Sugar and Your Body: Explaining to Youth

This is Fiora. She is a smart young lady. She likes to keep her body healthy by eating food that is good for her body.

One day Fiora’s friend Cassi offered her some candy, and Fiora said "No thanks."  Cassi asked her “Why don’t you eat candy?”  Fiora politely said, “It doesn’t make me feel good so I think it might not be good for me.”

Cassi was confused. “Well my dad told me I was too skinny and need to eat more candy! It's just sugar. Don’t we need sugar?”  Fiora said, “We do need glucose, but even that in large amounts can hurt our bodies in lots of ways.”

“I don’t get it!” said Cassi. “How can something we need hurt us?”  “It’s ok,” said Fiora. “I didn’t get it at first either. Let me tell you about sugar and how glucose works in our bodies.”

First, let me introduce some important players! This is Blood Cell, our blood carries oxygen and energy from food to all parts of our body so we can move and function. It’s important our blood is clean so it can keep our organs and brain healthy.

This is Glucose. We get her from sugar, fat, and protein. It’s the most important source of fuel in our bodies!  We wouldn’t be able to do much without her, so she can’t get too low. But if she gets too high she is toxic.

This is Pancreas. He does two jobs, makes Enzymes to help break down food into Glucose and makes Insulin and Glucagon to make sure there is not too much or too little glucose in the blood. Enzymes break the sugar down so we can access Glucose.

 Insulin is a hormone that comes out of pancreas when Glucose enters the blood, he helps store glucose in the liver, or if there is not enough room in liver then in fat cells, so it doesn’t get too high. Glucagon takes glucose out of the liver when it’s too low.

This is Liver, we really need him! He monitors the blood for toxins and glucose before sending it to the rest of the body, our blood would kill us without liver! He also stores glucose in his cells for later use by turning it into glycogen. Liver wants our blood to stay clean and balanced in blood glucose levels.

These helper guys are called Fiber, Vitamin, and Mineral. They are part of foods we eat that help the stomach, liver and pancreas digest food and regulate glucose for energy. We need lots of fiber to help move food through our bodies, and slow down the digestion process so we don't spike insulin, and vitamins and minerals make liver, pancreas, and muscles strong.

This is Water. Water helps blood move freely, helps cleanse the liver and pancreas and stomach, and helps our bodies get rid of toxic waste like too much sugar. We need to drink a lot more water than the amount that we eat food.

This is Sugar, he’s not part of our body. He has lots of names, like carbohydrate, fructose, sucrose, honey, corn syrup, candy, etc. Sugar is very sweet to eat, so it’s also very hard to stop. There are natural kinds of sugar (in fruit and veggies), and man made or refined sugar (in donuts and soda), but all sugars do a similar thing when you eat.

Let’s say you ate a pear. A whole pear has vitamins, minerals, a small amount of sugar called fructose, lots of fiber, and water. All important players in digestion! The pear goes in our mouths and enzymes from our saliva start to break the pear down into small particles.

Then Stomach enzymes and Pancreas enzymes break the food down so small it can be converted into Glucose and used as energy to fuel our muscles, heart, and brain. Pancreas sends out Insulin to protect the blood from too much glucose and send it via blood cells to the Liver.

The big blood vessel from the digestive track to Liver is called the HPV. Blood entering the HPV is rich with glucose from food, so it’s escorted by Insulin. Liver stores much of this as Glycogen so it can be released quickly as energy between meals. Liver could not do this without the help of Insulin.

Pancreas is what signals insulin to get the sugar to Liver and convert it into Glucose. If Pancreas isn’t giving enough enzymes or too much insulin, problems will arise. Blood glucose will get out of balance! So its very important to have a healthy pancreas that works right.

Too much glucose is toxic for our blood and organs, like poison. Too little glucose will starve our organs and brains. The body has a lot of ways to make sure we don’t have too high or too low glucose, but there are ways we can help it stay balanced by being careful what we eat.

Let’s say now that you ate a pear flavored candy. There is no fiber, no water, no minerals, and no vitamins in candy, there is a lot of sugar called sucrose. This is hard on Pancreas! He has to work extra hard to get enough insulin produced to escort, convert, and store that sucrose into glucose.

If Insulin senses high amounts of sugar, it comes out like an army and gets to work getting sugar out of the blood (called a "spike"). But that creates a problem an hour later when you don't have any glucose left because Insulin got rid of it all.  You "crash" or have no energy!

