Sugar Is Ruining Your Health

We all know that sugar is “bad” for us – but do you know just HOW bad it is for you? Is sugar really ruining your health?

Sugar does more than increase your pant size. Sugar can actually damage your entire body.

Many of my patients have heard the “Wolverine story” I tell to explain how sugar affects your cholesterol.

The “Wolverine Story:”

When you consume sugar, your body must release insulin to help put the sugar away where it belongs. But sugar itself and insulin are pro-inflammatory (meaning they cause inflammation). A little inflammation is normal and ok, but when you eat high levels of sugar all the time, it causes chronic inflammation. Inflammation, when chronic and unchecked, wreaks havoc all of your body.

In the case of your arteries and veins, imagine them as a hallway. And in this hallway, you just gave Wolverine (the superhero with the adamantium claws) a ton of sugar and now he’s running down that hallway with his claws out scratching up the walls. Well, those scratches need to be healed.

If you are trying to heal the walls of your arteries and veins, your body does that with cholesterol. When you eat healthy fats (such as coconut oil, avocado oil, meats, butter, ghee, etc.), you are going to have nice, fluffy cholesterol that lands on top of the scratches to protect it like a band-aid so they can heal.

However, if you are eating a high sugar diet, it’s likely that you are also consuming unhealthy fats (peanut oil, canola oil, vegetable oil, trans fat, etc.). These unhealthy fats also cause inflammation AND result in tiny, sticky cholesterol that acts more like dirt when it lands on the scratches. It gets stuck inside the scratches and keeps them open, preventing it from healing. And then more sticky cholesterol gloms onto the cholesterol that’s already there, building up bigger and bigger until it clogs the artery (causing a heart attack) or breaks free (causing a stroke).

So if you are trying to lower your cholesterol, is the answer eat less fat and take statins?

(I hope at this point you see that getting to the root cause – sugar – may be a better route.)

And it’s not just your arteries and veins that are damaged by the inflammation cause by sugar – it can be all of your body systems. Chronic inflammation is at the root of most chronic diseases people experience today, such as:

• Type II Diabetes
• Heart disease
• Obesity
• Cancer
• Arthritis
• Bowel disease like Crohn’s, IBS, and Ulcerative Colitis
• Asthma

It can take years of chronic inflammation to cause problems, but it adds up eventually. The best time to address inflammation is NOW before you have a problem. (An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say!)

Want to address your sugar intake?

Call 978-237-5106 today to schedule a Nutrition Response Testing® appointment. We’ll help you take back control of your health!