September 15, 2017

How does sugar compare when it comes to cocaine addiction? You might be shocked…

A few years back, rats in a lab were hooked up to IVs. Within those IVs was a drip solution that’s been running through the veins of the rats for several weeks. These rats were intentionally hooked on cocaine.

But that’s not the end of the experiment. The rats were taken off the drip, placed in cages, and then given a choice between two water bottles. One bottle contained the cocaine solution. In the other was filtered water and sugar.

Which one would you expect the rats to choose?

Coke… or Coke?

They didn’t just choose the sugar… They did so an incredible 94% of the time. Which is shocking. Even more shocking? When the sugar was taken away, instead of switching back to the cocaine, the rats chose to go through sugar withdrawal—which, according to Dr. Bartley Hoebel of Princeton University’s Neuroscience Institute is the worst withdrawal he’s witnessed short of straight up heroin sickness.

It should be noted that sugar addiction isn’t a strictly biological process. It’s not going to happen to everyone who eats the occasional cookie.

But just as with “harder” drugs (those quotations marks show the degree of hesitation I’m showing not to lump sugar into that category as well) there’s a threshold. You have to eat enough sugar to trigger the chemicals in your brain to begin creating those overwhelming feelings.

Basically, you need to eat A LOT of sugar to get addicted. That’s the good news.

The bad news? Americans eat A LOT of sugar. Upwards of 160 pounds per person per year, in fact.

And many researchers now believe that a good portion of us are addicted to sugar.

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Which maybe isn’t too surprising given that our obesity problem is at epidemic levels—or, at least, it’s not a shocking idea when you look at the problem from a safe distance.

But, it’s also very strange.

Most people know that cocaine is addictive. And because of that, most people don’t do cocaine. The subject of addiction overall is obviously more nuanced than that, especially when you’re looking at the opioid epidemic and how much of that began, but very few people starting from scratch seek out something that they know is highly addictive.

But with sugar? We give it to our kids on their first birthdays (if not before.) We give it to them in the form of high fructose corn syrup in crackers, waffles, granola bars, apple juice, and even in their gummy vitamins.

All this despite the medical evidence showing how detrimental sugar is to your health.

Here’s just a quick rundown of what sugar does to your body.

Your Brain

Sugar causes a release of dopamine in the brain, which in turn makes you feel great. For a short time, at least. The more sugar you eat, the more the brain needs to trigger the dopamine. Read up on how hard drugs affect the brain, and it’s the same cycle. Just another example of the body’s addiction response.

Your Mood

Eating a candy bar gives you a sugar high. When it’s removed from the blood, though, you get a sugar crash. Which makes it not so surprising to learn that adults who consume the most sugar are also the most depressed.

Your Joints

If you have arthritis, you should probably hide the sugar bowl. Sugar causes inflammation within the body, which is especially problematic for the joints. Sugar drastically increases your chances for rheumatoid arthritis.

Your Skin

Sugar causes inflammation, and that in turn causes a breakdown in the collagen and elastin, both of which are responsible for keeping your skin young and stretchy. The result? Wrinkles. And a lot of them.

Your Liver

Sugar in the liver can make that organ—your body’s main filtration system—resistant to insulin. Which means a high risk for type 2 diabetes.

Your Heart

Excess insulin, from excess sugar, in your bloodstream can, over time, cause your arterial walls to thicken. This makes your heart’s job that much harder, and leaves you prone to heart disease.

Your Kidneys

At a point, if the kidneys are overwhelmed by the amount of sugar they need to filter out of your blood and start letting the sugar pass into your urine. This stress leaves them weakened and exposed to damage from diabetes.

Your Belly Fat

Excess sugar stores as fat in your body. More sugar means more belly fat.

And that’s just the start of the damage sugar does to your body. Because if you’ve read any of our other blogs or watched our videos, you’ll know that when one system breaks down, the damage flows out through the system like a rock dropped in a pond. If one system comes under high stress, the other systems work overtime to regain balance, which in turn over-taxes them. Sooner rather than later everything has gone haywire and disease has officially set in.

Here’s the thing, though. I’m a cardiologist. I know all this information. But I still have a sweet tooth. I still put one raw sugar in my coffee each morning. So, I’m not passing judgment on anyone. It’s tough.

But I’m working hard to avoid more and more of it as I continue to get older. And I’d encourage you to work on it as well.

Maybe the first thing, the place to start, is to understand that cocaine and sugar aren’t two different things. They fall into the same category. One just happens to be legal (and federally subsidized). Recognizing that those two things are both horrible for your body—and that your brain treats them very similarly—is the first step in taking back your health.

So, what can you do to kick the sugar habit?

Good question. Nicole gives you a full rundown here in her post “Six Sweet Ways to Shake Off Sugar.”

Watch our video on busting the sugar habit once and for all right here.

Or listen below!

The post What Cookies and Cocaine Have in Common appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

July 19, 2016

Sugar is addictive. Science is clear and in agreement about this.

A researcher named Dr. Serge Ahmad did an experiment a few years back where he gave mice sugar water and water with dissolved cocaine in it.

In that study, 94% of the mice continually went back for more…. of the sugar water.

You read that right.

Sugar is at least—if not more so—addictive than cocaine.

And above and beyond being simply addictive, it’s also one of the main things driving the obesity, autoimmune, and heart disease epidemics currently running roughshod through our culture.

So, it’s probably pretty obvious that cutting down on our refined sugar intake—or eliminating it altogether—would be a good thing for our health.

