You know that sugar is bad for you and your kids, so you take another look at the label. But even that is a nightmare: You know that glucose is a sugar but what about maltodextrin, or dextrose?

All this is enough to make you go crazy! Even if you are successful at steaming the tide of sugar into your house, your kids are often out of your sight and exposed to sugar in their daycare, their schools, or, if they are older… everywhere they can travel.

Sugar Consumption Junction

We consume a lot of sugar. Most adults and children are eating 1/4 to 1/2 of a pound of sugar every day.

Kids are no better:

A recent study published in the journal Pediatrics, found that

• 10 to 15 percent of our children’s total calories are coming from fruit juice or soda (and juice, from a sugar point of view, is no better than soda).
• Children and teens aged six to eighteen, averaged 30 ounces of juice or soda every day (or 20 teaspoons of sugar).
• Younger children were drinking an average of 15.5 ounces of sugary drinks (or 10 teaspoons of sugar a day).

What is amazing about this study is that it only focused on sugars in drinks and not the cereal, cookies, jam, candies, crackers, ice cream and other foods our children are eating. Clearly, our children are eating a lot of sugar.

The Problem with Sugar

If you have ever wondered if sugar is harmful or not, let me put your mind at unrest: sugar is harmful. While there is not a single established medical association that has yet to speak up, there is mounting evidence that sugar is harming our health and the health of our children.

Sugar has two distinct characteristics that make it harmful.

First, sugar is addictive. Scientists have discovered is that sugar is every bit as addictive as cigarettes, alcohol, and even hard drugs. Rats that have become addicted to sugar act the same and have the same brain chemistry as rats addicted to those other “hard” drugs. So when you try to take sugar away from your children and they go crazy you know that you are experiencing addictive behavior. This is why we as adults also have a hard time staying away from the white stuff. Sugar has a powerful grip on us and seeing sugar as addiction explains a lot of the behavior we see around sugar, including binging, cravings and even yo-yo dieting. If you feel constantly pulled by sugar’s sweet song, you are not alone.

Second, sugar damages the body and it does so through three mechanisms.

• Weight: The standard medical opinion of sugar is that it contains calories, so it may add to our growing obesity epidemic, but only because of the calories it contains. This is true, but sugar does so much more to add to our weight. When our blood sugar is raised to the high levels that occur when we eat sugar (and especially when we drink sugar), our bodies store that extra sugar-energy as fat. This is a unique aspect of sugar that doesn’t occur, say, when you eat a steak.
• Insulin Insensitivity: Consistently high blood sugar leads to insulin insensitivity. When the cells of our body become insensitive to insulin it creates a downward spiral to poor sugar control, including metabolic syndrome and eventually diabetes.
• Toxic: Sugar is toxic in much the same way that cigarette smoke is toxic to the lungs of a smoker; only sugar harms our blood vessels. As sugar enters our blood stream, it damages the very blood vessels that carry sugar throughout the body. We see this damage dramatically in people with very high blood sugar (diabetes) whose eyes, kidneys, hearts, and nerves are all damaged by sugar. The same sugar damage occurs in people who are not diabetic, only at a slower rate.

Sugar is at least partly responsible for the ever growing epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and even heart disease and it even affects the brains and moods of our children.

How to Survive Sugar Land

For most of us, completely eliminating sugar from our children’s diet is an impossible task. Not only do we have to face our children’s and our own addiction, but our children are out of our sight for much of the day – especially as they grow older.

In the study mentioned above in the journal Pediatrics, researchers found that most of the sugar consumption (55-70 percent) occurred in the home, so parents do have a lot of control. Here are some ideas to help you control the amount of sugar your children are consuming:

• Get rid of soda: Removing all soda from the house can dramatically cut down on the amount of sugar that children are eating. Fruit juice should also go, but many parents feel they need some sweet drink in the house and while fruit juice still alters blood sugar, it does contain some nutrients – use with moderation.
• Look for hidden sugars: While you won’t know if everything on a label is sugar, look for the OSE at the end of the ingredient. Examples of sugars include glucose, maltose, fructose, dextrose; this won’t help you find all the sugars, but it will take care of most of them.
• Eat crunchy: Encourage your children to eat something fresh and crunchy with every meal. When we try this in our home, our kids always say potato chips are crunchy and we have to say, no: fresh and crunchy. Good crunchy foods are carrots, celery, apples, pears, peaches… and really most fruit.
• Eat Fruit: For the most part, fruits, eaten in whole-form, are much better and don’t cause a rise in blood sugar the way that juices made from the same fruits do. Try mixed berries with a little whipped cream as an afternoon snack (whipped cream makes anything fun).
• Stay away from artificial sugars: While the subject of artificial sweeteners is an article (or a book) in itself, let me say that these chemical sweeteners are harmful enough to recommend eating sugar over them. Artificial sweeteners are chemicals that shouldn’t be in our bodies and we are just beginning to see the damage that they cause.
• Sugar substitutes: The best natural sugars are Stevia and xylitol. Stevia is an herb that is super-sweet but has no calories, and it actually helps with blood sugar control. It takes some effort to learn how to cook with it, but it usually satisfies that sweet tooth. Xylitol is a sugar that has some benefits including not increasing blood sugar dramatically and it has also been shown to be an anti-cavity sugar.

