© 2012 Nancy Appleton PhD & G.N. Jacobs
If you have been watching the news recently, you’ll understand if I take a moment to enjoy that the tide may be turning on sugar. Perhaps, I should pull a Sally Field Oscar Speech and thank everybody on the planet, including CBS News. Okay, I’m fine now.
The magazine show 60 Minutes recently ran a story mostly based on Dr. Robert Lustig and his YouTube video that represented the opening broadside against refined sugar in general and fructose specifically. Dr. Lustig took the position that sugar is toxic and should be regulated the way nicotine and narcotics are regulated. Sign me up. Oh, that’s right, I already did and I told you so.
I have minor differences with Dr. Lustig that won’t affect the basic program of getting off sugar. Where he says fructose, whether bound as half the sucrose molecule or served up straight as High Fructose Corn Syrup, causes all the damage, I say to include excessive glucose in the regime. No one will get healthy replacing excessive fructose with even more glucose. Part of the diabetes/heart disease/hypertension disease cycle is simply run on too much sugar, whatever the type.
In short order, the show hit the high points of cancer, obesity, and heart disease and linked sugar to all of these diseases. The sugar spokesman tried to say Americans just need to exercise more to counteract the sugar, which flies in the face of our common experience that says many of us did exercise more and still got fat. However, many sugar addicts report that excessive sugar makes them mentally unready to exercise, making us even fatter. Lastly, the piece covered sugar’s addictive properties using the same stark terms as with cocaine or heroin. Again, I told you so.
My one quibble with the piece is that either because of time, professional timidity, or lack of research before air is that the producers only covered the high points of degenerative disease. My I told you so includes a lot more diseases than obesity, heart disease, cancer and addiction. I would’ve liked someone to explain the Mineral Wheel describing how the nutrients we take relate to each other and how sugar upsets the apple cart.
Sugar makes the body highly acidic causing the body to pull calcium out of the bones to act as a base to remain in homeostasis. In one fell swoop, I have just linked osteoporosis to sugar because what else is calcium taken out of the bones? But, I have also continuously asserted mineral relationships (calcium meets up with phosphorous just so and so on) as an indicator of the health of the body’s various hormone-based systems, which includes digestion and the immune system among others. If a person doesn’t fully digest food and can’t fight off a cold, can you think up a host of other medical problems to afflict us because of sugar?
I can. I did. And then I listed them. The only things in human medicine that sugar doesn’t seem to directly affect are accidents and other mayhem. Though, less sugar can help you recover faster.
Lastly, I would like to mention that CBS News and other outlets have also reported on the latest research from Harvard University that sugar adds a 20-percent risk of heart attack among men that drink one sugary drink per day. The tide is turning. Cities begin to ban sugary drinks from public vending machines. We begin to understand just how dangerous sugar is and I told you so.
Nancy Appleton Books Health Blog 
Extremely disconcerting. I have been keeping up with your work for many years. Although I have reduced my sugar intake significantly I am still very much addicted. Is there advice for ridding oneself of this addiction? Thank you for all your contributions to this very serious health problem.
Hi,
There is. The doctor covers the addiction part of the problem in most of her books, including Lick the Sugar Habit and Stopping Inflammation. The summary: go slow, take baby steps, seek help & support when appropriate.
One trick is to resolve to eat half as much sugar as yesterday. This works on a convergent series where in the purely mathematical sense going half the distance to the far wall means you never reach the wall. In the real world, there is a fudge factor that finally allows to stub your toe against the baseboard. This trick lets you have enough sugar to keep from freaking out, but steadily gets you on the right track. Other tricks include using the small fork for smaller bites. Or eat off the salad plates. There are tons of help for sugar and food addiction.
Thank you.
G.N. Jacobs for Nancy Appleton
there is a lot more to it than that. You need to avoid all sugars. It causes problems and serious problems. It affects your adrenals, thyroid, lymphatic system and every organ in your body. Bad nasty stuff.
Since I cut sweeteners and wheat out of my diet 26 months ago I’ve lost 155 pounds. One thing I’ve found is that my taste has changed. I no longer like sweet food or drink. I consider this a blessing as I am not tempted to eat the junk. Is this typical? I went cold turkey, stopped it all at once. It did take me a while to learn the dangers of wheat, once I learned, out it went. I feel great. Going on 3 years now and I’m keeping the weight off. I tell my story on my blog.
I too went cold turkey off sugar, albeit more than once. I’ve also had to find out what I was allergic to in other foods: corn, wheat, starchy vegetables, potatoes, nuts & seeds, etc since these seem to make me crave sugar. Every time I’m eating right for my body and not eating sugar, I feel 25 years younger; every time I eat allergens and sugar, I age 30 years – well worth the effort!
Nancy, you are a true trailblazer.. thank you for all the knowledge you share. Bitten Jonsson R.N. sugaraddiction specialist in Sweden
What about those people who eat anything they want (sugar, fast food, junk, etc) and never gain any weight? Do we just chalk it up to their fast metabolism? What would be their motivation to stop eating sugar? This is not my problem (I wish) but was wondering about your insight on this.
That some people are apparently genetically immune to the usual premise that sugar makes people fat is a given. Their metabolisms are simply amazing, or so we think. We have to filter out several other reasons why people never get fat.
First, there is the exerciser/athlete that works out for many years who burns off the sugar delaying the fat a long time. A friend of the staff is like this, a former Olympic saber fencer (from the years when American fencing couldn’t get arrested let alone win anything, so you probably wouldn’t know his name). He has a terrible diet, but worked out a lot. For the twelve years of our association starting in his early thirties he had eight years of looking good, but now in his forties he has a serious potbelly.
