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What’s Causing Your Inflammation?
By Catherine Guthrie, Experience Life
Americans are on a bona fide sugar binge. During the past 25 years, the average person’s intake of sugar and other natural sweeteners ballooned from 123 to as many as 160 pounds a year. That breaks down to more than 20 teaspoons of the added white stuff per person per day. And our collective sweet tooth is growing. For the past decade, Americans’ sugar consumption has edged upward at the average rate of nearly 2 percent a year.
Why the sugar obsession? The vilification of fat may be partly to blame. During the low-fat frenzy of the past couple of decades, oils were squeezed out of processed foods – and sugar was pumped in to make reduced-fat foods tastier. It seems clear now that we effectively traded one dietary evil for another.
New research is revealing disturbing links not just between sugar and obesity, but also between sugar and inflammation. Inflammation, of course, has been implicated as a major factor in a number of vitality zapping diseases, from cancer and diabetes to atherosclerosis and digestive disorders.
Whether you’re concerned with managing your weight, your health, or both, it makes sense to evaluate the impact your sugar habit could be having on your body.
The Refined-Carb Connection
On the spectrum of dietary dangers, processed sugars are on a par with unhealthy fats. “High-fructose corn syrup is the primary cause of obesity in our culture,” says Elson Haas, MD, author of Staying Healthy with Nutrition (Celestial Arts, 2006, New Edition). “Our bodies simply aren’t built to process all that sugar.”
Still, to date, sugar doesn’t have nearly as bad a reputation as it probably deserves. One of the reasons it slips under the radar is that connecting the dots between sugar and disease requires widening the nutritional net to include all refined carbohydrates (like processed flours, cereals and sugars of all sorts). This may seem like a fine point, but it’s an important distinction.
Most dietary sugars are simple carbohydrates, meaning that they’re made up of one or two sugar molecules stuck together, making them easy to pull apart and digest. Complex carbohydrates, like those found in whole grains, legumes and many vegetables, are long chains of sugar molecules that must be broken apart during digestion, therefore offering a longer-lasting surge of energy. The presence of naturally occurring fiber, protein and fat in many whole foods further slows the sugar-release process.
The more processed and refined the carbohydrate, as a rule, the faster it breaks down in the digestive system, and the bigger the sugar rush it delivers. That’s why refined flours, sugars and sugar syrups pose such a problem for our systems.
The body is exquisitely designed to handle small amounts of sugar. But refined carbs deliver a larger rush than our bodies were designed to accommodate, or even cope with. In ancient times, hunter-gatherers coveted the occasional piece of fruit or slab of honeycomb as a rare treat and source of rapid-fire energy for, well – hunting and gathering.
“Refined sugar is a genetically unfamiliar ingredient,” says Jack Challem, a nutrition researcher and author of The Inflammation Syndrome (John Wiley & Sons, 2003). “A lot of health problems today are the result of ancient genes bumping up against modern foods.”
To wrap your head around sugar’s destructive powers, it helps to understand how the body reacts when it meets the sweet stuff. With each gulp of a sports drink or soda, for instance, simple carbohydrates are quickly dismantled into simple sugar molecules (glucose) that pass directly into the bloodstream. As a result, blood sugar rises markedly. To bring levels back to normal, the pancreas releases insulin, which lowers blood-sugar levels by escorting glucose out of the bloodstream and into cells.
If energy needs are high at the time sugar hits the bloodstream, that sugar is put to good use. But a too frequent or too heavy supply of sugar pushes the pancreas into overdrive, causing it to release too much insulin – a spew instead of a squirt. And an excessive release of insulin spells inflammatory trouble.