What to do if you can’t stay away from sugars:

• Know what keeps blood sugar low: If you cannot get sugar out of your life, you need to understand how to keep you and your children’s blood sugar low. The nutrients that keep blood sugar low are: protein, fats and fiber. So the best way to eat a sugar is to eat it in a meal where protein, fats and fiber are present. This means giving children their desert right after dinner, or having them include other foods (that contain a protein, fat or fiber) with their snack. So don’t pass out the cookies without, say, a hot dog. Don’t give a juice box without, say, peanut butter. Peanut butter (especially the non-added sugar kind) makes everything taste good: put it on apples, carrots, celery… whatever they will eat.

Sugar Challenge

You are in for a challenge when you try to keep sugar away from kids; doing the right thing is hard. Every step you make to remove sugar is a step in the right direction. Sugar is a powerful foe, but you can lessen the damage with a few simple changes in what you are offering your children. If you are really brave, you can check out the 30 30 Sugar Free Days Challenge.

Good luck and good eating!

Most people don’t think that they can, but a sugar free diet is a great way to give your health a boost and extend your life. If you were thinking about joining an expensive weight loss program – where you are stuck buying their food – I have a better (and healthier) option for you.

Sugar is harmful: Despite what the sugar industry and medical associations are saying, sugar is harmful. It is harmful in three ways:

• Adds Weight: As discussed above, sugar adds pounds to our bodies. This causes harm to our bodies because being obese or overweight increases a number of diseases: diabetes , stroke, heart disease, certain cancers and many more diseases. Obesity cuts life expectancy by as much as five years.
• Insulin Insensitivity: Consistently high blood sugar lead to the cells throughout the body becoming insensitive to insulin. This insulin insensitivity is at the heart of diseases such as metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Having diabetes, by the way, can clip as many as 10 years off your life and, maybe as many as 18 quality years off your life.
• Toxic: Sugar is toxic to our blood vessels, much the same way that cigarette smoke is toxic to our lungs. As sugar flows through our blood stream, it destroys the very blood vessels that carry the sugar throughout our bodies. This destruction is easily seen in people who have poor blood sugar control (like diabetics) who have high rates of eye disease (retinopathy), kidney disease, heart disease, nerve disease (neuropathy), and strokes, all caused by the destruction of blood vessels. The destruction also occurs in people who don’t have diabetes, only at a slower rate.

There are many reasons why you will want to join us on our sugar free adventure:

• Sugar is addictive: For many of you who read this blog regularly, you know just how powerful sugar addiction can be. Sugar often feels like it has the power to control us instead of the other way around. Sugar addiction shares common traits with all addictions, including: hoarding, binging, using the addiction to change moods, and many other addictive-like behaviors. Seeing sugar as an addiction explains a lot of how we act around sugar and is likely the reason why so many of us yo-yo diet. If you really don’t think sugar is addictive, try staying away from it for a few days and see; most people become acutely aware of just how addicting sugar can be when they remove it from their lives.
• You Want to Feel Better: Kicking sugar and eating a sugar free diet will be hard at first. But most people who are on the diet report that they feel better, have more energy, and even sleep better. Many people also report the almost magical disappearance of stomach problems, fatigue, depression, sinus infection, skin problems and more.
• Weight loss: Sugar has more to do with weight gain than you might have been led to believe by medical and nutritional professionals. Sugar does contain empty calories, but sugar is also special in its ability to add to your waistline. Your body has certain energy needs and once those needs are met by what you are eating, any excess sugar in your blood stream is going to be stored as fat. Excess sugar is very common when you are eating sugar and foods that act like sugar on a consistent basis. Keeping sugar out of your diet keeps your blood sugar low and, consequently, keeps your body from storing fat.
• You are curious: The last reason you may want to join us on our 30 Sugar Free Days is that you are curious to find out if sugar is addictive and can change your weight. Believe me when I say that those answers will become very clear for you if you join the 30 Day challenge.

Break the Habit, Break the Cycle

Breaking the sugar habit can be hard, but I am here to provide you with the support that you need, including meal plans, recipes, a newsletter and the ability to contact me with your questions; all at no cost.

Taking the 30 Sugar Free Days challenge is a step towards your better health. So many weight loss programs are designed to help you shed pounds, but do nothing to address your health. Why not have both good health and weight loss?

If you think you can go 30 days without sugar, please join us. You can sign up to receive our newsletter by clicking here: 30 Days Sugar Free.

Sugar cravings can be awfully hard to break, but luckily there are comforting ways to help us through our sugar habit.

Most people shrug off sugar cravings as a lark or something to laugh at, but for anyone who has ever tried to kick their sugar habit, sugar cravings are anything but a laughing matter. Sugar cravings can be very intense and drive us to eat more than we want to (sometime when we are not even that hungry) and binge on certain foods. Scientists are just now discovering how serious sugar cravings can be and are conducting experiments that show sugar craving to be every bit as powerful as cravings for drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.

