Just a Spoonful of Sugar …
Sugar can overwhelm us. We crave it; some might even say we’re addicted to it. It’s everywhere we look. And it hides.
Well, first thing to address: addiction. Addiction is an ample word to describe many people's relationship with sugar. Eating sugar releases dopamine, lighting up our energy center and creating a temporary high.
Sugar laden foods (aka delicious treats) are chemically designed to make us crave them.
Mentally, we rationalize. Something we deserve when our days are crazy and hectic. And always perfect for a celebration.
The World Health Organization stresses that an adult on a standard calorie diet of 2000 should aim to consume no more than 25 grams of sugar per day (that’s about 6 teaspoons of sugar). But that’s part of the problem. We don’t think in grams, which is how our food labels are calculated.
And 6 teaspoons of daily sugar still sounds like a lot. Just for the asking, 1 gram of sugar = about a ¼ teaspoon.
To put grams into perspective …
A single can of Coke contains 44 grams → 10.5 teaspoons of sugar!
A cup of Dannon Low Fat Vanilla yogurt contains 34 grams of sugar → 8 teaspoons of sugar!
A small box of raisins (1.5 oz) contains 25 grams of sugar → 6 teaspoons of sugar!
The average American actually consumes 150 pounds of sugar a year, about 17 teaspoons of sugar a day.
Sometimes it just seems like there is no escaping it. We often feel like we control our sugar intake. But often we really can't be sure.
We know what we’re doing when we add it to our coffee.
We know when we indulge in a piece of cake, a cookie, or some ice cream, that the treat comes along with quite a bit of sugar.
But what we don’t realize is that sugar disguises itself on our food labels under 61different names. Sugar is in so much of what is sold on the store shelves; in fact, more than 68% of packaged goods have some form of sugar - including most ketchup, mustard, salad dressings, bread, and tomato sauce.
Another surprising fact is that flour acts more like sugar in our body than sugar does.
If we eat 2 slices of whole wheat bread, we raise our blood sugar more than if we consumed 6 teaspoons of table sugar. White processed carbs like bread and pasta convert almost immediately to sugar once consumed.
So what’s the real problem with sugar?
We reach for it when we’re in need of an energy boost. The only problem is … after that boost, we end up in another energy slump … maybe with a headache and brain fog to boot. But we continue on in our cycles of wanting it … which ultimately creates a continuous cycle of blood sugar spikes, and blood sugar crashes. And that cycle of ups and downs is not good for us.
Because our bodies are on this continuous rollercoaster of sugar spikes and falls, a majority of Americans are not metabolically healthy, and in fact have insulin resistance. This opens the door to so much of our chronic disease.
In fact, it is widely believed by top doctors that 88% of us could be metabolically unhealthy and have insulin resistance.
Let me explain.
As a starter, what is metabolic health? When we are metabolically healthy, our body knows how to convert food to energy, and also how to get rid of waste.
How do we know if we're not metabolically healthy? Oftentimes, it’s not something we know or feel … but it’s indicative through being aware of our general health markers.
If we have 3 of the following conditions, most likely we have metabolic dysfunction:
High blood pressure
High fasting blood glucose (> than 100mg/DL)
Large waist circumference (35+ inches for women and 40+ inches for men)
High triglycerides (higher than 150 mg/DL)
Low LDL (<60mg/DL)
And what does insulin resistance mean?
When we eat carbohydrates (sugars and starches) the food breaks down into glucose. When this happens, our pancreas releases insulin that goes into the bloodstream to carry glucose into our cells for energy.
Given the standard American diet of lots of carbs, processed foods, sugar and alcohol, most people are giving their insulin a continuous workout - actually putting the pancreas on overdrive to release the insulin into the body to carry away the glucose and get it back down to a normal level.
At some point, the insulin stops being able to do its job properly. And this is when our glucose levels start creeping up. Creeping up to a pre-diabetic level and then ultimately leading us to Diabetes 2.
According to Dr. Ben Bikman (Phd in Pathophysiology and Biomedicine and Professor at Brigham Young University), insulin resistance is the single most common health disorder in the world, and the root of so many chronic diseases that we suffer from.
It can impact our brain - leading to memory loss. It can impact our muscle cells - possibly leading to chronic pain. It can be the cause of migraines and infertility. According to Dr. Bikman, insulin resistance is also the number one cause of hypertension.
The good news is that because our lifestyle factors are primarily to blame for getting us to an insulin resistant state, there are things we can do to reverse it as well.
As always, please reach out to me if you think you might be facing this challenge and want to have some further conversations.