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In the interest of completeness, we’ll finish off the topic of sugar by discussing the concept of blood-sugar regulation. Basically, “carbohydrate” is a fancy word for “sugar”, as all carbohydrates get broken down in the body into sugar.

Even all those healthy vegetables like broccoli, kale, spinach, asparagus etc. get broken down into sugars to be absorbed by the body as fuel.

Maintaining an even blood-sugar level is critical for overall health, and many of today’s major diseases like diabetes and heart disease, are directly related to a lack of blood-sugar regulation.

The body is always trying to maintain homeostasis, and is only happy with a small window of variation in blood sugar. If we eat a very sugary snack without any protein or fat to slow the absorption into the bloodstream, the blood-sugar level quickly rises above the body’s comfort zone and the body responds by secreting a whole lot of insulin (your fat-storage hormone) to quickly take the sugar level back down to normal by storing the excess sugar that can’t be used as fuel, as fat.

Often too much insulin is secreted in the body’s panicked response to the sky-rocketing blood-sugar levels, and consequently blood sugar plummets too low, causing a crash in energy and a strong craving for more sugar in the body’s desperate attempt to bring blood-sugar levels to within normal limits. So, we reach for that cookie, and the cycle starts all over again.

Some people cycle between too high and too low blood-sugar levels all day, and this is extremely hard on the body. Over time, you gain fat weight because the cells of the body can only use so much sugar as fuel at a time, so insulin is constantly asked to convert the left-over sugar to fat.

More time passes and you become insulin resistant, because it takes more and more insulin to lower the blood-sugar, and finally the insulin stops working altogether, so your blood-sugar remains high, and you develop type 2 diabetes.

More time passes and you get the heart disease diagnosis, as the constantly high blood sugar makes the blood components sticky, and slowly destroys the structural proteins of the arteries.

It is important, therefore, to regulate your blood sugar by choosing carbohydrates that break down into sugar gradually. The best choices are organic above-ground vegetables, as they are full of nutrition, yet less starchy and sweet than the below-ground vegetables.

Whole grains like brown rice, millet, quinoi etc. that have not been flaked or ground into flour may also healthy choices for carbohydrate and some mixed types. (Read my tip on Customized Nutrition for more information on nutrition based on your own biochemical individuality).

Protein types tend to be very insulin sensitive and tend to gain weight on a diet high in grain, flour products like bread or pasta. Research by Jarvi et al. shows that once grain is ground into flour, even if the fibre content remains the same, it turns into sugar much more quickly in the body, so instead, choose flourless breads made of sprouted grain, like Manna or Ezekiel breads.

Consuming some quality protein and fat along with the non-starchy vegetables and whole grain is also very helpful in slowing the sugar rush into the blood. The more starchy or sweet the meal or snack, the more quality protein and fat is needed to balance it, so eat smaller quantities so you are not over-eating in the calorie department.

It is due to the problems of blood-sugar regulation that consuming products that contain straight sugar is such a problem for the body and should be avoided by everyone.

Alcohol creates an insulin response just as sugar does, so reducing alcohol consumption is also very important if you are trying to lose weight, avoid disease and improve your health.

To help you understand the studies below, high glycemic foods refer to foods that break down into sugar quickly, whereas low glycemic foods break down into sugar slowly.

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Artificial sweeteners are not a healthy substitute for sugar and they often cause people to eat more food and gain weight. When the body detects a sweet taste, it expects carbohydrates that contain nutrition, and when the gut finds no nutrition, the message is sent to the brain to eat more in order to get the nutrition needed.

The FDA has had more complaints about Aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal, Canderel, NatraSweet, Spoonfuls, DiabetiSweet) than any other food additive, and yet it is still on the GRAS list (Generally Regarded As Safe) despite its strong association with brain tumours and seizures. 

It is a synthetic compound made up of Phenylalanine and Aspartic Acid held in a chemical bond by Methanol, which breaks down into Formic Acid, Formaldehyde and Diketopiperazine (DKP).  It is the DKP that causes brain tumours.