Sugar Cravings Get Complicated

Here is the strange things: sugar cravings can carry over from sugar itself to foods that act just like sugar in your body. These foods, mostly grains and starchy vegetables (see: foods that act like sugar ), cause your blood sugar to rise just as if you were eating sugar. So, while you might want to stay away from sugar for your health, you need to include these foods that act like sugar if you really want to make an impact in your health; otherwise, you are just trading one sugar for another.

Check out my 30 Days Sugar Free Days Program that you can join if you want to try to stop all sugar and foods that act like sugar.

Cravings are also your body’s way of directing you towards foods that your body needs. The only problem is that once you become addicted to something, your cravings have gone haywire. Do you think that a smoker should follow their cravings to smoke, or an alcoholic to drink? Probably not. Likewise, your sugar cravings can often lead you astray.

Where Can You Find Comfort?

By now, you are scratching your head. Not only is sugar addicting, but there are also many other foods that act like sugar in the body and, while you may have cravings, you can’t really follow them. I’m willing to bet that every single one of your traditional comfort foods are either a sugar food, or a food that acts like sugar in your body. What are you to do?

Here are where you can still find some comfort:

• Okay, this is going to sound a bit silly, but sugar cravings come from, well… eating sugar. The more that you eat, the more that you are going to crave. I have a name for this and I call it the “sugar magnet”: once you put sugar into your mouth, more is going to want to follow. So, to avoid many of these cravings, you have to avoid the sugar.
• It is your brain that is telling you that you need to have sugar, not your body. Your brain has a set of chemicals called neurotransmitters that are involved in all sorts of brain messaging, including cravings. These neurotransmitters can be manipulated by what you eat. A diet that has plenty of good proteins and vegetables provides the raw materials for good neurotransmitters. By eating the right foods for your body, you cravings will lessen.
• Eat often: eating many small meals throughout the day is one of the best ways to keep cravings at bay. You might think that this will cause you to gain weight, but, in fact, the opposite is true: eating many small meals throughout the day can actually boost your metabolism.
• Sugar cravings also come from high spikes in blood sugar. Staying away from foods that act like sugar keeps your blood sugar more steady throughout the day and keeps the craving monsters away. There are many foods that you can eat that don’t affect your blood sugar at all: see the list of Below the Glycemic Index Foods.
• Comfort foods: Comfort foods generally have to characteristics: fatty and sugary. Look for hearty soups, stews, meals with plenty of good proteins (beef, poultry…). Things like peanut butter and beans can have the creamy, fat, sugary kind of taste you are looking for.
• If you find that you absolutely need something like a potato or grains, make sure that you are eating them near other low-sugar foods.

Kicking and Comforting

Trying to kick the sugar habit and finding your comfort foods can sometimes seem like opposite goals, but they really aren’t. Both are steps you trying to make to take care of yourself — only keeping sugars and foods that act like sugars out of your life actually accomplishes that goal. Many people report that their traditional comfort foods aren’t that at all, they may taste good for a while, but then they make us feel bad later. Find the true comfort foods, the foods that really feed your body what it needs, you will feel better much sooner than taking the old way.

You open a can of soda and pour that sugary drink into your mouth. The sugar travels down your throat and into your stomach; the sugar then has a very short trip from your stomach into your blood stream. As that sugar starts to move its way throughout your body, it eventually makes its way to your brain. You brain is happy with this shot of sugar you just gave it, because, while it only makes up only two percent of the body weight, your brain uses one-half of all the sugar energy in the body.¹ 

But, is there such a thing as too much sugar for your brain? And that soda you just drank, it will cause your blood sugar to skyrocket and eventually drop; what happens to your brain then? And what about other sugar-brains questions: doesn’t sugar make you or your kids hyperactive, and doesn’t sugar change your mood?

The short answer to these all these questions is: we don’t know. Scientific studies on the effects of sugar on the brain are sparse at best and most medical professionals and organizations will say that sugar has nothing to do with mood or hyperactivity. If you are surprised by that stance, you are not alone.

Most parents have witnessed firsthand the effect of sugar on little kid’s brains. Most adults will tell you that they have experienced a sort of mental fog from eating too much sugar, not to mention the sugar high and the sugar crash. But none of these experiences mean anything to researchers who report that there are no such things as sugar highs or lows or that hyperactivity could be caused by too much sugar.

But just because there isn’t much research on how sugar and foods that act like sugar and how they affect mental function, doesn’t mean there isn’t any. This article will piece together the bits of information out there on sugar and brain function to get a better understanding of what sugar is doing to our brains. As usual, I will be including not only sugar, but foods that act like sugar in the discussion.

Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor

Let’s start with a brain chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF is the key to understanding what happens when sugar hits our brain.

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor is responsible for the development of new brain tissue. If you didn’t have this chemical in your brain, your brain wouldn’t develop properly and you would die very soon after birth. The key to BDNF is to understand what it does: it helps to create new neurons (nerve tissue), and, therefore new memories.

You want as much BDNF around as possible if you want to learn, grow, and have normal brain functioning.

