mckitterick: (skeleton bicyclist)
mckitterick ([personal profile] mckitterick) wrote2011-04-19 01:40 pm
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Is Sugar Toxic?

First, read this NYT article on why sugar is so dangerous to your health. I'll wait.

I stopped eating refined sugars a year ago, and within two weeks I lost 10 pounds. I also started feeling healthier almost right away. This is why: Not only does sugar (cane, corn, you name it - refined sugar) make us fat, but it also causes insulin resistance. This makes it a primary cause for diabetes and metabolic syndrome. That means sugar causes heart disease. Worse yet, because of all these effects, it promotes cancer.

There's a terrifying thought, considering that it's in almost every prepared food you find in the grocery store.


Click the image to see the NYT article.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to give up refined sugar for one month. See how much your body responds.

Starting today, I'm giving up on diet soda, as well. Why? One's body sees the artificial sweetener and produces insulin in response... so the most dangerous aspect of sugar - that it promotes these diseases - can't be avoided by using artificial sweeteners in place of sugar. I've been noticing soreness in my guts, what appears from all symptoms to be a gall-bladder issue. Therefore, my body is responding to diet soda by producing insulin and increasing my triglycerides (blood fat) from artifical sweetneners.

*sigh*

I'll report in a month on how that's going. I hope to hear from YOU, too!

Good luck.
Chris
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[identity profile] ms-danson.livejournal.com 2011-04-19 06:58 pm (UTC)(link)
What does giving up refined sugar entail?

[identity profile] emt-hawk.livejournal.com 2011-04-19 07:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Reading every package of everything you plan to eat, and make sure that it's not included as an ingredient.

Spaghetti sauce often contains sugars, for example.

--Hawk

[identity profile] mckitterick.livejournal.com 2011-04-19 07:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Right, as Hawk says, it's only easy if you cook all your own food. Almost EVERYTHING packaged contains sugar, I shit you not (look at boxes and packages next time you go grocery shopping).

Refined sugar is cane sugar, corn syrup, honey (the bees refine it for us), and so forth. Just don't add those and you'll be avoiding refined sugar! Now, you can have some without the terrible effects, obviously, but I found I had to go cold-turkey to make it stick.