Sugar - Part 1
Sugar 101
There’s an important body truth that is important that you don’t ignore: your body is wired to crave sugar. Ask any mother of very young children and you’ll see just how wired in our sweet cravings are.
Your drive for sugar isn’t there to just frustrate and annoy you, it’s there to keep you alive. Every single one of your 37 trillion cells use glucose (sugar) for energy and sugar is so important that your cells have a Plan B and Plan C just in case glucose isn’t available.
In nature, it’s VERY hard to find easy-to-access sources of glucose. Fruit, when in season, is a joyous find! Honey is an even more glorious find…even if you have to fight some bees to get it. Honey was so precious for a large part of human history that jars of honey were buried in the tombs of many pharaohs.
If there’s no glucose around, your body will convert up to 50% of the protein you consume into glucose. Yes, even on a very high protein/very low carb diet your body is still getting lots of glucose.
Plan C is much more clunky, and your body uses it as a VERY last resort. Oddly, it’s also the hottest diet trend right now (keto). If there’s no available glucose and barely enough protein, your body then switches its energy source to ketones. This keeps you alive, but it would rather not use Plan C.
If you’d like to learn more about the body’s reluctance to use Plan C, click here (https://nutritionstudies.org/is-the-ketogenic-diet-natural-for-humans/)
In a nutshell – your body NEEDS glucose and will do whatever it can to get it.
So, in our world of food abundance, it’s not surprising that food manufacturers have hijacked this deep need for glucose to sell more products. If it’s sweet, it sells.
This is why so many of us struggle with eating more sugar than our body can tolerate and why Type II Diabetes is so prevalent. Many practitioners have turned their backs on all sweet food and I’m sure it helps people with very high blood sugar feel a bit better (in the short-term).
But…it doesn’t deal with our deep wired-in craving for sugar and research has found that we eat more of a food when we deprive ourselves of it. So, by saying no to cookies you’re much more prone to eating lots and lots of cookies.
Instead, I’d like to bring sugar into balance in your life, to help you develop a new relationship with sugar. This way you can enjoy sweet foods without feeling like they’re the ones in control.
This is how I live with sweets and from my experience, it’s glorious 😃
Pay attention to how quickly sugar converts to energy
The #1 reason many people are dealing with issues around sugar (like poor blood sugar regulation) is due to the processing of sugar.
As we’ve already talked about, in nature sweet, sugary food comes in 2 forms – fruit and honey. Both of these foods are high in fructose, a type of sugar that needs to be converted into glucose by the liver. Fruit also contains fibre to help sloooow down that process. This allows the body to convert the fructose to glucose as needed.
Ironically, today some of the worst sugars on the market are high in fructose. Your liver has a limited capacity to convert fructose to glucose and stores whatever isn’t needed at the moment. This was a rare backup plan in most of human history…but now we guzzle down lots of drinks sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. This use of fructose is incredibly hard on your metabolic system. More on that in “The Ugly” section.
In general, naturally sweet food, like fruit, also contain lots of fibre and tons of nutrients to help the body process glucose (namely, chromium, B vitamins, and magnesium). Starchy veggies and whole grains also bind their glucose up into long carbohydrate chains, which the body needs to break down first before accessing the glucose. This allows for a steady trickle of sugar into the bloodstream.
Today, the store shelves are filled with refined types of sugar like white sugar and high fructose corn syrup. They’re added to treats that also contain refined flour that quickly breaks down into glucose too. The nutrients needed to digest and utilize the sugar have been stripped during processing, so the body needs to steal nutrients from the cells to digest them.
And, the body is incredibly capable of dealing with whatever we throw at it. One glorious donut or sugar-sweetened drink isn’t going to cause any harm, other than your body might give you signs that it didn’t enjoy that treat (like low energy, stomach pain, or a headache). It’s years or decades of these nutrient-poor high-sugar foods that break down the body’s glucose system, leading to issues.
Type II Diabetes and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD)
These are conditions that come about after years or decades of enjoying more refined sugar and flour than your body can tolerate. There’s also a genetic component to these conditions – some people are prone to move toward a diagnosis faster than others. But, I would argue that EVERYONE will eventually get a diagnosis of one or both of these conditions if the body is chronically thrown out of balance for a long time.