Research has shown that high sugar diets (along with high fat diets and lack of essential fatty acids) decrease a BDNF.² In fact, the relationship between BDNF and sugar gets even more interesting: low amounts of BDNF actually leads to insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome and even diabetes.³ This means that high sugar in the blood leads to low BDNF, and then low BDNF leads to a worsening of blood sugar control, which leads to high blood sugar, which leads to worse blood sugar control… and the cycle continues.

In an interesting study on rats, it was discovered that the animals that had the best ability to learn spatial and memory tasks also had the highest amount of BDNF. It took only two months on a high sugar and high fat diet to significantly reduce BDNF in the brains of the experimental animals and for the reduction to have an effect on the animal’s ability to perform spatial and memory tasks.⁴

Low BDNF is no small thing as it has also been associated with depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, Huntington’s disease, Rett syndrome, and schizophrenia.

But there is much more to the sugar-brain story than BDNF, let’s take a look.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is one of the best places to start when discussing how sugar affects our brains. There are quite a few clinical studies that link the consumption of grains (foods that act like sugar) with schizophrenia.⁵ It has long been thought that people who are schizophrenic may have a problem with the protein found in many grains (gluten) and there is a strong association between schizophrenia and Celiac disease.⁶

Interestingly, there is also a close association with poor blood sugar control (metabolic syndrome) and the severity of schizophrenia:

It appears that the same dietary factors which are associated with the metabolic syndrome, including high saturated fat, high glycemic load, and low omega-3 (PUFA), may also be detrimental to the symptoms of schizophrenia.⁷

These researcher show that once again, a diet low in essential fatty acids (omega-3) and high in fat and sugar will decrease BDNF and it makes me wonder if sugar and foods that act like sugar may be the “smoking gun” in schizophrenia.

Depression and Anxiety

As a hint that how we live and what we eat have some effect on our moods, it has long been known that coronary heart disease and diabetes all are common in people with depression.⁸ This means that the same dietary conditions that create heart disease and diabetes also can lead to depression. Interesting…

Sugar consumption in population studies have been shown to have a close link with major depression.⁹ Researchers suggest that the sugar and brain association may be due to the oxidative stress that sugar can cause or the change in beta-endorphins (brain chemicals that make us feel good) that comes about because of sugar use.

Anxiety, too, has been closely linked with sugar use in a number of studies.¹⁰

Children

Perhaps the biggest questions arise when discussing children, mood, behavior and sugar. While any parent would tell you that sugar can dramatically change the behavior of a child, the medical community is silent. There have been a few studies that show an association between high blood sugars and problem behaviors, but these studies have mostly been performed in children who already have blood sugar problems (such as diabetes).¹¹¹² More studies need to be done and need to be done in children with normal blood sugar.

Autism is an interesting exception to the lack of research. A review by the prestigious Cochrane review admitted that many of the studies linking foods that act like sugar (grains) and gluten to autism have been of poor quality, but they do point to one study that does show a relationship between a gluten-free diet and improvement in the symptoms of autism.¹³ While far from conclusive, these studies open the possibility of a solution for the growing epidemic of autism.

Brain Plan

Okay, let’s say you actually want to take care of your brain. What is the best way to go?

• Avoid grains and sugars: Read my book Sugarettes or take the 30 Sugar Free Days Challenge, and get yourself off sugar and foods that act like sugar.
• Exercise: It has been shown that exercise is great for your brain, and it increases BDNF.¹⁴
• Supplement: Your brain thrives on vitamins, especially the B vitamins and make sure you are taking some form of omega 3 oils (fish oils).

We can take care of our brains much better than we do and knowing that the foods that we put into our mouths can dramatically how we think, how we feel and act, and which diseases we get means that your brain and how well it functions is in your hands. You have a choice and what you eat and drink can make dramatic differences in how you think, feel and behave.

Citations:

1. Fehm HL, Kern W, Peters A. The selfish brain: competition for energy resources. Prog Brain Res. 2006;153:129-40.
2. Molteni R, Barnard RJ, Ying Z, et al. A high-fat, refined sugar diet reduces hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor, neuronal plasticity, and learning. Neuroscience. 2002;112(4):803-14.
3. Krabbe KS, Nielsen AR, Krogh-Madsen R, et al. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and type 2 diabetes. Diabetologia. 2007 Feb;50(2):431-8. Epub 2006 Dec 7.
4. Molteni R, Barnard RJ, Ying Z, Roberts CK, Gómez-Pinilla F. A high-fat, refined sugar diet reduces hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor, neuronal plasticity, and learning. Neuroscience. 2002;112(4):803-14.
5. Peet M. International variations in the outcome of schizophrenia and the prevalence of depression in relation to national dietary practices: an ecological analysis. Br J Psychiatry. 2004 May;184:404-8.
6. Kalaydjian AE, Eaton W, Cascella N, Fasano A. The gluten connection: the association between schizophrenia and celiac disease. Acta Psychiatr Scand. 2006 Feb;113(2):82-90.
7. Peet M. Nutrition and schizophrenia: beyond omega-3 fatty acids. Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids. 2004 Apr;70(4):417-22.
8. Peet M. International variations in the outcome of schizophrenia and the prevalence of depression in relation to national dietary practices: an ecological analysis. Br J Psychiatry. 2004 May;184:404-8.
9. Westover AN, Marangell LB. A cross-national relationship between sugar consumption and major depression? Depress Anxiety. 2002;16(3):118-20
10. Yannakoulia M, Panagiotakos DB, Pitsavos C, et al. Eating habits in relations to anxiety symptoms among apparently healthy adults. A pattern analysis from the ATTICA Study. Appetite. 2008 Nov;51(3):519-25.
11. Valdovinos MG, Weyand D. Blood glucose levels and problem behavior. Res Dev Disabil. 2006 Mar-Apr;27(2):227-31.
12. McDonnell CM, Northam EA, Donath SM, et al. Hyperglycemia and externalizing behavior in children with type 1 diabetes. Diabetes Care. 2007 Sep;30(9):2211-5.
13. Millward C, Ferriter M, Calver S, Connell-Jones G. Gluten- and casein-free diets for autistic spectrum disorder. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2004;(2):CD003498.
14. Exercise: Ang ET, Gomez-Pinilla F. Potential therapeutic effects of exercise to the brain. Curr Med Chem. 2007;14(24):2564-71.

