Eating healthy should be a top priority, but too often we’re tempted with food that doesn’t fit that description. What is the true villain of a healthy diet? You can’t just blame it on one type of food, there’s plenty of blame to go around, but indications are that sugar, is a top contender for that title. Sugar, whether it comes from beets, sugar cane, corn—as in high fructose corn syrup—or from a man-made alternative containing nothing from plants, seems to be in everything. It’s in that high priced pastry and those candy bars you have tempting you at the checkout counter.
Sugar may be the culprit in many cases of heart disease.
It’s common knowledge that fat is horrible for your health…but common knowledge isn’t always true. While a diet high in fat certainly isn’t healthy and trans fat is even worse, you need healthy fat and the real culprit it seems is sugar. Why does everyone blame fat then? We’ve been sold a misinformation campaign that was paid for by the sugar industry. It came from a flawed study by Harvard scientists. This mega study took multiple research papers and conveniently omitted any that blamed sugar, but prominently touted those that blamed fat. You can understand how that happens. Their paycheck depended on the deception. Since that study back in the 1950s, it’s been considered common knowledge.
If you consume a lot of sugar, you’ll set yourself up for insulin resistance, prediabetes and diabetes.
What is insulin resistance? It’s the first step toward diabetes. It comes from the body being overwhelmed by sugar over a long period of time and the cells not responding to insulin to open and use the glucose in the bloodstream. The body then makes more insulin to ensure the sugar gets to the cells and it becomes a vicious cycle, resulting in too much insulin and eventually diabetes. That can cause heart disease, visceral fat—abdominal fat—difficulty thinking and high blood pressure, too. Reversing the problem is possible with a healthy diet and exercise, unless it goes too far.
Watch your waistline grow when you eat a high sugar diet.
Sugar is addictive. It triggers the opioid centers of the brain and makes you want to eat more, rather than leaving you feeling full. It actually makes you feel hungrier in some cases. HFCS—high fructose corn syrup–a manufactured product that combines corn starch with enzymes to convert some of the sugar to fructose, is one of the biggest offenders. It’s a combination of glucose and fructose that interferes with the hormones and creates leptin resistance. Leptin is the hormone that makes you feel full, so no matter how much you eat, you’ll still want more. It’s a cheap form of sugar, so is in everything from junk food to ketchup and may be the leading cause in the rise of obesity.
- Chronic inflammation can lead to serious conditions, like cancer. Sugar increases inflammation, so it is one of the culprits in a host of diseases.
- If you’re trying to lower your blood pressure by eliminating salt from your diet, you’ll be slightly successful, but if you eliminate both sugar and salt, you’ll see more progress and watch your blood pressure drop faster.
- If you’re trying to cut out sugar, check labels. It is disguised by many different names. Sometimes manufacturers use several types of sweeteners so no one of them appear at the top of the ingredient list.
- Sugar negatively affects your immune system, accelerates aging, causes tooth decay, depression, gum disease, increases stress and effects cognitive thinking, particularly in children.
For more information, contact us today at Revolution Training