THE SUGAR DILEMMA-Part I

THE SUGAR DILEMMA-Part I

We’ve been told for years that sugar is fine to eat in moderation. But what is moderation to one person is totally different to another; and if you’re struggling to lose weight or dealing with diabetes, there is no such thing as eating sugar in moderation. So, no matter who we are and what our reason is, most of us really don’t understand the dangers of sugar.

Food labeling doesn’t help either. It can be confusing with all the different names for sugar and clever marketing. There are actually more than 50 names for sugar, but no matter what they call it, sugar is still sugar!

It is surprising for most to learn that sugar has the same addictive characteristics as heroin, cocaine, meth and nicotine. Addiction counselors Dr. Mark and Lynnette Shadoan say that sugar is 8 times more addictive than cocaine.

Research has shown that the brain treats sugar much like it does other addictive drugs. You start off with the ability to eat just a little, but soon you end up craving more and more to get the same effect.

Once you eat something with sugar in it, your taste buds are activated to send signals to your brain that set off this entire cascade of stimulation. In particular, the dopamine pathway is activated, which is part of our pleasure and reward centers. So, when we eat the simple sugar, glucose (which is crucial to cell function and survival), it stimulates this reward pathway in our brains, making us feel happy and euphoric.

What eventually ends up happening is that when we keep eating sugar, our reward pathway continually gets bombarded and stimulated until, finally, the dopamine receptors become desensitized. It now requires more dopamine to get the same feeling or satisfaction we used to get from just a little sugar.

That whole process actually changes your genetic expression (you know, genes as in DNA), which creates a motivation cycle of consumption, dopamine release, reward, and pleasure. That cycle then gets increasingly difficult to break because of the pleasure it provides.

So, just like a drug or alcohol, it takes more sugar to satisfy our desires, resulting in weight gain.

Eliminating all added sugar from your diet can lead to some of the same symptoms as drug withdrawal. Sugar withdrawal can include symptoms such as headaches, dementia, cravings and even chills or flu-like symptoms. It’s neurologic.

Prolonged sugar consumption can lead to a change in genetic expression, meaning everything from neurotransmitters, to receptors, to the basic functions of the cells. High sugar diets reduce something called neurotrophic factors in the brain that help with communication between our brain cells.

This is why a correlation has been discovered between a reduction in these neurotrophic factors and Alzheimer’s, Alzheimer’s and dementia. This helps us better understand why Alzheimer’s, a major cause of dementia, is being termed type 3 diabetes. It’s because of a type of insulin resistance and dysfunction that occurs specifically in the brain. It is why diabetes doubles the risk of developing dementia.

Sugar addiction is a problem. It could very well be the reason we are struggling to lose weight. Next week we will look at 4 ways we can help to stop the sugar cravings.