We do a lot of strange things, and unfortunately for our health, they often lead to illness. As a whole, our memories are short, we think that the things we do every day are the things that humans have always done, but this is just not true.

To determine what we should do, we often look to other people for help; scientists call this “social proof”. Social proof is fine when everyone around you is acting in accordance with their health and their happiness, but as you might guess from all the unhealthy people you see every day, this just isn’t the case. We have slowly moved from healthy living habits to destructive habits and the movement has been so slow we have barely noticed it. I’ve gathered together some of the weird things humans do that can seem perfectly normal because everyone else is doing them, but are not.

If you are looking to improve your health, you might want to steer clear of what everyone else is doing.

• Not Sleeping When We Are Tired: Look around you: dogs, cats – even the mice in your walls – all lie down and sleep when they are tired. We don’t do that. What do you do if you are tired? If you are like a lot of us, you reach for coffee. Animals don’t do that, they lie down and sleep when they are tired. There are actually two issues here: the first is that amount of sleep you need and the second is sleeping during the day. It can be a bit hard to determine what is normal for the amount of sleep we need, but looking at animals, they are sleeping much more than we are and they tend to break up their sleep into smaller chunks. You might need eight hours of sleep, but maybe your number is six or ten hours. You should also consider adding a nap into your routine. Next time you think you need a pick-me-up from your coffee cup, try a short nap. I’m a big fan of the nap and try to catch one every day; it is the best way I know to “reboot” my brain for an afternoon in front of the computer. Here is a great page for information on napping and a no nonsense guide to napping.
  
• Not Relaxing: You relax don’t you? You go home, sit in front of the television and relax. Right? That is not what I’m talking about. You, your body, your mind, and your soul need a time out. I’m not talking about sitting in front of the television, but true relaxing, just hanging out and doing nothing. To understand what I mean by relaxing, try picturing a day at the beach. The beach seems to be one place in our society where it is okay to just sit and do nothing (if you didn’t pack in toys, radios…). Try to set aside a small portion of your day for pretending you are on the beach. Just sit and stare at the clouds or your ceiling or whatever. Do nothing, just let your mind wander. If you are into prayer or mediation, this is a great time to practice that.
  