Liver is hard at work too.  Without fiber to slow things down, vitamins, and minerals to help, Liver has to take minerals and vitamins and glucose from food you already ate to store the sucrose-glucose as fat or get it out of your body. If you ate 5 candies, it’s likely that is too much to be stored at once! So Liver needs extra fiber and water to get rid of the sugar or it acts like poison and hurts your cells.

Other foods, like chips, donuts, cake, white bread, cookies, crackers, and pasta contain high carbohydrates and low fiber, vitamins, minerals, and water. It makes Pancreas and Liver work too fast all at once! So they also overwork enzymes and insulin, throw our blood glucose off balance, and have to store it as lots of fat, like when you eat candy.

Sugar makes us feel energized for a little while, but then our blood glucose crashes because Pancreas and Insulin worked hard! We are out of balance!!! Then we feel depleted, tired, and moody. We will feel hungry really soon and crave food. Our brains will think it needs more glucose, even if we have lots of fat stored, because of the sugar high.

Protein is another source of fuel for our bodies. It is different from sugar and carbohydrates, but the enzymes can still convert it into energy for our bodies through a process called glucogenesis, the same way it turns glycogen into glucose. Protein slows down insulin, so if you have a weak pancreas protein is a good food to eat.

The best way to keep our glucose balanced is to eat whole foods! Eating an apple (fiber, minerals, vitamins, water, fructose) will keep you balanced, eating apple juice (water and high fructose), especially from the store with added sugars and preservatives, will spike your insulin and be hard on your pancreas and liver.

The body lets us know when we’ve had too much sugar by getting sick or fat.  I metabolize food quickly already, so it doesn’t take much sugar to make me feel upset in my stomach, tired, moody, and weak. Sugar will deplete my body instead of giving me energy. Being cranky is another sign you’ve had too much sugar.

“Are there any foods that make you not feel good Cassi?”

Cassi thought about  it. “I did feel sick once when I ate three cinnamon rolls. They were so good I couldn’t stop.”

“That would make me sick too!” said Fiora.  “And sometimes if I go too long without eating I get really angry,” said Cassi.  “I call that Hangry!” said Fiora.

“So you eat sugar, you just eat it in fruits and vegetables to help your body digest it easier and stay balanced in glucose?” Cassi clarified.

“Exactly!” said Fiora. “It’s hard to do, but it makes me feel great. I try to listen to my body.”

“I understand now. Thanks for explaining Fiora. Maybe I will try to eat less sugary and refined foods too. Or at least pay attention to when my body says enough is enough. So what do we do with this candy?” Cassi said.  “Better in the garbage than in our bodies!” said Fiora. “Let’s keep our bodies clean.”  “OK!” and Cassi threw it away.

WRITTEN BY HEATHER SCHAUERS * * * ILLUSTRATED BY KRYSTAL BARRETT

Food Fighter

As I have transformed my life in order to fight the Standard American Diet, which has not been easy, I have realized that there is something biologically wrong with me that I am so sensitive to sugar, refined foods, unhealthy oils, hormones, artificial additives, and gluten.  I am like the ultra unhealthy food barometer, if it's even slightly not good for you my system reacts.  I can see that my fellow human beings are generally not as fragile, and can handle a lot more than I can without adverse side affects. That has dampened my resolve to fight somewhat--I haven't got all the answers, solutions just are not clear cut when it comes to food, and I am just one small weak person fighting an entire culture of ideas about food.  Where do I go from here?

I am still a food fighter.  This school year I am making my kids lunches.  I get up at 6:00 am so I can make a healthy breakfast and then pack three healthy lunches before 7:30.  No more prayer and scripture in the morning, no more workout in the morning, it must come later because morning is my food-fighting time to keep myself and my children free of the SAD.  I still keep our pantry clear of sugary refined foods and cook from scratch, I still make dinner and rarely go out to eat, I still read food labels.  This next month is emergency preparedness month, I plan to stock my food storage with foods I can tolerate (which limits my options quite a bit because the refined sugary foods are what store well).  I am currently writing a book that tries to simply explain blood sugar regulation so that young people can understand it, and my sister is illustrating it for me.  I am making meals ahead in the freezer for my kids when I leave for my anniversary trip in October. In my arena, I'm still fighting, taking responsibility for what I and my family eat, because I love them and I choose life.

