Sugar: How Bad is Bad? Part 3: The Science of Sugar’s Effect on the Body
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It is the job of the adrenal glands to keep us steady in the face of stress, whether it’s trouble on the job, death of a loved one, the stress of a lingering chronic infection, or the crisis of an automobile accident. But it’s fairly easy for those adrenals to get overloaded and fatigued. It is estimated that almost all of us suffer from HPA-D (formerly known as adrenal fatigue) at some point in our lifetimes (see my blog on HPA-D vs. Adrenal Fatigue).
Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal axis Dysregulation, HPA-D for short, is the chronic activation of the body’s stress-response system. If the HPA axis is constantly in overdrive, the body’s cells, tissues and organ systems become resilient to changes in physiological needs (stress) and the metabolic reserve is depleted.
I find in my clinic that there are three reasons a person has HPA-D: emotional stress, dietary stress, and pain/hidden inflammation. Sugar and processed foods are major contributors to two of these three. If you’ve been reading along with this four-part series, you have learned that sugar really does a number on our hormones.
The adrenal glands, a major part of the HPA axis, are in charge of maintaining the correct ratio of hormones throughout the body, especially cortisol (the stress hormone). In small quantities, cortisol speeds tissue repair. In larger quantities, it depresses your body’s immune defense system. In a perfect world, our adrenals should only produce extra cortisol in a flight or fight scenario (running from a saber tooth tiger, to be extreme). Sugar and processed foods, however, trick the body into thinking it’s in trouble (stress) so it produces cortisol to compensate. This creates a roller coaster requiring the adrenal glands to fire each time sugar is consumed in order to manage blood sugar drops.
Sugar is also highly inflammatory, causing damage to every cell in the body. It forms a sticky coating over many cells (glycation), causing an inability for the body to recognize insulin because too many cells “look” like insulin. The body doesn’t know which to process and, in all truth, starts to freak out. Thus insulin resistance is created--a condition in which you have both elevated blood sugar and elevated insulin production.
People with insulin resistance tend to be chronic snackers who eat sugar for pleasure. They often crave sweets and must have dessert after every meal. Symptoms of insulin resistance include fatigue (very common after every meal), depression, and infertility. Weight gain also a symptom as excess sugar is stored as fat.
Blood sugar dysregulation and insulin resistance are primary causes of many diseases. Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are created when glycated proteins begin to harden. If AGEs bind with collagen inside a joint, arthritis is developed and can sometimes lead to the need for amputations of the lower extremities. AGEs can also clog smaller capillaries inside a cornea and cause blindness. This is why some diabetics lose their eyesight. AGEs also bind to nerve receptor sites in the brain, creating a link between sugar consumption and Alzheimer’s. In fact, some are starting to call Alzheimer’s diabetes type 3.
Likewise, sugar is hard on your heart. If glycation starts on the inside of arteries or blood vessels in the heart, the process injures walls and blocks the function of the immune system, preventing white blood cells from getting in. The immune system then beefs up its inflammation response, but inflammation inside the arteries is bad--it opens the door to heart disease. Over-consumption of sugar is turning out to be more important to heart disease than cholesterol.
The science behind the reasoning might be heavy, but so are the consequences of eating too much sugar (and processed foods). Sugar is bad.
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Heidi Toy Functional Medicine Blog
Did you know most people didn’t have refrigerators in their homes until well into the 1900’s? It wasn’t even invented for large scale commercial use until the mid 1800’s [1]. So how did people keep their milk cold and make their food last longer? Fermentation. It sounds like a gross concept, because we often associate fermentation with a bad odor, but foods like cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut and pickles are all fermented foods. And those aren’t gross, are they? Well, some might disagree with me about sauerkraut, but that’s beside the point. Fermented foods are digestive aids. Microscopic living organisms in fermented foods help extend the food’s shelf life, enhance flavor, and help the body absorb minerals. These organisms pre-digest the food, getting rid of harmful components, and create more vitamins and enzymes than the food began with. Enzyme-rich foods have many benefits including [2]: Increase digestibility of food we eat Boost immune system Increase alkalinity; neutralizing pH levels Provide a healthy balance of friendly flora in the gut (Learn more about your microbiome in my other blog posts ) Tone the colon and help with elimination Control cravings for unhealthier foods Eliminate toxins and undigested wastes in the body In the “old days,” people use to ferment all kinds of foods through pickling, canning, pasteurization and added salt. Nowadays, however, large scale fermentation has lost many of its nutritious benefits due to the need for speed to get the product on the shelf as fast as possible and as cheap as possible. The only true fermented foods you will find are sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt and kefir, beans, wine and beer, some meats (such as salami and pastrami), legumes and nuts (such as tofu, soy sauce and miso), sourdough bread, and various kinds of vegetables [3]. Fun facts about sauerkraut: The Germans “stole” it from the Chinese! Sauerkraut (probably not labeled as such for the Chinese, but the same recipe) was one of the main foods for those who built the Great Wall of China. Genghis Khan brought it to Eastern Europe during an invasion. It also contains high levels of vitamin C, and sailors often took it on long journeys to prevent scurvy.
How can we best keep blood sugar stable? Do what our body is designed to do – use fat for energy. Our species did not survive the Ice Age because of vanilla coffee lattes and cheesecake. Throughout most of our history, we ate a diet that was likely 50-70 percent fat. Look at the old family photo albums, specifically pictures of people in the first half of the 1900s, before we had so many processed foods. You won’t see many fat people--in fact, most look darn skinny. If they lived on the farm, they ate lots of eggs, meat, milk, and vegetables out of their own backyards. “Diet foods” were non-existent. Heart disease was almost non-existent. Our metabolism is designed to work much better with fats better than with sugar. Fats provide the slow and steady fuel our body likes to use for energy. Think of fats as a slow-burning log on the fire. One log (i.e. one meal containing fats) lasts for hours. Starchy carbs, on the flip side, are like kindling. You constantly have to throw more twigs (chips, pasta, bagels) to keep the fire burning. The first step is to know your sugars by reading the labels, and then avoid said sugars as much as possible.
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Omega-3 and Omega-6 are considered “essential” fatty acids because they cannot be produced by the body--we get them from the food we eat. They are biologically active upon ingestion, which means the body utilizes them right away and cannot store them up for later. They are essential because they help with both inflammatory and anti-inflammatory responses.
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