• Eating Grains:
  I know what you are thinking when you read this: of course it is normal to eat grains; the government recommends that grains make up most of our diet, it has to be normal. But, once again, eating grains seems normal because everyone is doing it, but grains are not optimal food for humans. Humans have only been munching on grains – in any large amounts – for the last 7,000 years. Sure, that sounds like a lot of time, but it actually is not. Our bodies have not adapted to the large amount of carbohydrates we put into them. High blood sugar which results from eating grains is responsible for more ill health than smoking cigarettes (see my book Sugarettes). Try replacing grains with fruits and vegetables at every meal. You will be astonished at how much better you feel.
• Wearing Shoes: Putting shoes on your feet seems pretty normal, right? Actually, your foot is incredible complex and wearing shoes all the time can be harmful to your feet. I suggest you spend at least part of the day waking around without shoes. A great trick is to get a plastic bucket and fill it with small stones (like pea gravel) spend ten or 15 minutes just standing in the gravel. It gives your feet a massage and rebuilds many of the muscles that have atrophied due to shoe wearing. There are also shoes from Terra Plana called Vivo Barefoot shoes that have a Kevlar bottom so that your feet can have the barefoot experience while still looking like a normal shoe.
• Being Inside: We live most of our lives inside and this is just not healthy. Not only is the air pollution inside a home or office often much worse than outside, we are also not getting enough sunlight. We have grown afraid of the big bad sun and have forgotten that it has a lot to do with our health. Yes, you should not be out in the sun long enough to get a bad burn, but skin cancer has a lot less to do with our exposure to sunlight than previously thought. It appears that skin cancer may have much more to do with the lack of essential nutrients than sun exposure; some research suggests that it is the lack of sunlight that causes cancer. We get vitamin D from sun exposure and that vitamin is so essential to our health that you should consider supplementing if you are not getting enough (I like cod liver oil for vitamin D supplementation).
• Drinking Calories: If you think, like I do, that eating foods as close to the way that they are presented to us in nature (non-processed) is the best way to eat, then you have to question consuming calories in liquid form. Think about it, if you go back 10,000 years, how many drinkable foods were available on the planet? Only water (okay, and, breast milk). Drinking calories only becomes a problem when those calories are mostly sugars. Sugars in liquid form are absorbed rapidly into our bodies and create all sorts of havoc including: weight gain, diabetes, heart disease and maybe even cancer. Our bodies are woefully unprepared for calories to come in a liquid form. If you are going to do only one thing for your health, I strongly urge you to stop drinking soda and fruit juice.
• Stretching Before Exercise: Okay, I don’t count this as a major health hazard, but there is a great recent article that shows stretching is not such a good idea for athletes.
• Not Moving our Buns Around: We sit a lot! We sit in cars, we sit at work, we sit on the couch… humans are professional sitters. Our ancestors had far more muscle mass than most of us do today. Muscle mass is one of the keys to not only how long we live, but also to general health and weight loss. You need to get up and move your buns around every day and build up your muscle mass. Walking is perhaps the best exercise you can participate in, but swimming, cycling, running, hiking and anything that gets your heart rate up, are all great. Exercise is so important that you should prioritize it over everything else that you do: exercise is a vitamin, exercise is a drug, exercise is the fountain of youth. There are hundreds of research studies that show that exercise helps with weight loss, depression, anxiety, heart health and works as an anti-cancer activity. Get off your buns and move them around a bit every day.
• Not Going to The Bathroom When We Need to Go: Once again, look to the animal world and find one animal that will stop its urges to go to the bathroom. Ignoring the urge to urinate has been associated with a higher rate of urinary tract infections, but it is especially harmful when you hold on to a bowel movement. Constipation is a major source of illness and increases the risk for hemorrhoids and even certain cancers. Constipation often leads to more constipation. I know it is hard, because of how we live our lives, but try and not ignore your body’s urges.
• Cooking Foods: As I mentioned earlier, it is best to eat foods as close to the way that they are presented to us as possible. When we cook foods, they lose vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients. The most grievous of losses are the loss of essential fatty acids, or EFAs. Most of us don’t get enough essential fatty acids and EFAs are one of the few supplements that I think everyone should take (one again, I would recommend cod liver oil to get your EFAs).

Well, there they are: the Weird Things Humans Do. I’m sure I missed a few; feel free to add them into the comment section. When you look at all the strange things we do you start to realize just how un-normal normal can be. Health is a matter of breaking free of the things most people do and charting a way through the world that prioritizes your health.

I write a lot about sugar and foods that act like sugar in this blog. Lately, I’ve been getting a few questions about what I mean by “foods that act like sugar,” so here is the explanation and it all start with an understanding of the glycemic index.

The Glycemic Index

By now, most people have heard of the glycemic index, but I’ll take a moment to explain it.

The way the glycemic index works is that a scientist will measure the blood sugar of a volunteer and then feed that volunteer a single food. After two or three hours, the volunteer’s blood sugar is measured again. What scientists have discovered through this kind of testing is that certain foods increase blood sugar a little, others increase blood sugar moderately, and still other foods increase blood sugar dramatically.

While there are complicated glycemic index charts that show hundreds of foods, here is a typical one:

What you want to notice about this list is that sugars (left-hand column) are mostly in the high top part of the chart. Sucrose (table sugar) and glucose are always found near the top, but, here is the kicker: so are white rice, pancakes, bread, corn flakes, crackers, parsnips, potatoes and many other foods. These are the Foods That Act Like Sugar in your body.

A Sugar is a Sugar

The take home message from the studies done on glycemic index is that a sugar is a sugar, no matter what the source. To your body, it doesn’t matter if you pick up a table spoon of sugar and put it in your mouth, or if you pick up a baguette and start munching on it: the results are the same. Up up up goes your blood sugar every time you eat these foods.

If you want to maintain good blood sugar control, I always recommend eating low or below the glycemic index.

According to recent research, the number of people with diabetes has doubled in the last 10 years.¹ The report, by the Centers for Disease Control or CDC, shows that the nation (and really the whole developed world) is becoming heavier and heavier (see YouTube video) and with that excess weight comes an increasingly large number of people who have diabetes.

Having diabetes is far from a mild disease; it has major implications on the quality of life. People with diabetes are much more likely to have:

• Heart disease
• Kidney disease
• Eye disease (cataracts, macular degeneration, blindness)
• Vascular disease (stroke and poor circulation to hands and feet)
• Loss of nerve sensation (neuropathy)

Life Expectancy

Diabetes is harmful and it will cut your life short. Diabetics lose an average of 12 years for men and 14 years for women from their lives. ⁵ Yes, women are harmed by diabetes more than men.

There is associated problem with diabetes that doesn’t get much attention that has to do with the quality of life lived by a diabetic. The quality of life deteriorates rapidly in people with diabetes: blindness, losing limbs, heart disease, kidney failure and more. When scientists make an estimation of the loss of not only years lived, but also the quality of those years, they come up with something they call “quality-adjusted years”. Men lose an average of 19 quality-adjusted years and women lose around 22 years.⁵

I don’t know about you, but 20 years kicked off of a life seems rather significant.

