The body knows sugar is toxic and releases hormones to regulate it…
Ever since reading the book Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan, I now more than ever are very strict with the vegetable oil consumption in my childrens diet.
If you missed what I wrote here is the debrief of Catherines book explaining why vegetable oils are of a major concern for you and why you really need to seriously eliminate them from your diet….
Sheer Poison! The facts on vegetable, canola, sunflower and rice bran oils.
Catherine not only goes deep into vegetable oil facts, she also goes very deep into the dangers of sugar. We all know sugar is not good for us, but let’s look deeper into why…
Of course, we need sugar in our bloodstream just to stay alive. Glucose is the only fuel that red blood cells – and a few other types – can use. But things so awry when you eat more than your body can handle. Because sugar – in high concentration is a rarity in nature, the human metabolism is simply not prepared for exposure to the 100 plus extra kilo of sugar the Australian now consumes yearly!!!!
In a different century, only the wealthy could indulge in sweets made with refined sugar. Now sugar is unfortunately the mainstay in the modern diet.
Sugar seeps into your tissues, it coats the cell membranes, with life changing consequences – it makes your soft tissue hard, brittle, and easily breakable – it causes inflammation all over your body. It weakens your connective tissues, it disrupts the complex series of physiologic development in young children during puberty, starting a long term of interfering with hormone receptors.
These interruptions of the hormone receptors, such as jamming them and causing insulin sensitivity is the cause why we gain an extra 5+ kg per decade after the age of 35!
You see once you are insulin resistant, blood sugar levels rise higher still, leading to diabetes and all its related disorders, including weight gain and circulatory and sexual dysfunctions.
For the same reasons sugar jams hormone signals, it also clogs nutrient channels weakening bone and muscle and slowing neural communication, which can impair mood and memory and lead to dementia. While all this is going on, sugar stiffens the collagen in your tendons (making brittle), joints, and skin, causing arthritis and premature wrinkling, while interfering with the production of new collagen throughout your entire body. And because sugar changes the surface markers your white blood cells need to distinguish indigenous cells from the invaders, it opens the door to cancer and infections.
Hypoglycemia is a commonly recognized problem of low blood sugar. But it may also be the earliest sign that a person is on their way to developing insulin resistance. The symptoms of hyperglycemia include feeling tired, hungry and shaky or nauseated before lunch or dinner. These feeling come from adrenaline, which helps the liver pump out more sugar but also makes us shaky, nauseous, even panicky. Because sufferers often figure that their symptoms are due to low sugar levels, they often self medicate by eating more sugar, which only makes the situation worse!
So things get harder for menopausal women – such as estrogen and progesterone rise and fall and can cause anxiety to some women. It’s like the brain was deprived of glucose, and triggers a stress response from the adrenal glands. They would in turn release adrenaline, which, like glucagon, instructs the liver to release stored glucose.
Adrenaline affects the nervous system, causing anxiety and shakiness, and even nausea.
So rising and falling estrogen and progesterone in combination with mixed signals from high levels of insulin glucagon, and the occasional bursts of adrenaline can cause short circuits in the brain resulting in seizures.
Please understand that sugar is toxic and seriously the amount of sugar bursts in these high energy drinks, people say it’s the caffeine , they never think it’s the sugar, all these cafes now that serve ridiculous milkshakes with cakes on the top is so disastrous – I would never allow my children to have these!!! You see it’s not just that sugar causes illness, but the sugar induced problems pull otherwise healthy people into a state of ill health!.
Most children these days have been raised on low fat products, which as we know are full of sugar, making them taste great and this is why our children are so addicted to this substance. It goes back to as early as baby formula having not only sugar in it, but also the vegetable oils (argh), so addiction started flourishing then, so of course the children of now all they want is the ridiculous milkshake with the cake on top!!
I am shattered when my 9 year old said to me “why can’t I be normal”, all because I wouldn’t let him have chocolate or icecream – children think this is “normal”, this is sad as it’s a sign of addiction!
Denying kids of healthy fat often drives them to sugar, you know all the ready to go snacks have hardly any if at all any good healthy fats in them, as these are not as appealing to our sugar addicted children!
What’s worse is now recipe books are trying to show they are changing and removing sugar – well they’re only CHANGING energy sources, from granulated sugar to liquid syrup/sugar, which is in fact a more concentrated sugar, with 4 times the calorie quantity and raising the blood sugar levels higher. So the higher they fly up, the bigger crash when they come down, so imagine how much MORE sugar they need to raise it again – yes at least 4 times the amount – now this is a huge roller coaster ride.
(These syrups you need to look out for are: rice malt syrup, maple syrup, maltodextrin, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, malt, malt syrup, fructose plus many more).
Rising and falling blood sugar levels can be damaging and bring an onset of anxiety to our children and us as adults.
Then there is the carbohydrate factor. Cheap carbs break down into sugars (think of a cereal boxes content), it’s cheap carbs combined with sugar, but they try to sell it to you as a fibrous breakfast meal! You see carbohydrates are sugar, and they don’t taste sweet, so of course they need to add more sugar.
The human digestive system can also convert starch into sugar, which is exactly what it does every time we eat starch. This is why, as far as your body is concerned, starch and sugar are almost the same.
Where people get confused is that when they are eating pasta or a dry biscuit, because it is not sweet, they don’t think it has sugar. Starch is like a chain gang that, when bound together in long molecule, won’t cause any harm.
But if you let a cracker/dry biscuit sit on your tongue long enough – or get broken down by digestion – the starch molecules turn into the very same sugar that you know is bad for your body. This means if you have sat down and ate an entire box of dry biscuits, you have essentially sat down and ate a box of sugar!!!
So when eating either sugar or starch – you really are eating just sugar.
It’s not that you have to be anti-carbs, it’s just that you need to understand how the big companies out there load their product with this ingredient to help keep costs down and fill the boxes so to speak, but they are not concerned about the effects to consumers health.
I don’t want to sound like the ‘fun police’ – I as a health coach just want you to be aware of the damages sugar and vegetable oils can do to your system, to rapidly decrease your health and wellbeing.
Sugar is everywhere, hidden in everything and, people relate sugar binges are at kids parties, but with the prepacked foods out there now, it’s not just kid’s foods that have it, it’s the adult’s food as well, it’s no wonder so many people are struggling with their weight.
All you can do is be aware, be mindful and I hope you make the right choices. Share this information with others because the more people that know the less people become ill with a metabolic disease.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this, and if you didn’t get to read the previous blog about vegetable oils – here it is. Sheer Poison! The facts on vegetable, canola, sunflower and rice bran oils.
To your health
Kerrie
