Things to Know About Sugar
Almost everyone has a sweet tooth in one way or another. Today, refined sugar is available in many of our foods. Some people are aware and know how to limit their intake of sugar, while others are not aware that excessive consumption of food and drinks with high sugar can cause serious damage.
Remember there are no proteins, essential fats, vitamins or minerals in sugar… just pure energy.
- Eating too much added sugar allows the fructose found in sugar and high-fructose corn syrup to send your hunger hormones into a tailspin. The hormonal messages that tell your brain you're full aren't properly triggered, tricking your system into thinking you haven't eaten at all.
- Sugar is a primary contributor to the aging process. Fructose, the sweet molecule in sugar, is seven times more potent than the glucose portion of sugar, forming oxygen radicals, leading to higher rates of cell damage and death, and contributing to chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease. It speeds along the aging process in general.
- Sugar specifically promotes belly fat. Adolescent obesity rates have tripled in the past 30 years and childhood obesity rates have doubled. One factor that seems to inflict obese children is fat accumulation in the trunk area of the body. Why? One cause may be the increase in fructose-laden beverages.
- Sugar can increase your liver fat. When you overdose the mitochondria in your liver with sugar, the organ has no choice but to take the excess and turn it into liver fat. Some of this fat never makes it out of the liver, leading to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. This forces the pancreas to make extra insulin so the damaged liver can do its job.
- It makes you an addict as dopamine is one your body's feel-good neurotransmitters. But eating too much fructose shuts down healthy signaling in the body, meaning it takes more and more sugar to fire off signals that bring pleasure.
- Sugar can suppress the immune system.
- Sugar can cause hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children which can adversely affect school children's grades and cause learning disorders. Sugar can also worsen the symptoms of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
- Sugar interferes with absorption of calcium and magnesium and can cause tooth decay especially in children.
Remember there are no proteins, essential fats, vitamins or minerals in sugar… just pure energy.