It is Bad and Getting Worse

Population estimates are hard to come by, but the current number of people with diabetes is estimated somewhere between 4.3 to 16.6 percent of the population,² with certain ethnic groups such as Native American and Hispanics at the high end of those calculations.

But even those percentages don’t tell the whole story. What you really want to know is this: what are your chances of getting diabetes? It is easy to think that your chances of getting diabetes are between 4.3 to 16.6 percent (like the population estimates), but that is not true. To find out your own risk, you have to look at lifetime risk (the chances you will get diabetes some time in your life). What are your lifetime risks for diabetes? The esteemed Journal of the American Medical Association or JAMA made these estimates in 2003:

For people born in 2000, their lifetime risk for getting diabetes is 32.8 percent for males and 38.5 percent for females.⁵

That is incredible: an almost 40% risk of getting diabetes some time in your lifetime.

It Doesn’t Have to be This Way!

Here is the thing you need to know: diabetes is completely preventable. It is the one disease that I can say for sure that you never have to suffer through as long as you follow my dietary advice. No pills, no drugs… just follow dietary advice. I detail just what diet to follow in my book Sugarettes, but let me give you an outline of what you need to do:

• Avoid sugar in all its forms: soda, cookies, candies…
• Eat a diet at or below the glycemic index
• Find ways to deal with your sugar addiction
• Exercise

That is it. Sounds simple, but following it is hard.

Diabetes has doubled in the last 10 years, don’t let you or a member of your family become one of the statistics.

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). State-specific incidence of diabetes among adults–participating states, 1995-1997 and 2005-2007. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2008 Oct 31;57(43):1169-73.
   
2. Ramsey F, Ussery-Hall A, Garcia D, et al. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Prevalence of selected risk behaviors and chronic diseases–Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), 39 steps communities, United States, 2005. MMWR Surveill Summ. 2008 Oct 31;57(11):1-20.
   
3. Magliano DJ, Shaw JE, Shortreed SM, et al. Lifetime risk and projected population prevalence of diabetes. Diabetologia. 2008 Sep 23
   
4. Mainous AG 3rd, Baker R, Koopman RJ, et al. Impact of the population at risk of diabetes on projections of diabetes burden in the United States: an epidemic on the way. Diabetologia. 2007 May;50(5):934-40. Epub 2006 Nov 21.
   
5. K. M. Venkat Narayan, James P. Boyle, Theodore J. Thompson. Lifetime Risk for Diabetes Mellitus in the United States. JAMA. 2003;290:1884-1890.
   

How do you know if you are addicted to sugar?

Addictions can be tricky to define; there are both physical and psychological addictions. Proving something is an addiction is a bit difficult, but the test below is a test that would work for any addiction. Give it a try:

• Have you ever used sugar as a reward for something? Was sugar the treat you gave yourself after you completed a task or a job well done?
• Have you ever used sugar to change your mood, like when you felt sad, tired, or when you needed a lift?
• Have you ever eaten sugar even when you weren’t hungry? You just finished a meal and are very full, but still you order dessert or go to the fridge and pull out the ice cream.
  
• Have you ever tried to stop eating sugar and couldn’t? You tried a diet like Atkins or South beach, but felt endlessly drawn by sugar and foods that act like sugar and couldn’t stick to the diet.
• Have you ever taken a small bite of something sweet and felt compelled to finish the whole thing? You thought you were just going to have a bit of something, but then you at the whole thing. Sugar foods count here too: have you ever started to eat a bag full of potato or corn chips and finished the whole bag?
• Have you ever quit eating sugar and when you started eating it again, couldn’t stop binging? When you took sugar out of your diet and then returned to it, did you binge on sugar and sugar foods?

If you answered yes to one or two of these questions, then you probably have a sugar problem. If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, then you can be guaranteed that you are addicted to sugar.

The signs of addiction are typically:

• Using the addiction for a reward
• Using a substance to change a mood
• Feeling compelled to consume the addiction even though you don’t need it
• Binging, especially when the addicted substance is removed for a while

Sugar has all characteristics of an addiction and the scientific community is just beginning to wake up to that fact. But before you dismiss the addiction as just as a funny thing we all do, you need to realize that sugar addiction ultimately means harm to your body. Sugar consumption is associated with increased weight and obesity, diabetes, heart disease and potentially many other diseases.

Getting off your sugar addiction can be hard, but you can do it with the proper support and help.

You may have heard of high and low glycemic index foods and that you should eat as many low glycemic foods as you can if you want to keep your blood sugar low or if you are diabetic, but you may not have heard of the concept of Eating Below the Glycemic Index.

A typical glycemic index chart looks something like this:

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Click to Enlarge Chart

What you should notice about this chart, or any glycemic index chart, is that there are a number of foods that are missing. The reason why these missing foods are not on the chart is that they don’t have any effect on your blood sugar at all. But just because these foods are not on the glycemic index doesn’t mean they are not important, in fact the opposite is true.

