E034: How Can Something Sweet Be So Evil?

Imagine getting up every day full of energy is if you were in your 20s. Again, what would that be like? What would that be worth to you? What is your health worth to you? Think about it. Your health isn't everything. But without it, everything else is nothing. And yet too many of us are taking it for granted until something goes wrong. No one wakes up hoping to be diagnosed with a disease or chronic illness. And yet, we've never been taught how to be proactive in our health through our school system, or public health. As a registered health coach and integrative health practitioner, I believe it is time this information is made available to everyone. Combining new knowledge around your health and the ability to do my functional medicine lab tests in the comfort of your own home will allow you to optimize your health for today and all your tomorrows don't wait for your wake up call.

Welcome back to The don't wait for your wake up call Podcast. I am your host Melissa dealey and excited to bring you a new theme this month. This month we are going to be talking about the topic of sugar. Sugar is in everything It is really hard to avoid. And this is going to be a two part episode, where today I talk to you about the effect that sugar has on your body. And in my episode two weeks from now, I will be giving you some action steps that you can take to be lowering your sugar intake because it truly is in everything. And we can try to read labels and be really conscious about sugar. But having some additional tips as to where sugar might be sneaking into your diet is going to be really helpful for you if you're wanting to lower the amount of sugar that you are getting into your diet. So just to start off with, did you know that four grams of sugar when you're reading a nutritional label that equals one teaspoon of sugar, and there are many foods that you might not even realize have sugar in them. And as an example, catch up. Why does ketchup need sugar? It's tomato based, right. And it's not even meant to be sweet. But there is sugar in ketchup. In fact, in one tablespoon of ketchup, there's five grams of sugar. So that's more than a teaspoon of sugar in every tablespoon of ketchup. Crazy, right? There's also sugar in rice cakes that you might have your children eat as healthy lunch snacks, in fish crackers in salad dressings. And then there's some places where you probably are aware of their sugar, but maybe you don't realize just how much. So one cup of sunrype orange juice that is labeled as no added sugar. So therefore the sugars in that one cup are just the natural sugars 28 grams of sugar in one cup. So divide that by four. That's seven teaspoons of sugar in one cup of orange juice. Now, I was raised thinking that fruit juice was a healthy way to start my day. And I used to give my kids orange juice or apple juice to start their day. But I would never have given them seven teaspoons of sugar knowingly. And perhaps you would never do that either. But you might be starting your day with some fruit juice. And I want to invite you has your be one action step from today's episode before I said give you more next time around is rethink that juice that you're drinking in the morning and either diluted or skip the juice altogether and enjoy the fruit, the whole fruit because when you eat the whole fruit, you're also getting the fiber from the fruit. And when you get the fiber along with the sugar, you're not getting the massive insulin spike that you will get from starting your day with a cup of oj and we will talk about that insulin spike shortly. What else? Pepsi. So you probably know Pepsi, coke. All of those drinks have sugar in them. But again, do you know how much so in 220 million liters, so just less than a cup, there's 26 grams of sugar in a Pepsi. And then something else that you might think of is starting the day is a healthy way to start the day for yourself or for kids is Honey Nut Cheerios. Honey Nut Cheerios have nine grams of sugar per quarter cup. Well, a quarter cup of Cheerios isn't really very many. So you're probably having at least half a cup, which means now it's 18 grams of sugar. So the Cheerios plus the orange juice to start your day, that's a lot of sugar to be putting into your body. And that is then going to create an insulin spike. So just in talking about how sugar impacts your body, and affects you overall, I just want to dive right into that. And we're going to come back to that insulin spike, because it is so important. But first of all, sugar is very addictive to human beings. And it is also toxic. And the food industry knows that it's addictive. And they play on that, unfortunately. And it does go back to the 80s 90s, when governments were looking at the rising obesity in the population, the rising issue with heart disease, and trying to figure out a way to, you know, improve the health of the population. And they determined that if we didn't eat fat, we wouldn't be fat. And from there came the low fat, no fat diet of that time. And what happened was, when the food industry took the fat out of the food, it tasted like cardboard. And so we all remember that time of thinking that healthy food didn't taste good. And so nobody wanted healthy food. So what the food industry did was they replaced the fat with sugar, because sugar made it taste good. So now we're all being sold, eat low fat, no fat if you don't want to be fat. But this food is loaded with sugar, and we didn't realize it at the time. And as such, it was causing other health issues within us. But also because it's addictive, it made us want more. And the food industry figured that out. And so that's why they also started putting sugar into all sorts of foods where you wouldn't even expect to find it. Because it makes you want more, they do the same with salt. So one or the other. Sometimes they're in both in Pepsi and drinks like that, you're going to find both salt and sugar, so that it's triggering those cravings, both of those cravings that we can experience. So the food industry, unfortunately, in this day, and age, really doesn't care about our health. They're looking at their profit and their bottom line, and how do they get us to buy more. And they do that by adding in sugar and salt. In addition to that, there was a study done with lab rats, and the lab rats were given cocaine water to drink. And then they were introduced to sugar water to drink. And then they were given both and allowed to choose and guess what they chose. They chose the sugar water,

