7 Reasons To Avoid Sugar
Do you know the effects of sugar on your body? Did you know the average American consumes 150-170 pounds of sugar per year? That’s ¼ – ½ pound per day! Yet many people do not realize how toxic sugar is to the body and that it is a major contributing factor to many degenerative conditions including obesity, diabetes mellitus type 2, cancer, asthma, recurrent infections and chronic fatigue. By decreasing sugar consumption, we can improve our overall wellness and vitality. It’s one of the first things I recommend my patients remove from their diets.
Let’s face it, the food industry tries to camouflage this toxic substance, so whenever you eat a pre-packaged food, always check the ingredients for anything that represents sugar: evaporated cane juice, organic cane sugar, corn syrup, agave, sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, date sugar, dextran, maltodextran, confectioner’s sugar. Beware of hidden sources of sugar, especially cereals and salad dressings. Even ketchup and mayonnaise contain sugar!
Why should we avoid sugar?
- Sugar robs your body of nutrients and minerals. Sugar has an acidifying effect on your body, and in order to balance the acidity, the body uses valuable minerals and vitamins to neutralize and discharge the sugar. It takes calcium from the bones, which is a contributing factor to osteoporosis. It also steals B vitamins from your brain leading to brain fog and memory problems.
- Sugar dehydrates your body. Whenever we excrete sugar from the body, we excrete water. When we are dehydrated, we feel more fatigued, the energy doesn’t flow as well through our body, and our organs don’t function as efficiently as they should. Dry skin also accelerates the aging process.
- Sugar decreases your immunity. Sugar has a negative effect on the functioning of your white blood cells, which are responsible for fighting off fungal, bacterial and viral infections as well as repairing damaged tissue. This means that it makes you prone to infections as well as increasing the time your tissues take to heal.
- Sugar feeds cancerous cells. Evidence from both animal and human studies suggest that abnormal glucose metabolism plays an important role in carcinogenesis. Sugar also causes oxidative damage to DNA causing an acidic condition in the body. Both contribute to cancer formation.
- Sugar is toxic to the liver. White sugar (sucrose) is composed of two molecules: glucose and fructose. Glucose can be metabolized by every cell in the body, but fructose can only be metabolized by the liver. When we eat excess fructose, it builds up in the liver and turns to fat leading to fatty liver, the precursor to liver cirrhosis.
- Sugar weakens your microbiome. Sugar has shown to be toxic to your microbiota. These are the commensal and symbiotic microorganisms that make up the microbiome in your gut. The microbiome is responsible for proper digestion, detoxification, immunity and hormone production. A weakened microbiome can be associated with leaky gut syndrome, which may have an association in autoimmune diseases like diabetes, rheumatoid, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia.
- Sugar causes inflammation. Sugar is one of the leading factors of inflammation in the body. Chronic fatigue, arthritis, coronary artery disease, peripheral vascular disease, autoimmune diseases, cancer, and obesity all have components of inflammation in their pathophysiology. One of the fastest ways to decrease inflammation in your body is to cut out the sugar.