Below the Glycemic Index Foods:

Here are the foods that are below the glycemic index. You can safely eat as much as you want of them and they will have no impact on your blood sugar:

• Onions and garlic
  
• Cruciferous vegetables: Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, chard, kale, and cabbage
• Lettuce of all kinds: red leaf, green leaf, iceberg…
• Mixed greens: spinach, arugula, endive, dandelion greens, escarole, radicchio, red mustard and various lettuces: red leaf, green leaf, romaine
• Avocados
  
• Meats: fish, chicken, beef, pork, wild game
• Eggs
  
• Mushrooms: Shitake, Maitake, Reishi and others
  

What is amazing about all these foods is that they are not only low on the glycemic index, but many of them are what I call Disease Busing Power Foods because they pack that additional nutritional punch that makes them not only good for you, but can actually prevent (and maybe even treat) many common diseases (such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and others).

By choosing foods from below the glycemic index, you are picking the very best nutrition you can find. You are not only keeping your blood sugar low, but you are also giving your body that extra boost it needs to navigate our stressed-out over-processed and sometimes toxic world.

Cannot Live on “Below” Alone?

You may look at the Below the Glycemic Index foods and think that you cannot live on those foods alone. Fair enough. The next best place to choose your foods from is the low glycemic index foods, the best of these include:

• Nuts: peanuts, cashews, almonds, walnuts…
• Fruits: apples, kiwi, cherries, berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries…)
• Beans: pinto, chickpea, butter beans, lima bean, black beans, lentils…
• Grains: while I’m not a big fan of grains, if you want to include them in your diet try to prepare them as most people make rice: boil and eat them. The whole grain with the lowest glycemic index is barley. You should also choose the whole-grain versions and not the “white” versions. If you simply must have your grains ground and processed, choose pasta as it generally is very low on the glycemic index.

Below or Low

As you can see, the best way to eat is to choose foods low or below the glycemic index. While it can be difficult at times, these foods are what your body need to thrive.

There are two ways to look at cold and flu season. The first is to think that there are bugs out there and if you are too close to someone who has those bugs, you are going to get sick. The second is to realize that there are bugs out there, but there are always bugs out there, and that you only get sick when the conditions are right for the bugs to thrive.

Growing Flowers in a Desert

The best way to understand the second way of thinking is to picture a desert and think about what can grow in a desert environment. Only certain plants and animals can thrive in the desert. If you take a plant from a tropical climate and put it in a desert, it will die almost immediately. The reason why the tropical plant will not thrive and grow in the dry desert is because deserts don’t provide the right conditions for the tropical plant to grow.

The same is true of bacteria and viruses.

If you provide the right conditions for the bugs to grow, then, yes, you are going to get a cold. If you body is more like a desert, then the bugs will never get a hold and you will avoid the cold altogether. There are ways you can prepare for cold and flu season so that you can avoid getting sick.

Tips for Growing Your Own Personal Desert

• Slow down: take time off and spend time with the ones that you love. Remember that winter is the time to slow down; everything in the natural world is getting slower. Take a hint from nature and take a break from your busy schedule. In talking with dying patients who may not have much time left, they often lament the time that wasn’t spent with family and friends. Fall offers us this opportunity to slow down, enjoy our meals, and focus on loved ones.
  
• Eat for Health: You want to focus on vegetables that have been growing all summer and are now ready to eat. The more hearty vegetables should start showing up on your plate. Beets, turnips, parsnips, rutabaga, and winter squashes such as Acorn, Butternut, Pumpkins are a welcome addition to any meal. Add more protein to your diet as you need the extra amino acids to boost your immune system. As always kick sugar out of your diet, it ruins your immune system (and remember to remove the foods that act like sugar too: see my book Sugarettes).
  
• Soup: Both Chinese and Indian culture’s placed high emphasis on what are called “tonifing” soups. These, like your grandmother’s chicken soup recipe for a cold, act to increase the body’s ability to fight disease. Choose fresh vegetables, with emphasis on garlic and onion, chicken or fish may be added to boost protein content. Add plenty of spices: turmeric, thyme, basil, all have antimicrobial properties and also help to support the body’s own healing mechanism.
  
• Sweat: As the weather turns cold, take advantage of any opportunity to enjoy a steam-room or sauna. Not only have this been shown to aid in detoxification, but it also allows you a chance to relax and take some time off. Massage is another good way to aid in detoxification and promote a relaxed atmosphere. I still think you should exercise in winter, but just take it a bit slower.
  
• Sleep: With more nighttime and less daytime it would make sense that we sleep longer. Sleep impacts health in so many ways, getting the right amount of sleep for you is essential to your health and your body’s ability to fight disease.
  
• Herbs and Vitamins: There are many herbs such as Echinacea and others that promote healing and make colds shorter and less painful. These are best when they are chosen for the individual and their particular illness. Consult a professional who can personalize an herbal and nutritional program just for you.
  

What if you do get a Cold?

Okay, even if you do get a cold, you might want to look at it another way.

From a more natural perspective, fall and spring are times for the body to clean junk out of your system and a cold or flu may be a companion to help you clear out that junk. From this perspective, when you get a cold, you are not going to battle it, but accept it as a friend. Take a cold for what it truly should be: a hint that you need to slow down, get more sleep, eat better and take care of yourself.