which shows just how addictive it is because we all know that cocaine is addictive. And yet the rats chose the sugar over though cocaine. Now I am by no means professing that you should be using cocaine instead of sugar. That is not the point here. The point here is to show you just how addictive sugar is. And that's why it can be a problem to get the sugar out of our life. But I'm here to help you with that. The other thing that I also want you to know that was a huge aha for me when I learned this is that the cancer cells in our body, we all have cancer cells in our body all the time, right. And we have cancer killer cells in our body as well to try and keep those cancer cells in balance so that you know we're not turning on disease. And I talk about that a lot. And I talk about creating a body that is inhospitable to disease, which we can absolutely do. And that's part of my detox program and other among other things. But our cancer cells that are in our body have 15 times more sugar receptors than our healthy cells. So when we are eating sugar, we're actually feeding our cancer cells. And I don't think anybody wants to do that. And when we know better, we do better. So now that you know that you might want to shift your mindset around sugar and think about just how much sugar is getting in to your diet. So there are three main challenges to kicking the sugar habit, and I'm going to discuss two of them today and then come back in the two episodes from now and discuss the third one and then action steps to helping you do that. So first of all, The first challenge is more around why you have sugar cravings, and why those cravings can feel out of control? Well, it comes down to the idea of the polarity of food. And the body wanting to be in balance, which I often talk about as well. And there's so many polarities in our world hot and cold, hard and soft, night, and daytime, etc. And with the polarity of food, we are looking at the idea that food is more than simply fuel. It has energetic qualities that are beyond the simple science of calories, fat, grams and nutrient values. For instance, leafy greens grow upward from the ground, so they have an upward lifting energy, whereas root veggies grow downwards into the ground, and they have more of a grounding energy. And if you think of the body wanting to be in balance, you've got your center point, right, and off to one side, you have contracted tension. And off to the other side, you have expansive bliss. Okay. So on the contracted tension side, some of the foods that can lead us to that stage is too much red meat, eggs, salt. in that space, we might feel grounded, we might feel focused, and we also might feel aggressive.

