The Most Abused Drug in America
The most abused drug in America is not an illegal drug, or even alcohol, caffeine or nicotine. It’s sugar.
On a physiological level, refined white sugar creates exactly the same response in the brain as cocaine, except that it’s much milder. What happens is that it bonds to opioid receptors, which make you feel good when they’re stimulated. Your life could be in the dumps but you don’t care because you feel a sense of pleasure.
However, feeling good is a short term response. Long-term, sugar is addicting: lack of it makes you feel bad so you constantly crave more in order to feel better.
Recognizing and breaking the addiction
If you want to eliminate sugar from your diet and you find yourself negotiating (“I’ll give up candy but not cake”) you have a problem. An Applied Kinesiologist can help you determine the severity of the problem.
Breaking the addiction can bring varying degrees of withdrawal symptoms ranging from panic attacks to anxiety to extreme bouts of crying. But once you’ve kicked the addiction, you can take sugar or leave it. It won’t matter to you.
Sugar is the body’s fuel. Your body can get all it needs from animal protein because there are pathways in the body that convert protein into sugar. However for those pathways to be turned on, you have to go without other forms of sugar for three days.
Blood sugar levels
Sugar pushes your blood glucose level up; the body reacts by producing insulin which takes glucose out of the bloodstream so your blood sugar level goes down. Now you’re riding a “high blood sugar, low blood sugar” rollercoaster, which is completely unstable. Symptoms appear when blood sugar is on the low side: many psychiatric disorders have a large blood sugar component.
Imagine that your body is a fireplace that needs fuel to keep it burning.
- Eating proteins and healthy fats is like feeding the fire with big logs that keep burning over a long period.
- Eating vegetables and fruits is like kindling – it helps get the fire going.
- Eating sugar is like throwing paper on the fire. It flares up quickly. Then it’s gone.
The average American consumes over 150 pounds of sugar a year.
One of three Americans born after the year 2000 will become diabetic.
For the sake of your health, let sugar be something you do on rare occasions and not on a daily or even a weekly basis.
For a more detailed discussion of the points mentioned above, click here to listen to our podcast.
Dr. Brown
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