Aspartame breaks down more quickly with heat, and as such, is worse in hot drinks, or in soda pop that may have been in the sun at some point in its journey to our fridges.  If you have ever tasted a diet drink that didn’t taste sweet, you know the Aspartame in it broke down into the above mentioned neurotoxins (nerve poisons). 

Some symptoms of Aspartame toxicity include migraines, depression, seizures, attention deficit disorder, angry rages, joint pain, muscle spasm, and it can mimic diseases like MS, chronic fatigue syndrome, and fibromyalgia. Symptoms like migraines may appear quickly in some people, while in others there may be no symptoms for some time. 

If you or someone you care about has any of these symptoms, remove Aspartame from the diet for four to six weeks before medical testing to see if the symptoms resolve, and so that the artificial sweetener won’t cloud the diagnosis. 

Once again, read labels, because Aspartame is everywhere, including children’s vitamins, cool aid type fruit drinks, diet soda pop, sugar free chewing gum, gelatin desserts, frozen desserts, fillings and toppings for baked goods, hot chocolate mixes, breath mints, yogurt, wine coolers, tea beverages, some flavoured bottled waters, some fibre cereals, cold remedies and other medications.

Mary Nash Stoddard compiled the research on Aspartame into a report that she titled Deadly Deception: Story of Aspartame : Shocking Expose of the World’s Most Controversial Sweetener, if you are interested in looking into this subject further.

Sucralose, under the brand name of Splenda, is gaining in popularity as a substitute for sugar. Because this product is newer there is less research to look at, but what is there should give pause for thought.

It is advertised as being made from sugar, but that does not mean it is anything like sugar, just as water in no way resembles the oxygen and hydrogen from which it is made.

To make sucralose, three chlorine atoms are substituted for three oxygen-hydrogen groups on the sugar molecule turning it into a chlorocarbon. Chlorocarbons have been known to cause genetic, organ, immune and reproductive damage for some time, and they cause swelling of the liver as well as swelling and calcificatiion of the kidneys. 

If you get any mid-back pain in the kidney area or bladder irritation after consuming Splenda, take it out of your diet immediately.

Choose healthful sweeteners like raw (unpasteurized) honey, organic maple syrup, Rapadura or stevia to sweeten your food if necessary.

Related Tips:
Sugar – The Disease Generator

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On some level most of us know that sugar is not healthy, but I don’t think the majority of us have any idea truly how devastating sugar is. And reducing one’s sugar consumption is challenging as it is highly addictive, causing withdrawal symptoms such as headaches, mood swings, depression, fatigue, and cravings.

Even as early as the 60s, the research of Alfred Lopez repeatedly pointed to sugar as being a significant player in the development of heart disease, and then Ahrens’ work in the 70s found the same thing. Sugar causes an increase in the adhesiveness of the blood platelets, which may be the reason for its role in heart disease.

Sugar is also implicated as a causative factor in type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, kidney disease, liver disease, obesity, and depression, and is important in the growth of cancerous tumors, as cancer cells love sugar.

Every tablespoon of sugar depresses the immune system for up to 6 hours. If you find that you are constantly sick, sugar may be a large part of the reason.

Sugar also encourages candida albicans overgrowth, a fungus that starts in the digestive tract and can spread to the internal organs and the respiratory system. Common symptoms may include yeast infections, digestive problems, or asthma.

Sugar is far more fattening for most people than fat is. The leading source of calories for kids and teens is from carbonated soft drinks and juice containing high-fructose corn syrup and sugar, and as a result they are becoming obese and developing type 2 diabetes at an alarming rate. In liquid form, sugars are very problematic as usually they are consumed as extra calories as opposed to substituting for solid foods.

High fructose corn syrup (often listed as "fructose glucose" on labels in Canada) is a crystalline fructose or hydrolized fructose product that is manufactured in the lab (genetically modified corn) that came onto the market in about 1970, and because it is so inexpensive, it is used as a preservative in all kinds of foods one would not expect.