But, that’s easier said than done. We’re addicted to it, after all.

So, here are six ways to kick sugar—and take back your health.


PUNT ON PROCESSED FOODS
Back in 1977, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published their “low-fat diet guidelines” and recommended it to all Americans. The graph below shows pretty clearly that this was the EXACT MOMENT that the obesity epidemic in this country started.

Why?

Because when the food industry began to produce foods that were low in fat, the public balked because the food tasted terrible.

So, to make it palatable— and, oh right, profitable— they filled in the gaps where the fat used to be with two things: Salt and sugar.

And the epidemic started in full.

Which is why you should give up processed foods for good. If it comes in a bag or a box, don’t eat it. When you go to the grocery store, shop only around the perimeter of the store. That’s where they keep the healthy stuff.

READ THE LABELS
If you’re going to ignore my last point and still find yourself wandering toward the inner aisles of the grocery store, at least go in there with a little knowledge. You should at least know how to identify how much sugar is in what you’re buying. That’s what the labels are for.

So, it should be easy. Look for “sugar” in the print and then make sure there’s a only single digit before the “g” in grams. Simple, right?

Except… labels aren’t always exactly as forthcoming as we’d probably prefer.

For example: There are fifty-six names for sugar.

Fifty-six.

It’s nuts how far the food industry will go to hide the fact that they’ve got you addicted to sugar, and that they only make a profit by making you more and more addicted to it.

Here’s a great infographic from Woman’s Health… use this as a guide the next time you’re looking for what to buy at the grocery store:

You know what liars do? They call a particular thing by different names. The list above is a way to decode those lies.

Because, as you learned when you were four, lying is decidedly not sweet. Not sweet at all.

IDENTIFY YOUR TRIGGERS
In your quest to avoid refined sugars, one of the most important things that you need to understand from the start is that certain things are going to trigger the craving.

It’s going to be different for everyone, but here are a few common triggers:

+ Coffee
+ Tea
+ Anything high in saturated fats
+ Dairy
+ Stress
+ Etc.

Knowing what’s going to set off your own cravings is an important step. So, identify these as early in the process as possible, and thereby set yourself up for success.

PRIORITIZE YOUR FRUIT
All fruit is not created equal. Fruit contains sugar, of course, but it also contains a lot of other good stuff. And, just like with any other decision that you make in life, you need to find the right balance.

So, in deciding which fruit to eat, it’s a good idea to figure out which fruits are giving you the most good stuff—and the least bad stuff.

Here’s a great list of fruits—ranked from 32 to 1. It factors in calories, sugar content, fiber, antioxidants, and specific levels of vitamins and nutrients.

(Here’s the sneak peak: Blackberries, raspberries, avocados, guava, and strawberries are at the top, meaning “good”; grapes, figs, and bananas round out the bottom, meaning “not-so good.”)

AVOID SUGAR SUBSTITUTES
The main workaround the food industry has given us as consumers for avoiding the sugar that they put in everything is the introduction of “sugar substitutes.” These artificial sweeteners come to us under a variety of names: saccharine, aspartame, and sucralose, to name just a few.

While the medical community, as recently as the the mid-1990s, saw the potential for using these substitutes to get us all off sugar, the real dangers of these chemicals are now coming to light.

New evidence, for example, shows that people who frequently consume sugar substitutes may be at an increased risk of excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Oh, and also… these chemicals are LITERALLY neurotoxins.

Which means: Artificial sweeteners are actually worse for you than sugar.

Blue? Pink? Yellow?

The color doesn’t matter. They’re all killing you at the same (rapid) rate.

UNDERSTAND YOUR SWEETNESS EXPERIENCE
Your tongue experiences five specific types of taste: saltiness, bitterness, umami, sourness, and sweetness. But that doesn’t mean that all sweetness tastes the same.

It’s incredible to talk to people who’ve gotten off refined sugar entirely. They all say the exact same thing:

Not only do they no longer crave sugar, they also understand “sweetness” in a different way.

Compared to a Dairy Queen Ice Cream cake, a carrot isn’t all that sweet. But once you kick the sugar habit, carrots (and so many other vegetables) taste incredibly sweet.

The skinny here is that our bodies have been evolutionarily set up to want sugar. The reason for this is because our ancestors—that is, the humans who survived without getting gored by an angry pack of woolly mammoths—sought out the highest energy sources. And those were the sweetest fruits and vegetables they could find. The ones that went for the foods with lower-sugar levels didn’t have the same level of energy— and paid for it evolutionarily.

But—and this is a big but—even though our bodies need sugar to function, that doesn’t mean that we were designed to take in the levels of refined sugar that we currently do.

In 1900, for example, the average American consumed 5 pounds of sugar per year.

In 2000, that number jumped to 150.

That has to change. We’re literally killing ourselves.

But also know this: giving up sugar doesn’t mean that you’ll be craving it all day long for the rest of your life. Instead, you’ll discover that the cravings go away after a week or two, and that the healthy foods you’ve put in as replacements will taste better than you could’ve ever imagined.

I hope you’ll take these simple ways to avoid refined sugar to heart as you look to get out of the rut of negative, destructive habits. Your future—and I’m not exaggerating this in any way—depends on it.

If you need a little guidance, or just want some company as you continue on your health journey, I invite you to join us for a FREE and highly informative dinner.

The post 6 Sweet Ways to Shake Off Sugar appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.