However, my fight has slowed down and turned inward, myself and my children, rather than pushing the family and community boundaries. I don't want to offend, judge, or incur guilt in anyone around me who has not opted to fight this fight, and I still have enough mental and physical problems that I can't claim it's a cure-all. I don't like it when people "should" on me, I don't want to "should" on anyone else. I feel as though I was letting my determination to "let everyone know about food dangers and never touch a single dose of toxic food again" cause damage to my relationships with family members, cause bitterness towards people making these foods available, and cause me to lose focus on other worthy goals spending so much of my focus on the food fight.  In short, my strength was turning into a weakness.  So I have backed off, and now when people ask me about food I try to change the subject unless I sense there is a genuine desire in the person to know more.  My writing on this blog has certainly abated.

I still have a burning ember of desire to write what I feel, even if I don't know everything.  Eating whatever you want has a price tag, small or large, and I will stick to that belief until I die.  I might not have all the answers, and solutions may not be clear cut, but here is what I do know.
1. Some people are weak and need to watch what they eat, some people are strong and don't need to be as selective, and God love and accepts them both.
2. God is proud of me for recognizing my weakness and choosing to be very careful about my food choices and preserve this body he has given me.
3. There is no one right diet for EVERYONE, because all metabolic types differ, within in a culture, a community, and even an immediate family.
4. Sugar and refined processed foods that act as sugar are addictive and cause blood sugar dysregulation and imbalance to the digestive, circulatory, and hormonal systems in the body when ingested in high amounts on a regular basis in ANY human body.
5. No matter how important the cause or how great the truth, if our desire to help becomes judgmental, we aren't helping.

It is important to me that everyone in the world know what I have learned, I wish I could help more, promote awareness more, fight more, but I want to love others more than I want to help them (and risk judging them), so I wait.  Maybe God has an opportunity for me to be a food fighter in an arena other than my own life someday. 

Inquiries

I've had a couple friends this summer ask me about what they can eat because they are trying to eliminate sugar due to health problems, one with yeast overgrowth and another low energy. I thought I would share my responses to them in case you are suffering in some way and wondering if sugar elimination would help, and would like a somewhat concise answer. Please contact me if you'd like an electronic copy of my recipe collection.

Question:

"So... I've really been struggling with my energy lately and kept getting the feeling that I need to get sugar out of my diet. I remembered that you had/were doing something like that so I came to see if I could find out more about it :) I don't know if I will be able to get rid of as much as you have, but I'm at least starting down that road. I'm mostly wondering what you eat instead! And....does everyone think you are crazy? :)"

Response:

Let me answer your last question first, yes I believe some people think I'm crazy, maybe that I'm OCD and extreme, and even my own husband has been hard to read as to what his opinion is of my eating standards, but he tries to be as supportive as possible. Honestly, I would have looked at myself as crazy a decade ago, the idea that sugar is harmful is hard to grasp when so many people eat it without any apparent negative effects. Even my 93 year old grandma has made some comments as I've set before her a beautiful sugar free grain free meal, like "why are you doing this?"  and "isn't it amazing I've lived so long eating as much sugar as I have?" Yes it is amazing.  If I hadn't received sacred and personal revelation that this is what my body needs to do to remain alive (and healthy) I would have given up, it's way too hard to keep it up for any other reason than a strong eternal conviction that it's right.  So I let people think what they want to think, knowing that sometimes the greatest opposition comes in the face of the greatest truth.  Pray for guidance, the Lord guided me, so I know he will guide you too.

First thing to remember going into this: There is no one right diet for EVERYONE. There are too many different metabolic types and cultural evolutionary factors and personal health differences for anyone to make any broad and sweeping claims about what to eat and what not to eat. Articles on the news like "diet myth busters" and "how to lose 10 pounds" make me cringe, because what you need to eat and how is very "like no others, like some others, and like all others"--unique to you.  When you start out trying to change your diet it is frustrating to hear advice on what is safe to eat and what isn't, you're "danged if you do danged if you don't" if you listen to what everyone says is harmful or beneficial. So the first step is to create a food diary and record everything you eat and drink and what your digestive response is and what your mood/energy level is for a month. This will to some degree show you what may or may not be causing problems. 