Next: Sugar and Inflammation
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20 comments
add your comment »I agree...homegrown is awesome and so are Farmer's Markets! I knew refined sugars and processed foods were bad and we have been trying to stay far away from them at our house...but I had no idea of the link with inflammation. I do recommend though for anyone suffering from inflammation that they try the Topricin pain cream. I love it- it is natural and I do not have to feel dependent on oral pain meds to help with aches and pains and inflammation! I hope this helps others and I am glad to see more things pointing towards a whole foods diet. Yay! Healthy yummy foods :)
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Dee, you are fortunate indeed. Perhaps,as you point out, you are able to moderate, or you metalbolize quicker. Chubbier souls might fare better in a spare environment than you, or, they might indeed be slenderer too. Moderation is a relative term. Younger folks also tend to weigh less on more intake than when they age. If your temperment, sense of humor, humility and empathy are as balanced as your food intake, you are fortunate indeed, and an inspiration to those of us who only moderate moderation itself.
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To Jamie, Jennifer and anybody else who wants to know "what's left to eat":
A balanced diet needs carbohydrates (less simple ones like sugars and more complex ones like in whole grains), fats of the good kinds in moderate amounts (cold-pressed veg. oils or raw nuts, seeds, avocado, fish etc.) and protein, preferably from grains, legumes, and nuts and less from animal products. You don't necessarily have to go vegan, surely not "breathairian", but it is best to eat more plant-foods and less animal-foods.
Any extreme low-carb/low-fat/low-whatever (or high-whatever for that matter) can be more harmful than beneficial. If the carbs and fats come in their most natural form which also contains vitamins, minerals and fibers, the caloric part will be better utilized by the body and therefore less harmful.
The main problem with refined sugar is that it's an addictive but as opposed to cigarettes or drugs, people don't realize how harmful it actually is so they go on consuming it as if it had anything to do with food.
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Almost every soda on the market, with exception of Hansen's, is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Let's lay blame where it belongs, not on cane sugar. I am in my sixth decade, have used sugar moderately as sweetener of choice all of my life, and weigh 110. It's not sugar per se that causes weight gain, it is our food and beverage choices. Unprocessed, natural foods rarely need added sweetener.
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This article is trully educational.Well,l'm a kind of a sugar addict but this almost exclusively goes for the sake of sweets,cakes,candies.l hate sweet drinks,l drink water and green tea.As a chocoholic I made a compromise and moved from sweet,milk chocolate to darker and more bitter one,dropped sugar from green tea and now l'm really enjoying and comparing subtle tastes l've never known of before cos the sugar has overpowered them.Not to mention all the wealth coming from cocoa and tea antioxidants,polyphenols,catehins,EGCG...So,in spite of my addiction,l've found it possible to replace unhealthy,sweet foods with less sweet but healthier choices for the most of time and step into one new,parallel universe of taste.Just takes some time.But when you get used to the new tastes,eating the same amount of milk chocolate at once as before,becomes a problem too sweet to swallow.
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To Wendy Savage:
There is pure chocolate without sugar...it has many health benefits. It's the "candy" chocolate that is bad.
I have lowered my blood pressure from high to normal in a year...the only change in my diet is 3 pieces of dark "Xocai" brand chocolate a day. It is sweeted with blueberries and acai berries. High in anti-oxidants.
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oh and by the way i eat anything i want in moderation ,
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Listen i weigh 122lbs and i have been using sugar all my life , i have never dieted, i eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and yogourt,i am very active, and i might add very healthy.
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You are going to have either sugar fat or carbs in your diet. If too much fat is bad and too much sugar is bad what is left?
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Another excellent argument for home cooking! I've been doing that for years, even making my own jam instead of getting the store-bought jams (which are loaded with preservatives and don't even taste as good as homemade). I've had a copy of "The Joy Of Cooking" since I moved out on my own, and over the past several years that book has become my cooking bible! There are so many good recipes in there, and not just for dinners either! Check the food section of your local newspaper as well, and look on cooking websites-they're often chock-full of good recipes for anything you can think of.
Another good argument for starting your own gardens and visiting local farmers' markets as well! Homegrown as well as home-cooked is best!
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