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| Is Sugar Toxic? |
 Trina writes, "By the early 2000s, according to the U.S.D.A., we had increased our consumption of sugar to more than 90 pounds per person per year."
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By the early 2000s, when sugar consumption peaked, one in every three Americans was obese, and 14 million were diabetic.
57 million Americans have pre-diabetes or are insulin resistant and another 24 million have diabetes (90 to 95 percent of all diabetes diagnosed is type 2, which typically appears in adults and is associated with obesity, physical inactivity, family history, and other factors).
Every heard the phrase "empty calories?" I hear this when clients drink diet soda or artificially sweetened waters. According to Robert Lustig who gave a lecture called "Sugar: The Bitter Truth," which is posted on YouTube (http://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM), it is not about the empty calories, it is about how sugar is metabolized in the liver. The phrase Lustig uses when he describes this concept is "isocaloric but not isometabolic." This means we can eat 100 calories of glucose (from a potato or bread or other starch) or 100 calories of sugar (half glucose and half fructose), and they will be metabolized differently and have a different effect on the body. The calories are the same, but the metabolic consequences are quite different. Lustig is a specialist on pediatric hormone disorders and the leading expert in childhood obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine.
Cancer researchers now consider that the problem with insulin resistance is that it leads us to secrete more insulin, and insulin (as well as a related hormone known as insulin-like growth factor) actually promotes tumor growth.
Diseases like diabetes can be prevented by losing 7 percent or more of your body weight, in addition to exercising and following a low-calorie, low-carbohydrate, high-fiber diet. Fighting stress and getting enough sleep may also help control blood sugar. Sleep is critical for managing stress and maintaining proper insulin levels. Getting a massage, acupuncture treatments, and daily exercise will help as well.
If sugar just makes us fatter, that's one thing. We start gaining weight, we eat less of it. But we are also talking about things we can't see — fatty liver, insulin resistance and all that follows.
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Posted on Sep 12, 2011 09:54am.
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