I have even noticed it as an ingredient in those touted-as-healthy low-calorie frozen dinners! It is now everywhere in processed foods, including crackers, baked goods, salad dressings, ketchup, medications, and obviously, soft drinks.

High-fructose corn syrup is particularly dangerous, because unlike sucrose which raises blood-glucose levels, HFC syrup converts into triglycerides and adipose tissue within an hour of ingestion. Interestingly, the rise in obesity rates correlate very well to the introduction of this destructive product.

When I am feeling particularly cynical, I wonder why the term "sugar diabetes" has all but disappeared from the lexicon. Is it because it is more profitable to treat disease rather than to encourage the removal of HFC syrup and other forms of processed sugar from the marketplace?

So read labels carefully. No form of sugar is healthy, so know that any word that ends in "ose" is a form of sugar, such as glucose, sucrose, fructose, maltose, lactose, dextrose, galactose etc. Also watch for "monosaccharides" or "disaccharides", or various "syrups" which are also fancy names for sugar.

Almost all sugar on the market is highly processed, and as such the nutrient-dense molasses of the sugar-cane plant has been stripped away. The only sugar on the market that is a whole food is from Brazil, and is called Rapadura which literally means, "unseparated sugar". If you must use sugar, this is the only one that can be recommended.

"Sucanat", "turbinado", "raw sugar", "demerara", "muscovado", and "evaporated cane juice", are all examples of separated sugar and should be avoided.

To wean yourself off sugar, you may find it helpful to take a gram or two a day of omega 3 fish oils, to reduce the cravings.

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The lipid hypothesis needs to be re-evaluated. It has serious flaws. First of all, it is important to understand that that “risk factor” does not mean the same thing as “cause”. A risk factor is a characteristic that is associated with a diagnosis. For example, for women, being tall is associated with breast cancer. Does that mean that being tall causes breast cancer? Of course not.

It is also important to understand cholesterol is an essential component of our cell membranes, it acts as an anti-oxidant, it is a precursor for the synthesis of vitamin D as well as bile for digesting fats, and is the only source out of which our steroid hormones, such as cortisol, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone can be made. 

Cholesterol is used by our bodies to repair lesions in the arteries.  Dr. Mary Enig, fat researcher, suggests that blaming cholesterol for heart disease is something like blaming firefighters for starting fires. After all, they are always found at the scene of a fire!

The key to stopping heart disease is to stop the lesions in the arteries from occurring in the first place, by minimizing glycation by eating less sugar and high fructose corn syrup, and minimizing free radical damage by not consuming refined and therefore rancid vegetable oils.

Our bodies consider cholesterol to be so essential to our survival, that every cell in our body except for our brain cells can manufacture it as needed. If we eat little or no cholesterol, our bodies manufacture more, and if we eat a lot, our bodies don’t manufacture as much. 

This way our cholesterol levels maintain homeostasis irrespective of our diet, and this is the reason it is so difficult to reduce or raise cholesterol levels much with diet alone.

Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD, who wrote the book The Cholesterol Myths, goes through study after study destroying the idea that high cholesterol levels are the cause of heart disease.

In the Framingham heart study done near Boston that spanned 30 years , the researchers concluded that high cholesterol was a risk factor for heart disease, but when one really dissects the data, one must question how they came to that conclusion.

For example, when the participants of the study are plotted on a graph it clearly shows that those with cholesterol levels between 182 and 222 did not survive as long as those with higher cholesterol levels of between 222 and 261. The study shows that about half the people with heart disease had low cholesterol, and half the people without heart disease had high cholesterol.

Most studies have found that for women, high cholesterol is not a risk factor for heart disease at all – in fact, the death rate for women is five times higher in those with very low cholesterol.

In a Canadian study that followed 5000 healthy middle-aged men for 12 years, they found that high cholesterol was not associated with heart disease at all.

And in another study done at the University Hospital in Toronto that looked at cholesterol levels in 120 men that previously had heart attacks, they found that just as many men that had second heart attacks had low cholesterol levels as those that had high.

