Sugar Rush
Every one of us has had a sweet tooth moment and had to indulge in our favorite sweet treat but how does our body handle all that sugar? Sugar is a sweet crystalline substance obtained from various plants, especially sugar cane and sugar beet, essentially consisting of sucrose, and used as a sweetener in foods and drinks.1 Sugar in moderation is not the problem, it’s the added sugar and excessive intake of sugar. Added sugars (like sucrose and high fructose corn syrup) contain a whole bunch of calories with NO essential nutrients.2 These are considered empty calories. Sugar is also very bad for the teeth, because it provides easily digestible energy for the bad bacteria in the mouth.2 Before sugar enters the bloodstream from the digestive tract, it is broken down into two simple sugars… glucose and fructose. Fructose can only be metabolized by the liver in a significant amount. However, if the liver is full of glycogen, eating a lot of fructose overloads the liver, forcing it to turn the fructose into fat.2 Having too much glucose in the blood is highly toxic and is the main reason for complications of diabetes, such as blindness. One feature of the metabolic dysfunction that is caused by the Western diet, is that insulin stops working as it should and the cells become “resistant” to it.
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