That being said, there is a lot going on inside us we can't catch on the food diary, and if I were to demonize any one food it would be sugar, and your desire to know more about how to eliminate it gives me leave to talk to you about it. Ha ha.  My guess is that you are not absorbing your food sufficiently, thin people who ingest sugar and refined grains (of which the Standard American Diet mostly consists) often have as many or more health problems than fat people, because somewhere there is an enzyme deficiency not absorbing converting and storing glucose like it's supposed to, which causes inflammation, mood dysregulation, low energy, taxes your pancreas and liver, and causes blood sugar regulation problems. Your history of depression has much more to do with biology than you can imagine, all hormones and neurotransmitters are made first in the gut, and sugar causes a huge imbalance especially when you already don't have full absorption powers, the minerals vitamins and enzymes that are needed to regulate our body are used to detoxify waste from our system and the brain cells suffer first.  You already know depression is not due to a character flaw, you helped me understand that years ago when I thought I was broken and beyond hope, and now I'm hoping I can help you understand that it is due in part to the Standard American Diet. My biological vulnerabilities were being thrashed by a lifetime of sugar abuse, maybe yours are too.  Again, I worry more about thin people than heavy when it comes to sugar.

So I would advise you to do some research on the negative effects of sugar. Understanding what sugar is doing on a metabolic level will help you to curb some of those wonderful cravings. On a basic level of understanding, our body ingests food and our livers and pancreas convert it into glucose and use it as energy, storing excess glucose in our muscles and fat cells, and glucagon extracts this energy when its needed. Some bodies do this faster than others, I am a fast oxidizer and thanks to heredity my pancreatic enzymes don't absorb food properly, so I had a hypoglycemic complex for a long time. I ate refined foods, burned them too quickly, didn't get the nutrients I needed, crashed, my insulin too high my blood sugar too low and was desperate for food every 3 hours.  Sugar only makes that process worse, either wreaking havoc on the organs and enzymes of the fast oxidizer or being immediately stored as fat in the slow oxidizer, and excess fat causes strain on the body, so if you are intaking sugar/refined foods three times a day you are bound to have health problems one way or another, even die a slow death like I believe I was.

Furthermore, sugar and refined foods are far more addictive than people believe they are, and anyone, fat thin or in between, fast oxidizers, slow oxidizers, mixed types, young old, who tries to go off them for a month will feel the effects of the addiction. It is hard to believe you are not harming your body by depriving it of sugar, or that your body doesn't "need" sugar when you go off it, because like the alcoholic who needs that drink to feel better, you will feel you need sugars/refined foods. Its the dopamine talking. We do not need sugar, sugar in its refined form is a chemical waste product, tastes good and makes you feel good for a while, but it has no nutritional value and what's more is toxic to most systems, and should be completely eliminated from the diet. Gluten is a close second in causing problems, it interferes with absorption of food and crosses the blood brain barrier causing digestion and brain problems, but giving us a lift and making us go back for more. We not only have an obesity epidemic, we also have a mental health epidemic, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, parkinsons, ADHD, and infertility epidemic, and I wonder very much how everyone throwing off their blood sugar with so much excessive sugars has to do with all these health issues. More than we think. But it's hard to eliminate because it is readily available, highly palatable, and we are addicted. So watch for signs for withdrawal and remember you are cleansing your body, not harming it.

So what do you eat instead? This took me 3 years to figure out, it was like learning rocket science!  I had no idea what to do for breakfast other than toast, cereal, waffles, pancakes, cinnamon rolls or sugary oatmeal. SAD. But I found learning about food science was fascinating and the Lord blessed me with information that hopefully can benefit you as well. I will attach a recipe book I have compiled to this email and some quotes from books I like.  Also I keep a blog on my journey of sugar elimination, it has some good resources on it schauersthesearemywords.blogspot.com

I don't know where you are in your elimination process, but I would advise you to go slow. Start with eating only protein and veggies in the morning for a while, write in your food diary how that works, then move to eliminating refined/sugar foods from lunch, then dinner, etc.  Read food labels, and start replacing ketchup with home made marinara and salad dressing with guacamole.  Its a move to cooking from scratch, and it takes time at first to cook everything with whole foods, but you will get faster and it will get easier with time. Eventually you will want to completely put a ban on all foods made with cane and beet sugar and high fructose corn syrup and gluten, but it may take a couple years to get there.  Don't forget the food diary! I would never had known I was gluten sensitive without mine, and that I do well with dairy but not fruit and dairy together, and that you can do almost anything you do with bread with potatoes instead! Once you get the basic ideas of how to cook without sugar and grains, you'll take off.  My energy level and health has improved in so many ways since banning sugar/refined foods, I don't even consider myself "hypoglycemic" anymore. I can testify that health has a price tag but if you sacrifice sweets you will reap the benefits of good health.

Let me know if you have any other questions! I would love to support you in your fight against the SAD.

Love Heather