The Maoris of New Zealand die of heart attacks frequently, irrespective of their cholesterol levels. In Russia, it is low cholesterol levels that are associated with increased heart disease.

The Japanese are often cited as an example of a population that eat very little cholesterol and have a very low risk of heart disease. But the Japanese that moved to the US and continued to eat the traditional Japanese diet had heart disease twice as often as those that maintained the Japanese traditions but ate the fatty American diet. This suggests that it is something else, like stress perhaps, that is causing the heart disease.

Dr. Malcolm Kendrick noticed that in the MONICA study that has been going on for about 40 years, that there is no association between high cholesterol levels and heart disease. See the graph for yourself at the bottom of the article.

(Dr. Kendrick wrote another interesting piece about the "disappointing results" of low fat diets in the Women’s Health Initiatives heart intervention study, and the lack of association between death rates from CVD and saturated fat consumption based on the MONICA study).

These are but a small sample of the studies that contradict the idea that cholesterol is the villain in heart disease. So why has this idea held on so long? 

Perhaps pharmaceutical companies and the processed-food industry have a lot to gain by keeping this belief alive.  Statin drugs (Lipitor, Mevacor, Zocor etc.) are mega money makers, and they definitely do lower cholesterol, but if high cholesterol does not cause heart disease, why are they necessary?

Furthermore, statin drugs may not lower overall mortality rates, as lower cholesterol levels seem to be associated with higher rates of cancer.  Statin drugs  work by blocking the synthesis of mevalonate, which is a vital step in the body’s synthesis of cholesterol. 

By blocking this step, every following step is also blocked, and this is a problem, because Coenzyme Q10 (ubiquinone) and squalene, both precursors to cholesterol, are also blocked.

Coenzyme Q10 is very important for heart function, it acts as an antioxidant in conjunction with Vitamin E, and it is important in energy metabolism in the mitochondria of muscles, which is why muscle pain is a common side effect of statin drugs. Coenzyme Q10 is important for healthy brain function as well, and when Coenzyme Q10 levels are low, through statin use or otherwise, memory is effected. 

Squalene is also an antioxidant and is a potent cancer fighter.  If you are on statin drugs, supplementing with Coenzyme Q10 and squalene may be very helpful.

I realize that suggesting that cholesterol levels are not associated with heart disease goes against current dogma.  I am not making this suggestion in order to create controversy – that would be completely irresponsible.

After looking at the evidence, I am convinced that we are going down the wrong path. I am not alone in thinking this way – there are more and more scientists and physicians that believe that cholesterol and saturated fat stand wrongly accused. 

For me, the epidemiological evidence is most convincing. If we ate saturated fat and cholesterol in the form of animal fats, eggs, and full-fat dairy liberally for millennia and were heart-disease free up until the early 1900s, and just as we reduced our consumption of these foods and replaced them with sugar, vegetable oils and processed food, heart disease rates began to climb – to me it seems rather obvious that we are putting the blame on the wrong thing.

Feel free not to believe this idea, but please don’t simply dismiss it out of hand, either. If you have high cholesterol and you are taking, or thinking about taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, please read The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease so that you can make an informed decision regarding this important issue.

Two other very well researched books worth reading, written by scientists but geared to the lay person are Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Dr. Weston A. Price, on primitive cultures, their health and their eating habits versus more modern cultures, their health and their eating habits (one of the most important book on nutrition ever written), and Mary Enig’s book on lipid chemistry, Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer For Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol.

These books are each very different from each other, but they will open your eyes to the other side of the argument, and only then will you be able to come to an informed conclusion on this issue.

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Ravnskov, Uffe, MD, PhD The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease, New Trends Publishing Inc., Washington D.C., 2000.

Eric J G Sijbrands et al. Mortality over two centuries of in large pedigree with familial hypercholesterolaemia: family tree mortality study BMJ 2001;322:1019-1023 ( 28 April )

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