[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Finally there is some light being shed on the dangers of sugar and it is beginning to be taken seriously, much like the tobacco wars of yesteryear. In fact some of the tricks the Tabaco companies had used in the past to keep their products health risks from the general public, were strategies already used by the sugar industry (scary thought). Sugar is now being connected to the likes of a long list of human disease including, but not nearly limited too, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity.
Before we go further what do we mean by sugar?
Sugars come in many forms we recognize daily like the white stuff we use at our table, the brown stuff we bake with, high fructose corn syrup, and yes even the ‘healthy’ natural sugars of honey, maple, and agave syrups. It also comes in hidden forms, in names you may never recognized on the a label of your cereal box, names like, hexitol, maltodextrin, soribitol, and disaccharides making it hard to recognize the sugars hiding incognito. There are almost one hundred different names on the HHS list of sugar names! Making it conveniently almost impossible to recognize.
The Bliss Point
Sugar is one of the main ingredients in 99% of processed foods. A lot of research goes into what ingredients go into processed foods, and they look for ingredients that make us crave more. This process is called finding the bliss point in a product. Dr. Howard Maskowitz, the bliss doctor himself, says, “that this is the level of ingredients in which consumers will like it the most.” Maskowitz is a Harvard trained mathematician that uses models with different versions of a product and tests them until they find the bliss point in one of the products, then that product hits the supermarket shelves.
Eric Stis a neuroscientist at Oregon Research Institute states, “that sugar causes a similar reaction in the brain as cocaine.” Dopamine is released just like when we drink alcohol and take drugs and it is an immediate reaction. If you start eating a lot of sugared foods, like an addict to drugs or alcohol might, you will also build a tolerance. This causes you to have to eat more to get that dopamine release and thusly the high from the sugar you were craving. Another way sugar also makes you over eat.
What makes up sugar and how does it process in the body.
All sugars are created in the same molecular form with one, glucose and one fructose. Glucose breaks down in the body naturally and healthfully to feed the liver, muscles, brain and most of the cells of the body. While fructose, instead goes directly to the liver; which is the only organ in the human body that can handle it. When eaten in excess it is turned into liver fat and causes all down stream metabolic diseases.
In addition when we get too much fructose in our diets, the hormone that tells our brain that we ate and are no longer hungry gets turned off. That hormone is called leptin and it is known as the satiety hormone, because when working normally it will help us from over eating. The leptin hormone not being able to do its job is one of the main reasons we are obese in this country. When you give a child a fruit juice or a soda pop before they eat at a restaurant it has been reported that those children will always over eat.
Your heart and small dense LDL verses large buoyant LDL.
LDL we have been taught for years is a bad thing, because it means high cholesterol which leads to heart attack. What we were not told is there is good and bad LDL’s. Good LDL’s are the pattern A or large buoyant LDL, which are so light they float through the bloodstream with no problem and they are too large to fit under the endothelial cells so they never cause plaque build up. However, the bad LDL’s called pattern B or small dense LDL, are heavy and sink in the bloodstream, they are also small enough to fit between the endothelial cells and start a plaque build up leading to the cause of chronic heart disease. What is the cause for each types of LDL? Well, fats produce pattern A LDLs, and carbohydrates are the source of pattern B LDL’s. So really it is clear the cause of heart disease is not fats but carbohydrates. There is a clear difference in carbohydrates as well. A build up of fructose in the liver causes liver fat to build, which is later released into the bloodstream and creates the cholesterol called small dense LDL. These particles lodge in blood vessels causing plaque and eventually heart attacks.
When you get an LDL test from the doctor you get a factor of both types of LDL’s because it’s too hard to separate the two in any testing. Instead one needs to factor in a triglycerides test and HDL to help distinguish if your LDL’s are tipping the scales more on the good or bad side.
Knowing that LDL’s caused heart disease was one of the first reasons our government made a plight against a high fat diet and the fat free craze began around the 1980’s. However from what they have been able to recognize now, from being able to distinguish the differences in LDL’s in the body, researchers now know the LDL’s that cause heart disease are not caused by consuming fats, but instead by consuming carbohydrates.
From the start of the war on heart disease when our government had recommended a low fat diet we have ballooned, ironically, to the fattest period in human history. It all started in America, and as often happens other countries around the world followed suite.
It has been known and quieted that sugar is bad for you for years!
John Yudkin author of Pure, White and Deadly, 1972, wrote a book about sugar and it’s deadly causes. (Which interesting enough, a lot he has mentioned in his book has come to past). Ansel Keys was the nutritionist that was sent by the sugar industry to ‘debunk’ John Yudkin’s work at the time. His job was to make people think Yudkin and his predecessors were quacks so consumers would keep eating sugar without fear. He did a study, a multi variant regression analyzes, called, ‘The Seven-Country Study.’ His study had supposedly shown proof that CHD was caused by dietary fats. But when one looks closer at the study on page 262, it states, “the average percentage of calories from sucrose in the diets is explained by the intercorelation of sucrose with saturated fat.” In other words what he failed to add into his studies famous graph, that supposedly debunked Yudkin’s work, was a line showing sugars in the products, along side the fats they were eating, thusly without doubt showing which really was the cause of the rising CHD. As he stated the foods they were eating where sugar and fats combined, thusly something to the akin of donuts. Yet he used this research showing only one line of movement from this combined product, and saying the cause was from fats. This is not the proper way to do research and fully prove a scientific theory.
The sickly sweet truth
It is clear that sugar is the true culprit that has given blame to other far healthier dietary choices for years now. The sugar industry is now finally being exposed to the world much like the Tabaco industry. I believe this is just one of several nutritional deficits in our country that needed to be exposed for it’s threat to American’s health. However it is one of the deadliest and easily obtained poisons to our bodies, as well as one of the easiest changes we can make to reverse our health. So I am happy to help shine light on the sickly sweet truth.
What do you think about eating sugar? Will you limit your intake? Or cut it out of your lifestyle completely? Why? Share below.
Until next time, enjoy the good life,
Woman on the Journey,[/vc_column_text][vc_raw_html]JTNDcCUyMGNsYXNzJTNEJTIyc2lnbmF0dXJlJTIyJTNFQW1hbmRhJTIwSmVhbiUzQyUyRnAlM0UlMjA=[/vc_raw_html][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3ksKkCOgTw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n29ZIJ-jQA
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