Sugar Addiction
By Nancy Appleton, Ph.D.
Can you go for more than a day without eating sugar in any form?
Do you drink soft drinks or milkshakes, eat Danish pastry, fruit yogurt (a
6 oz. cartoon has 7 teaspoons of sugar or honey), donuts, bagels, cakes,
cookies, most bran muffins or many other sugary items. Can you go without
any other foods that contain words ending in "ose" such as sucrose,
fructose, etc., or contain corn syrup, corn sweetener, honey, barley malt,
maple syrup, sugar cane solids, or rice syrup? Do you pig out on a carton
of ice cream or a bag of cookies? If you find that sugar is part of your
diet every day, you may have a problem.
The average person eats 153 pounds of sugar a year. That is equivalent to
over 1/2 cup of sugar a day. The teenage boy eats twice that much. So you
say, "Who cares?" What is wrong with sugar?
There is much scientific evidence written in many medical journals showing
that sugar can ruin your health. Do you have any of the following
symptoms? Do you fall asleep after meals, have allergies, gas, bloating,
extended stomach after meals, joint pains, headaches, chronic fatigue,
constipation, diarrhea, over weight, skin problems, high blood pressure or
other symptoms? These all can be signs of a sugar problem.
We have evolved from early man having digestive mechanisms to digest
foods. We do not have the digestive mechanisms to digest the glut of sugar
that we are eating on a daily basis. Recently,
information has
emerged as to what happens to the minerals in the body when sugar and other
abusive foods are eaten. For example, every time we eat just as little as
two teaspoons of sugar our blood chemistry can change, and we can throw
ourselves out of homeostasis, the wonderful electrochemical balance needed
for health and life itself. Doctors and clinicians do not usually
test the total blood chemistry of a person before and after ingesting
sugar, but if they did, they would find that the minerals increase or
decrease, and change relationship with each other. In the usual case the
calcium increases and the phosphorus decreases (the ratio of calcium to
phosphorous increases too much) and there is toxic calcium in the body
because minerals only work in relation to each other. A mineral can become
toxic to the body when there is an excess of that
mineral in the body. Toxic calcium can cause plaque on the teeth, kidney
stones, arthritis, cataracts, bone spurs, and hardening of the arteries.
These are effects of an increase in a particular mineral ratio. When
minerals decrease, they can be reduced to such an extent that our enzymes
are unable to function well as each enzyme is dependent upon a mineral to
function. As a result we do not digest our food completely and some of
this undigested food can get directly into the blood stream and is treated
as a foreign substance. This by-product of incomplete digestion, causes
the immune system to come into action. Actually, this is one form of food
allergy. The immune system must respond to this undigested or partially
digested food in the blood stream. For some of us, this undigested food
can cause an inflammatory response with sneezes and wheezes. For others it
might cause headaches, anger, arthritis, fatigue, multiple sclerosis,
psoriasis or other problems. On top of all this, too much sugar can
overwork and exhaust our white cells and weaken our immune system. The
white blood cells need protein to function, and they are not receiving the
correct protein combinations since protein is not being digested and
assimilated properly.
The bottom line is that sugar upsets the body chemistry and suppresses the
immune system. Once the immune system becomes suppressed, the door is
opened to infectious and degenerative diseases. The stronger the immune
system the easier it is for the body to fight infectious and degenerative
diseases.
Sugar is implicated in the following diseases and many more: allergies,
arthritis, diabetes, hypoglycemia, osteoporosis, gallstones, kidney stones,
headaches, yeast infections, and cataracts.
So if you have any of the symptoms or diseases mentioned, remove all forms
of sugar from your diet for two weeks, I think that you will be pleasantly
suprised. Not only will some of those symptoms disappear but you will be
strengthening your immune system, allowing it to do the job it was meant
to, defend you against foreign invaders.
Nancy Appleton, Ph.D., did her undergraduate work at U.C.L.A. in Food and
Nutrition. She received her Ph.D. from Walden University in Health
Services. Her award willing dissertation
was written on "An Alternative to the Germ Theory," which will come out in
the book THE CURSE OF LOUIS PASTEUR. She is author of HEALTHY BONES, LICK
THE SUGAR HABIT THE CURSE OF LOUIS PASTEUR, and HEAL YOURSELF WITH NATURAL
FOODS. For more information on the web: www.nancyappleton.com