Dear Sugar-holic

Dear Sugar-holic,

Which one are you?

Are you the person who eats well throughout the morning and even through lunch. You eat your perfectly prepped or planned lunch and feel totally satisfied. Then 2 o'clock hits.. Your energy drops and the cravings come with it. You have to swing by that co-worker's desk to grab a piece of candy or you pull a stashed sweet treat out of your desk drawer to continue the day. 

Or are you the person who always feels sleepy and you notice your energy drops often, so you keep healthy food on hand, like fruit and energy bars, nothing bad. When you feel the crash coming, you grab your snack and keep grinding away at your busy job. You might notice that your hands even get shakey when this happens, but eventually goes away. Maybe it's just brain fog you notice. You may have even self-diagnosed yourself with hypoglycemia. 

Or maybe you get home from a long and stressful day. That disagreement with your boss really didn't go well, and now all you want to do is reach for the pint of ice cream and a spoon and curl up in front of the TV. 

By now you may have heard how addictive sugar can be, and you feel it too. In fact, sugar has similar effects on the brain as drugs through behavioral and neurochemical effects. A study on rats showed that between cocaine and sugar, sugar was more addicting and stated that "the stimulation of sweet receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a spuranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus lead to addiction." 

That means it's not your fault that you're a sugar-colic. Obviously, sugar doesn't have the same results as being addicted to cocaine, but the results aren't exactly dismissible either. Here's a few ways your sugar addiction might be effecting your health right underneath your nose.

Sugar changes how your hormones work. As discussed in our Insulin: The Key to Real Weight Loss blog, the presence of sugar in the diet can create a resistance to insulin, leading to higher blood sugar levels and ultimately diabetes and its correlated diseases. As insulin resistance increases, so does resistance of glucagon, the hormone that intimates sugar release from the liver.   This can lead to an adrenaline response as we'll detail below. 

Sugar can cause headaches and even seizures. If you regularly have headaches that feel like migraines, it could actually be due to sugar and not be a migraine at all. When sugar is present in the diet, you'll have drops in blood sugar levels. As this happens, the brain is deprived of glucose and triggers a stress response via the adrenal glands, which release adrenaline. Adrenaline directly effects the nervous system, causing anxiety, shakiness, and nausea. Combining this with the release of insulin and glucagon telling the liver to release sugar, the brain can short circuit. Sometimes this develops as a cluster headache, resembling a migraine, and sometimes is develops as a seizure. However, once the short circuit has occurred, it's much easier to happen again. 

Sugar speeds up the aging process. Excess sugar stiffens the collagen present in your joints, tendons, and skin, which can cause wrinkling and arthritis. At the same time, production of new collagen is disrupted. Got creaky knees and joints? They aren't supposed to sound that way. 

Sugar renders your immune system to a weaker state. Sugar has a sticky tendency. The feeling of sugar getting sticky on your hands isn't reserved from only outside of the body. The same thing happens on the inside, and it causes cells and tissues to absorb the sugar and become bloated, hard, and stiff over time. Within normal sugar levels, our white blood cells are able to clean up the mess and disperse the sugar. As it takes hold of the white blood cells, there can be trouble. Sugar changes the surface markers of white blood cells, which makes it difficult for them to distinguish between familiar cells and invaders. This opens to door for infection, and unchallenged white blood cells can allow cancer to grow without defense. 

Sugar can lead to circulatory dysfunction. As red blood cells become bloated and filled with sugar, they have difficulty passing through the spleen, where they are normally tested for quality by the body. Normally they would pass through tiny corridors, but if the red blood cells are too bloated from sugar, they are destroyed. This happens until the spleen is unable to remove all of the bloated cells quickly enough due to a high volume of sugar-bloated cells, and the capillaries can become clogged. This explains why diabetics often experience blindness, numbness and infection in their feet. Furthermore, for the gentlemen, early stages of circulatory problems can be seen through erectile dysfunction. 

Sugar can damage brain cells, make it more difficult to learn, and lead to dementia. The brain is composed of cells called dendrites. Healthy dendrites look like a tree with lots of branches. Hormones allow the dendrites to grow more branches, making more neural connections. As sugar gums up cell membranes, the brain cells are not immune. As hormone sensitivity in brain cells decreases, as does their ability to grow and make connections. As the structure of the brain is stunted or diminished, dementia and Alzheimers can result. 

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So how much sugar should you be consuming a day? 

The American Heart Association, though not my favorite source, recommends that men get no more than 36 grams or 150 calories per day and women get no more than 20 grams or 100 calories per day. 

Let's put that in perspective for you. An eight-ounce glass of orange juice contains 5.5 teaspoons of sugar, or 20 grams. A tablespoon of French Vanilla coffee creamer contains 5 grams of sugar, and you're probably not only having one tablespoon if you're not a fan of black coffee. It adds up quickly, and you're likely consuming more sugar that you're aware of, even if you're skipping the candy and cake.

Sugar goes by many names. Here's a few to look for on any processed or packages foods, all of which are converted into glucose or glycerine when eaten. 

Though carbohydrate needs vary for everyone based on their activity levels, body composition, and goals, a general rule of thumb if you are experiencing sugar craving, headaches, or any of the symptoms outlined above, to include high blood sugar, is to reduce total carbohydrate intake to 100 grams daily or less. 

Removing sugar from your diet to the best of your ability, doesn't mean you won't be able to enjoy sweets. Many people who remove added sugars from their diets begin to fully experience the natural sweetness found in vegetables and fruits. Sugar consumption has been shown to dull our senses particularly when it comes to tasting sweetness. By removing excess sugar from your diet, you're not only protecting yourself from a laundry list of diseases that can creep up while you continue to live a normal life, but you'll feel better removing sugar crashes and headaches, which also getting back to really enjoy the full flavor of food.