(Including me, I was well on my way to Type II Diabetes in my 20s. I had tons of symptoms, but my doctors would only test me for Type I Diabetes due to my age. I bet I was at least Insulin Resistant)
Type II Diabetes first begins as Insulin Resistance. The cells get bombarded with high amounts of insulin and glucose for so long that the insulin receptors break. This leaves too much glucose in the bloodstream (causing inflammation) and cells that are starving and screaming for glucose. I explain this in more detail here.
NAFLD is extremely common nowadays (although underdiagnosed) and in its most simplistic terms is a struggle with fructose. At least 20% of Canadians are dealing with it right now (that number is probably higher). It also can be caused by fast weight loss; the liver can’t always keep up with all of the newly liberated energy from the fat cells.
But, mostly it’s a fructose problem. Anytime the body has too much glucose in the bloodstream, the liver grabs it and stores it for later. When those stores are full it goes into fat cells. If we have something high in fructose or worse, glucose AND fructose, the liver gets overwhelmed and stores too much fat in the liver. Over time, this fat can be seen in an ultrasound and can inhibit the liver from working properly.
For both of these conditions, you CAN have sweet foods in your life, but it’s important to have them in their most natural, unrefined form…and your body would probably prefer small amounts at a time until its glucose utilization improves.
Over time, high blood sugar is also inflammatory, so you’ll be more prone to cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol, and other chronic inflammatory conditions.
Life can still be sweet with Type 2 Diabetes & NAFLD
You don’t need to eliminate all forms of sweet food to balance your body if you’re dealing with either of these conditions. Instead, think of your body as being more sensitive to sugar, and gentleness is key.
Your body will probably overreact to refined sugar, so focus on health sugars (found in the next part). And, be sure to use the info in the next section (putting on the breaks) anytime you enjoy something sweet.
With these small sugar tricks, you’ll find your body can enjoy the sweetness of life while staying in balance ❤️
Putting on the breaks - Balancing sugar highs
There are 3 ways to slow down the absorption of glucose into your bloodstream and 1 sure-fire way to bring your blood sugar down if you accidentally eat more sugar than your body likes (or actively choose to by eating something you really love ❤️).
Slow the absorption of glucose into your bloodstream by:
Increase the fibre (add chia seeds, ground flax, or using fibrous sweet foods like dates)
Increase the protein (have it with or after a source of protein)
Increase the fat (slather some butter on that yummy muffin)
You can also use a combination of these three and you’ll see that as a theme in most of my recipes for healthy sweets, like my black bean brownie recipe.
If your blood sugar feels high or you’ve had more sugar than usual – exercise. Through exercise, your cells need more glucose and it can pull your blood sugar down pretty fast. A brisk walk will do it or any form of exercise you enjoy.
How Sugar Appears on Ingredients Lists
Sugar adds up in processed food and there’s a little trick that manufacturers do – they tend to add more than one type of sugar.
Food manufacturers realize that consumers are savvy and know that ingredients are listed in order. The first ingredient on the list is whatever is most prevalent in the food. For this reason, food manufacturers will do whatever it takes to keep sugar out of that top spot. They do it by using 2 or 3 (or more) different types of sugar. This usually moves sugar out of the top 3 ingredients, but if they were added together, they’d probably reach #1. Sneaky!
Be a savvy consumer and look for all of the different ways that sugar might be listed in an ingredient list. Sugar goes by a lot of different names — more than 60, if we’re talking about what’s listed on nutrition labels. Here are a few of them.
Brown sugar
Corn sweetener
Corn syrup
Rice syrup
Dextrose
Maltose
Barley malt
Fructose sweetener
Fruit juice concentrates
Glucose
Glucose/Fructose
High-fructose corn syrup
Honey
Invert sugar
Lactose
Maltose
Malt syrup
Maple syrup
Molasses
Pancake syrup
Raw sugar
Sucrose
Trehalose
Turbinado sugar
To identify an added sugar, look for words that end with “-ose,” as well as phrases that contain “syrup” or “malt.”
Now that you know how sugar and glucose affects your body, let’s look at the different types of sugar 😋
Got any questions or comments? Comment below, jump to our private Facebook Group, or the Ask Lisa page :).