Are you a sugar addict? Do sweets and other sweet tasting foods make you go crazy? Then it’s high time you did something about it, because your addiction is definitely not something healthy.
Sugar cravings are something everyone have experienced at one point in their lives, some more than the others. We all know it’s bad for us. Now, we should also now just how bad sugar can get if we consume too much of it.
Let us begin with the obvious. Although few unfortunate souls are genetically predisposed to obesity, there is no reason we should let sugar ruin our heath. This sweetener is truly a bitter pill to those unable to stay away from sugary foods for too long.
Researchers have, several times, established a direct association between sugar consumption and fat development (1). Every time you indulge in a sweet pleasure, the extra sugar seems to be converted into the next fat reserve in the body.
People of all age groups fall prey to this epidemic, as you don’t need a gene to become obese if you have bad food habits.
Yes! Very like alcohol, no less. Sugar can make the mind feel less satiated, and you simply want more and more of the same. For many people, sugar is literally an addiction as it can release the happy hormone called dopamine in the brain. Consequently, advising someone with a sugar addiction to cut back on it would backfire, the same way it would for an alcoholic. There would surely be withdrawal symptoms paired with intense sugar cravings.
Mental health is something you must guard carefully. And believe it or not, sugar effect on brain is dangerous, as it practically weakens your mind without your knowledge. A little sugar never harmed anyone. But changing pace of lifestyles and on-the-go junk foods are gradually decreasing the brain’s memory and cognitive functions (2).
It goes without saying, if you want to avoid diabetes, you avoid bad sugar. The human body naturally produces its stock of insulin to burn glucose for energy. When the body is overloaded with sugar, metabolic dysfunction occurs, causing it to become insulin resistant. Type II diabetes is a result of the process, which in turn leads to several complications. Consuming sugary drinks increases diabetes risk by 83%, because the pancreas cannot produce enough insulin to keep up with the demand.
Too much fructose in the liver has been proved to act in the same way alcohol acts over the long term, causing liver damage. Interestingly, sugary foods cheat your brain into thinking you’re more hungry and less full. Hunger hormones are therefore disturbed, changing the way you eat. In an experiment, when those drinking glucose-sweetened beverages were compared to those having fructose-sweetened beverages, the former felt more satiated than the latter (3).
After diabetes, heart diseases are the most dreadful killers around the globe. Unhealthy consumption of excessive sugar increases the risk of death from heart disease (4).
Having sugar induced heart problems is not confined to those with obesity. A person can look thin and toned, and yet have a weak heart if their sugar intake is unhealthy.
Cancer is one of those words that never have an easy response. Why then is a simple word like sugar associated with it? Well, sugar consumption in the long-term has been linked to an increase in elevated insulin levels in the body. This very situation has a proven direct link to many types of cancer.
The bad news does not end there. Even to those suffering from cancer, high sugar consumption seems to have a negative connotation. Cancerous cells were observed to take in more glucose than normal cells, although this did not affect the cancer itself (5). On a related note, consuming a sugary diet leads to obesity, which brings with it a host of other cancer risks. This is one of the most harmful effects of sugar that one should beware of.
One feels they have aged just by getting a tan in the midday sun. But, how horrifying would it feel if you realize that bad sugars are aging the cells in your body faster than usual? Drinking sugar filled beverages has been linked to decreased brain functioning in children. The same principle applies to any other organ in the body and its consequent damage.
A glucose metabolite molecule from sugar, named glucose 6-phosphate (G6P), works adversely on the heart. Fructose is not absolutely necessary for the functioning of the body. But, many foodstuffs contain unwanted sugar, which, if unchecked, will reduce life expectancy.
Sugar effects are not just physically harmful. They can have an impact on your emotional status too. Just as when eating a lot of candy brings on a high, abstaining from sugar will also bring on a low. Anyone who has experienced one or two sugar cravings will agree that once the craving hits, that’s all you would want to think about. Anything else would become a distraction, mainly because sugar can change the mood (6).
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow agrees it’s a mood rollercoaster. She was quoted by The Telegraph as writing on her website Gloop, “Sugar gives you an initial high, then you crash, then you crave more, so you consume more sugar. It’s this series of highs and lows that provoke unnecessary stress on your adrenals. You get anxious, moody and eventually you feel exhausted.”
The more sugar you have, the less nutrition you take in. As a result, the stomach is the first organ being deprived of healthy inputs such as probiotics and gut cleansing fibrous foods. Lesser vegetables translate to lesser vitamins, meaning a lack of nourishment for the eyes, hair, brain cells and other such important organs.
These days, many are substituting a balanced diet with junk food and sweetened beverages. What they are missing are proteins, minerals, essential fats, vitamins, and carbohydrates. What they do consume are empty calories that lead to nutritional deficiencies.
Everything is acceptable in moderation. Still, sugar blurs the limits where moderation ends and excess begins. Since it is hard to check every food item that contains sugar, it should be prudent to avoid those that have the highest amount of sugar.
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