. That changed when manufacturers discovered a cheaper source of refined sugar: corn. A process was evolved that could change the natural fructose in corn to glucose, and then by adding synthetic chemicals, change the glucose back into an artificial, synthetic type of fructose called high fructose. (Freeston) High fructose became big real fast. In 1984, Coke and Pepsi changed from cane sugar to HFCS. True connoisseurs could tell the difference, but there weren't many of us. Today high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the preferred sweetener in most soft drinks and processed foods. Read the labels. As of 1997, worldwide production of HFCS exceeded 8 billion kilograms. (Freeston) Remember, natural fructose is contained in most raw fruits and vegetables. It is a natural food. Moderate amounts of natural fructose can be easily digested by the body with no stress or depleting of mineral stores. Natural fructose does not cause rollercoaster blood sugar, unless the person overdoes it. Natural fructose is not addicting. High fructose corn syrup, by contrast, cannot be well digested, actually inhibits digestion, is addicting, and causes a great number of biochemical errors, as we shall see. HFCS is artificial; a non-food. WHAT DOES REFINED SUGAR REALLY DO TO THE BODY? An excellent chart on pp 68-72 of Appleton's book gives a quick overview. Some excerpts: Refined sugar: suppresses the immune system
causes hyperactivity in children
kidney damage
mineral deficiencies, especially chromium, copper, calcium and magnesium
makes the blood acidic
tooth decay
advances aging
digestive disorders
arthritis
asthma
Candida albicans
decreased blood flow to the heart
causes osteoporosis
causes food allergies
causes eczema
atherosclerosis
free radical formation
loss of enzyme function
increases liver and kidney size
brittle tendons
migraines
blood clots
depression
Appleton references each one of these problems with a different study. These symptoms are just various manifestations of one main mechanism: sugar cannot be digested. Sugar inactivates digestive enzymes. It remains in the tract, fermenting. Some of the toxic mass gradually seeps into the bloodstream where it acidifies the blood. The body tries desperate measures to maintain the normal pH of the blood. The above symptom list shows the end-results of those efforts, the signs of their failure, or else the degeneration of a tissue that has become the final resting place for fermenting debris in an overloaded system.
ACID BLOOD
pH is a big consideration when soft drinks are taken in. If you pour a glass of Coke into,b> 10 gallons of water, the pH will drop from 7.8 to 4.6 immediately. (Whang, p 22) Our survival range is pH 7.3 - 7.45 in the blood. So obviously the body has to go through all kinds of complicated steps to keep our 5 liters of blood from getting too acidic. This process wastes vitamins, minerals, and enzymes which should have been used for normal metabolism. See how sugar can age the body? Worn adrenals, used-up pancreas.
Another problem with an over-acid digestive tract is that the good bacteria, the intestinal flora, are destroyed. Their job was the final stages of digestion. Without them, rotting and stagnation of food is promoted, instead of digestion. Half-digested carbohydrates are described as fermented, just like with making wine or liquor. The half-digested carbohydrates leak into the bloodstream intact and cause problems in the joints, muscles, organs - any place they lodge. Examples of diseases that come about in this manner:
- osteoarthritis
- hepatitis
- cirrhosis
- kidney disease
- chronic fatigue
- colitis/irritable bowel syndrome
- Candida albicans
- reflux/heartburn
- chronic allergies
Candida albicans is a common yeast infection that goes all through the body. Many researchers estimate that as many as 80% of American women may have Candida. (Anderson) The #1 way Candida occurs is floral imbalance—normal flora keep Candida and other potentially bad organisms in check. Not only does half-digested sugar kill off the good bacteria. In addition, Candida thrive on it. So it's a double whammy, the way sugar promotes Candida albicans.
