No Sugar?

Day 2 now: No sugar. Do you have any idea how hard that is? Do you realize how much sugar you consume? You may not think it's alot. BUT, try to eliminate it for ONE day. That means no sugar in your coffee, no sugary cereal, pancakes, waffles, oatmeal, or jelly on your toast. Nothing for your iced tea, no soda, no candy bar, or dessert after dinner.

And I have successfully gone 2 days now without ANY kind of sugar. None from fruit, white sugar, brown sugar, honey, molasses, sweetener, creamer, nothing. It's been very difficult. But, it's worth it. Listen to this interview with John Douillard. It's an hour and has many valuable concepts in it. And the last question he was asked "What is the one thing you would recommend to be eliminated from the diet." Without hesitation he answered "Sugar". Wow, that's really interesting. I can think of 10 things that you would think were worse than sugar.

But, here's why:
1. Fructose elevates uric acid, which decreases nitric oxide, raises angiotensin, and causes your smooth muscle cells to contract, thereby raising your blood pressure and potentially damaging your kidneys.

Increased uric acid also leads to chronic, low-level inflammation, which has far-reaching consequences for your health. For example, chronically inflamed blood vessels lead to heart attacks and strokes; also, a good deal of evidence exists that some cancers are caused by chronic inflammation.

2. Fructose tricks your body into gaining weight by fooling your metabolism—it turns off your body's appetite-control system. Fructose does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn does not suppress ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") and doesn't stimulate leptin (the "satiety hormone"), which together result in your eating more and developing insulin resistance.

3. Fructose rapidly leads to weight gain and abdominal obesity ("beer belly"), decreased HDL, increased LDL, elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and high blood pressure—i.e., classic metabolic syndrome.
Fructose metabolism is very similar to ethanol metabolism, which has a multitude of toxic effects, including NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease). It's alcohol without the buzz.

And to make it worse...
sugar consumption trends of the past 300 years:

In 1700, the average person consumed about 4 pounds of sugar per year.
In 1800, the average person consumed about 18 pounds of sugar per year.
In 1900, individual consumption had risen to 90 pounds of sugar per year.
In 2009, 50% of us now consume 180 pounds of sugar per year!

Sugar is loaded into your soft drinks, fruit juices, sports drinks, and hidden in almost all processed foods—from bologna to pretzels to Worcestershire sauce to cheese spread. And now most infant formula has the sugar equivalent of one can of Coca-Cola, so babies are being metabolically poisoned from day one if taking formula.

No wonder there is an obesity epidemic in this country.