On top of the foods that we eat, taking us into that contracted tension state, there's activities that we do that can take us into that state, such as working too much partying, staying up late, not enough sleep, stress, running, like always being on the run. So when we're in that state, we've shifted away from the body wanting to be in its balance point. And so we get signals from the brain, because the body wants to bring us back into the balance point, signals from the brain suggesting that we need to spend some time and expensive bliss, in order to draw us back towards this center, the middle of this line, right, and expansive bliss. When we're in that state, we're feeling happy, relaxed, light. And the foods and things that can get us to that stage can be sugar, dairy, alcohol, caffeine. But there's also activities that can get us to this state, such as getting good sleep, reading a book, meditation, going for a walk, taking a bath. Basically, if you don't allow yourself to relax, in order to get you out of that contracted tension state and come back along to the balance point, you're going to find yourself bingeing on wine, or chocolate or bread or desserts. And who hasn't done that, right, all of us, your body is begging for a break. And that's why it's looking for sleep, or meditation, or time to take a walk, or a bath or reading, as I said. So that's challenge number one, is our busy gogo go doo doo doo world has us spending far too much time in the state of contracted tension. And our body and brain are trying to bring us back into that center point back into balance. And so it sends signals that we need more expensive bliss. But what we often do is choose expansive bliss and getting to that state through food. Rather than through activities that I've mentioned. It doesn't always have to be through food. And then we get stuck in that state of always trying to get into expensive bliss and end up ingesting too much sugar and having those constant cravings for them every time. We're spending too much time down here in expensive tension. The second challenge is to why it can be so hard to give up sugar is because it feels so good to eat it. Nobody wants to give it up when it feels so good. How can something so sweet. Be so evil though. And products the problem is is that products containing lots of sugar usually don't have much fiber, fat or protein in them to help slow down the absorption of the sugar. And so that causes your blood sugar level to shoot up really fast, like to the top of a roller coaster and that's when we feel good We have that instant quick energy. But then we burn through it so quickly because absorption is happening really fast. And then we crash to the bottom of the roller coaster. Right, and now we have no energy. And our because our blood sugar is dipping way down. And that's the blood sugar crash.

You feel great after the high, and then you can feel shaky spaced out. And when you're crashing down below, right, and that can happen in the span of a couple of hours. And so what happens that I see with a lot of clients is they start their day, with maybe a coffee and a muffin, that even though it's a blueberry muffin, it can still have a lot of sugar in it, especially if it's storebought. And that sends gives them that quick energy to start their day. And interestingly, the body treats caffeine similarly to how it treats sugar. So it's also exacerbating that, that peak as we go and get that quick energy. And then we crash. Maybe we're crashing around 1030. So we reach for another cup of coffee, or we reach for a mid morning snack, which gives us that quick energy that gets us through until lunch. And then we have our lunch. And depending on what that lunch is, it could be another blood sugar rush. Or maybe we're eating something that has some good fiber and protein and fat in it, it takes longer to absorb. But then because our body's so dependent on this, by mid afternoon, we're looking for something else, it's become a habit, the brain is telling us you need something to get through the day, you're feeling your energy dip. So we reach for a chocolate bar, donut, whatever that is, maybe it's another cup of coffee, and we get energy to get us through to the end of the day. And then we're crashing again. And we're on this cycle of up and down, up and down, up and down all day long. And when you're in the middle of that crash, your body is just craving more sugar. And so that's why it's so hard for you to get off this roller coaster ride to just do it cold turkey because the body is missing that sugar, and is going to send you cravings, right and everybody's been there and also has experienced those sugar cravings. And I do want to point out that we are all impacted by sugar differently, just like were impacted by caffeine differently. There's so many different foods that impact each of us differently. So some people really do consider sugar, their cocaine. Whereas, you know, other people are less impacted by sugar, but maybe more impacted by caffeine. And I'm an example of that I can't barely do any caffeine, it'll keep me awake at night, my body is more tolerant of sugar. But with all of this awareness I have around it, I try to keep my sugar intake as low as possible. So the sugar craving is your body's way of saying it needs something specific to restore the balance that so often we're just reaching for more sugar. Now, when we've ingested that sugar, insulin is sent out into the body in order to rebalance our blood sugar levels and take the excess sugar out of our bloodstream, and it will take it to our brain. And the brain does need glucose for energy, it will take it to our blood cells, it will take it to our muscles. And when those areas are all full, and they can't store any more sugar, it gets stored in our body as fat. When your body is producing insulin to bring you down from that sugar high, it can't produce another hormone called glucagon, which is your fat burning hormone. So you have a double whammy going here in that your body is storing the sugar as fat at the same time, is it it's not producing your fat burning hormone? And again, nobody wants that. But does that make sense as to why when we're eating so much sugar, we're actually gaining weight. And very often that weight is gained right around the middle, almost like an inner tube around our waist. And so this is, you know, a very clear correlation between eating too much sugar and weight gain. So I want to leave you with that there for today. And just let you think about what you're eating where sugars might be sneaking into your diet.