ENZYME DISRUPTION
Many of the problems listed on the previous page are the result of incomplete digestion and breakdown. Refined sugar has the ability to change the shape of our normal digestive enzymes. (Appleton, p 65) As we saw in the Enzymes chapter, there's a lock and key thing going on here. Enzymes are proteins that have specific shapes in order to break down other specific molecules. When refined sugar changes the shapes of the digestive enzymes that are present for the express purpose of digesting that refined sugar - see what happens? The sugar doesn't get digested. It just sits there and rots. Fermentation.
This is why drinking a coke or a beer just before dinner will kill your appetite. And interfere with your ability to later digest the fats and proteins in the meal. Sugar destroys the digestive enzymes.
MINERAL IMBALANCE
Besides enzyme destruction and acidifying the blood, sugar depletes the body of minerals. Most of the damage to the body resulting from sugar can be traced to one of these three events.
As we saw in the Minerals chapter, many life functions of cells and tissues are dependent on the presence of minerals. The action of many vitamins are dependent on the presence of minerals.
First off, we have seen the importance of chromium for insulin to operate. A double threat is happening with chromium:
- chromium is depleted as the body attempts to metabolize and remove white sugar
- as the stores are used up, there won't be enough chromium left to allow the available insulin to work.
For this reason, many people who are being diagnosed diabetic may be just chromium deficient. Even if insulin is present, it cannot operate on sugars without chromium as a co-factor. (Appleton, p 61) Very often chelated chromium supplements together with eliminating refined sugar from the diet can normalize a patient who was incorrectly labeled as diabetic.
Sugar also causes osteoporosis, by the following mechanism: In order for calcium to be used by the cells, there must be a proper amount of phosphorus also present in the blood. Without the correct ratio of calcium to phosphorus, the calcium is in the wrong form - a harmful form. A form that precipitates out of solution and forms stones in the gallbladder, kidneys, and liver. Sugar wastes our phosphorus stores. Soft drinks contain phosphoric acid, which further disrupts the phosphorus balance. (Appleton, p 83) Without the right form of calcium in the blood, the body borrows calcium from the bones and teeth. Dr. Weston Price proved this in the 1920s. (Price)
It is the imbalance of calcium caused by refined sugar which causes tooth decay, even more than the acidic saliva attacking the exterior enamel of the teeth.
Here's another difference between raw and refined sugar. Raw sugar doesn't rot the teeth. According to Royal Lee
"Refined sugar has lost its minerals and will pick up minerals right out of the tooth..,you can take a freshly extracted tooth and soak it in raw sugar solution, and it will have no effect.. You soak it in the refined sugar and you will eat it full of holes."
THE GLYCEMIC INDEX
The suffix -emia at the end of a word means in the blood. Glycemia means glucose in the blood.
All foods containing carbohydrates affect the blood sugar differently. In 1981, David Jenkins came up with a way to compare foods with respect to their effect on blood sugar. (Miller) He called it the Glycemic Index. The GI is based on glucose, which has a value of 100. An apple for example has a GI of 38 and is therefore said to be low on the Glycemic Index. White bread which is rated at 70 is said to be high on the GI.
White sugar (sucrose) is refined and readily absorbed. Though it is high on the glycemic index (65), white sugar interferes with normal digestion of other foods in the stomach and intestine. White sugar causes sharp drop-offs in blood sugar level after it is removed from the blood, because it has destroyed digestive enzymes necessary for breaking down the other food that is still in the tract, waiting to be absorbed.
Natural fruit sugar, or fructose is generally low on the glycemic index (23). (Miller, p.29) Fructose is quickly and easily used by the cells and thus removed from the blood.
Here we see one of the common errors of Junk Science and the Everybody's-A-Nutritionist phenomenon. Some "experts" will say that it's bad to drink natural fruit juice because of all the sugar. Such a notion is completely without foundation, and shows no understanding of whole foods, the importance of enzymes, or the Glycemic Index. Fruits contain within them the enzymes such as maltase and invertase necessary to break down their fructose into usable glucose. The glucose is then either used as fuel or stored. People don't get diabetes because they drink too much orange juice. They get diabetes from drinking a six-pack of cola every day, or that box of donuts, or a quart of ice cream.