Second, there is the person who seems nearly anorexic except for the sugar consumption. My stepmom, who is ironically also a childhood friend of Doctor Appleton, would eat lettuce, skinless chicken and lots of chocolate instead of the regular food served to her family. She still believes that fat makes you fat. Except for the chocolate, she eats amounts that seem to be just above above starvation and still weighs maybe a hundred pounds dripping wet. She’s also had allergies, nerve pains, bad medicine reactions and most recently two heart attacks.
This leads us to – sugar doesn’t just make us fat to kill us. Sugar has been linked to cancer, heart disease without being fat to match and all of the reasons listed in our 141 Reasons Sugar Ruins Our Health. So the answer to why someone who doesn’t get fat should stop eating sugar is that they could get something else equally difficult to live with. Or they could go sugar-free for mental reasons like clarity and focus. Everyone benefits from eating less sugar, even the apparently immune.
G.N. Jacobs for Nancy Appleton
How do i quit sugar? I live in Belgium where at every corner you find at least 2 chocolatiers and 1 patisserie? It is part of the tradition here.
I recognize the addiction, but I honestly don’t know how to beat it. I cannot go with the ‘no will’ theory, it will not serve. I go to the gym, I tried al kinds of ways to quit sugar – the max. i could do was 3 weeks of no carbs of any kind. I saw clear and very obvious improvements, i felt better and …when i felt at my best, i ate sugar again. And it’s all down from there. Basically I am very much aware of what sugar does to me (history of diabetes in my family), and in the same time I cannot stop.
Any thought or suggestions?Please. I am desperate.
Hi,
The doctor and I fully appreciate how difficult beating sugar can be, even in places that haven’t made a national identity out of chocolate and sweets. You have a rough road ahead, because you’re an addict living in an environment that doesn’t lend itself to your recovery.
Some thoughts:
1) Moving won’t help you – Leaving aside that moving is expensive and that most people move because they were transferred to another city, or need a different sized house, you would be very likely to move to a neighboring country in the EU. Everybody in Europe has the local sugar bomb. France also has patisseries and various custard/pudding deserts. In Germany, your temptations are strudel and Black Forest Cake. In America, you’d probably have your head turned by those ice cream/cookie sandwiches in the freezer near the front door of every convenience store, or maybe it will be New York Cheesecake.
2) Admit to the full scope of your addiction – Reading between the lines of your post, you seem stuck on a very early step of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Steps (that has been applied to other addictions, as well). Step One: you admit you have a problem and YOU ARE POWERLESS AS AN INDIVIDUAL TO OVERCOME YOUR ADDICTION. It seems you’ve only gotten half of this step in that you repeatedly attempt to quit, but you flame out at three weeks, like clockwork. The various Anonymous groups work because they draw upon the collective willpower of everyone at the meeting, plus whatever definition you give for the higher power. The food related groups that come to mind are Overeaters Anonymous, Food Addicts in Recovery and Food Addicts Anonymous, plus there are a whole lot of small offshoots and that professional food management companies (Jenny Craig, Weightwatchers, Nutrisystem) have all borrowed from the Anonymous program for the counseling aspects of their own programs. Get busy with Google and see if you can find a local meeting you can attend.
3) Going cold turkey usually fails – It seems that you keep trying to beat the addiction on your own all right now. The body doesn’t like going from a lot of anything to nothing regardless of whether the food being cold turkeyed out of your diet is bad for you. In your case, you last about three weeks. When you join the group suggested above, you’ll want to discuss various plans for a gradual weaning from sugar. Depending on whether your problem is sugar, or just too many calories, your group and you will collectively come up with a plan that allows for human frailty but ultimately gets you to your goal of being as sugarless as possible. One such plan I call Half as Much as Yesterday, where you calculate how much sugar you had yesterday and you eat half that amount, or less today. This kind of plan eases your body through the transition so that at the three week mark you won’t have as many those awful cravings that wreck your plan. It also allows you to be more strategic about going off the wagon, because you may be able to time eating sweets with the sugary events that really matter (for example, having a few days of pushing away the desert cart as advance payment for that upcoming birthday celebration for that really good friend where there WILL BE CAKE and a lot of pressure to fully participate in the party).
4) Professional therapy may help – Even people fully invested in a support group may need regular counseling. Decide for yourself here.
5) Whole fruit may be a good substitute – A well-timed bowl of fruit may help you through a craving. Many people talk about how fruit is just sugar and is bad for you. Doctor Appleton will be the first one to say that someone who is sick has no business eating fruit. However, healthy people can eat fruit, because the sugar is moderated by another type of sugar called Dietary Fiber which slows the absorption of the naturally occurring sugar so that the body just doesn’t get hit all at once. Nothing is stopping you from ordering a dish of berries and cream (only if you’re still okay with cream, a whole other reply) for dessert. The fruit will feed your sweet tooth and mean one less desert that week.
6) Consider a Gymnemma supplement – We used to sell a gum where the main ingredient was this herb. In most but not all people, sugar and other carbohydrate heavy foods suddenly tasted like cardboard. People don’t like eating cardboard and ate less sugar. We stopped selling the gum because our supplier couldn’t find his ass with a hunting dog and a map and we aren’t set up to sell a perishable item like gum or other type of supplement. Other suppliers have since filled the void selling the herb in liquid solutions. Look it up on the web and see what happens.
7) everything else is probably fine.
I will gladly sell you anything from our store if you think it will help. Our Body Monitor Test Kit will at least tell you when you go off the rails. But, commercial plugs aside, the doctor and I hope these answers help.
G.N. Jacobs for Nancy Appleton