In addition,fruits are loaded with whole food vitamins, minerals, cellulose and natural antioxidants. These are fundamental nutrients.
Alternative-Lite holistic practitioners making recommendations for cancer patients who have refused standard treatment sometimes tell the patients to avoid fruits and fruit juices because "cancer loves sugar." Such unfounded advice is not only incorrect; it deprives the patient of an important source of nutrient forms which is are essential for fighting cancer and boosting the immune system: antioxidants. (See Cancer chapter.) Most credible holistic nutritionists, like MacDougall, Robbins, Dufty, Schultze, Gerson, et al., realize that normal amounts of both fruit and vegetable juices are extremely useful for anyone trying to overcome any immune-challenging disease.
DIABETES
The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates never even mentions diabetes. (Dufty, p.78) Before sugar came on the scene, diabetes did not even exist.
The English physician Thomas Willis first identified and named diabetes in 1674, after England's annual sugar consumption had gone from zero to 16 million lbs. in the previous 200 years. But Willis was unable to say anything bad about sugar since he was King Charles' personal physician, and Charles was making a ton of gold off the sugar trade. (Dufty, p. 75)
Very good statistics were kept in Denmark, comparing refined sugar intake with diabetes deaths:
year......lbs. consumed per person.....deaths from diabetes/ 100,000
1880...............29.......................... 8
1934...............113......................... 18.9
Years of loading up on indigestible sugar wears out the pancreas. You'll remember that insulin, produced by the pancreas, is supposed to allow sugar to be taken into the cells and used. When the body is young, the pancreas works well. Excess sugar in the teen years gets the pancreas used to continually dumping lots of insulin into the bloodstream to get ready for the day's sugar load. Since insulin only lasts about 15 minutes, the pancreas may have to work all day long. Here's where the rollercoaster first begins: all that free insulin will serve to abnormally lower the blood sugar on those occasions when the person forgot to eat his usual 10x normal sugar intake. All that insulin, and all it's got to work on is a normal level of blood glucose. Enter hypoglycemia - low blood sugar. The body gets accustomed to excesses of both sugar and insulin. For awhile. Funny how pigging out on sugar causes low blood sugar, but that's how it happens.
A few years later, when insulin no longer can keep up with the incoming daily sugar fix, the pancreas finally gives up. Unused sugar builds up higher and higher in the blood. The kidneys try their best to excrete it, causing the classic 'sweet urine' sign. That's what diabetes is: constantly high blood glucose. The idiotic solution is to take a drug to get rid of all that extra glucose, instead of simply to stop eating 10 or 20x as much sugar as the body can handle.
Thus we see the stupidity of recommending candy for diabetics to "keep their blood sugar up." Candy just keeps the rollercoaster going for another ride.
Glucose is the prime fuel source needed by the cells. The person becomes ill because all this glucose is in the blood, but not in an environment that it can be used by the cells. So the body starves. Gradually, other problems occur:
extreme thirst
frequent urination
ravenous hunger
dizziness
disorientation
memory loss
coldness in hands and feet
bruising
weight loss
kidney disease
fatigue
the shakes
sores and cuts that don't heal
headaches
skin eruptions
Sound like a blind date?
What is the medical approach to diabetes? Same as the medical approach to anything: sell as many drugs as possible. In this case it's synthetic insulin to the rescue, or at least drugs like glucophage and glypizide.
What can you do?
The only thing that matters anyway: protect the sanctity of your own blood. And that of your children.
I CAN QUIT ANY TIME
That's what everyone addicted to anything for the past 300 years has said. So do it. If you think you aren't addicted to white sugar, prove it. For 48 hours. Not only cokes, high fructose corn syrup fruit drinks, donuts and ice cream, but condiments, sauces, and aspartame drinks as well. 48 hours. Meet the monkey.
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