Rising Above the Deception – Overcoming Sugar Addiction
Sugar – more addictive than cocaine
Addiction equals enslavement. Do you want to be enslaved to the disease-inducing effects of sugar addiction?
Do you want to continue eating fake food? Eating fake food is like building your house on the sand. When the rains come down you crash!
I choose not to be enslaved by sugar addiction. It took a lot of conscious effort to overcome my sugar addiction, but it’s worth it. In the process I found out how to build my body on a solid foundation. Everyday I thank the good Lord for my healthy and pain-free body. Before turning my sugar addiction around, my body was crumbling and I’m sure I would be a total mess today had I continued in my addictive pattern of eating.
First rule of overcoming sugar addiction – Eat Real Food
Eat food the way God created it. He knows what your body needs.
Emphasize whole vegetables in your eating plan including all the different colors of vegetables
Emphasize good fats and oils in your eating plan.
You may crave sweets because your body knows that it’s not receiving enough good fats and oils to build healthy cell membranes and other structures in your body. Your body can turn some of those sugars into fatty acids, but that’s not a healthy way to get the fats your body needs.
Also Dr. Mercola recommends changing your metabolism to so you primarily burn fat as a fuel instead of depending mostly on sugar-burning. He advocates eating 50-70% of your daily calories from healthy fats including:
Olive oil
Coconuts and coconut oil
Butter made from raw, organic milk from grass-fed cows
Organic raw nuts, especially macadamia nuts, which are low in protein and omega-6 fat
Organic pastured eggs and pastured meats
Avocadoes
In my search to overcome sugar addiction I found Dr. Price, Pottenger, and Page’s pioneering nutritional research and clinical application. It saved my life. From that research I utilized the Get Healthy Eating Plan and turned it into a cookbook that helped my patients transform their sugar-addicted eating to healthy eating. You will find lots of creative ways to eat health in Dr. Jo’s Natural Healing Cookbook.
Second Rule of overcoming sugar addiction – Exercise
Have you noticed how a good healthy cardiovascular workout suppresses your appetite? Dr. Mercola thinks the decrease in sweet cravings occurs because a good workout decreases blood insulin levels.
Longer periods of exercise also click you into burning stored fat for energy instead of stored sugar. Fat burning releases ketones into your system. Ketones tend to suppress appetite too.
An Interesting Third Concept
Sugar acts similarly to cocaine, morphine, heroin or other opiate drugs.
Our brains and spinal cords contain opioid receptors which interact with endorphins that give us that happy high feeling.
Sugar and the opioids increase the release of dopamine in our bodies. In a normal release of dopamine, GABA is also released to balance the dopamine response.
But heroine (or sugar) blocks the opioid receptor for GABA and keeps it from doing its job. That leaves dopamine unchecked and creates a dopamine surge acting on the opioid receptors in our brains that brings about sustained energy and feelings of euphoria.
As you know, persisting in this state of unbalance in the body by continually consuming sugar (or another opioid drug) causes the body to eventually crash.
Interestingly Dr. Mercola reports that a compound called cafestrol in regular or decaf coffee blocks the opioid receptors and thus blocks sugar cravings. He feels drinking coffee can help decrease sugar cravings. But he also says to only coffee made from freshly ground organic coffee beans and limit consumption to one cup per day. And drink it black. Adding sweeteners to it obviously defeats the purpose of overcoming sugar addiction.
I have 2 misgivings about drinking coffee to decrease sugar cravings:
1. Coffee can drop blood sugar and thus actually create sugar cravings.
2. Coffee upsets body chemistry, unbalancing mineral relationships which leads to disease
So you might want to experiment to see if coffee helps with sugar cravings in your initial period of dealing with sugar addiction, but don’t make drinking coffee a regular habit.
Dr. Mark Hyman, MD, a well-known and very nutritionally knowledgeable doctor, has just released his new book, Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet.
Here’s an excerpt from Dr. Hyman’s book:
“If you are overweight, there’s a very good chance that you’re a food addict.
But let me stop right there and tell you that I’m not blaming you. You are
not gluttonous, nor weak-willed, nor any other self-recriminating belief you
may have about yourself and your relationship to food. Your hormones, taste
buds, and brain chemistry have been hijacked by the food industry. Not
metaphorically, but biologically. You are hooked – a junkie mainlining some
of the worst, deadliest drugs on the planet: sugar and anything that turns to
sugar in your body. That’s why you’re here to detox.
The $1 trillion industrial food system is the biggest drug dealer around,
responsible for contributing to tens of millions of deaths every year and
siphoning trillions of dollars from our global economy through the loss of
human and natural capital. I realize this sounds extreme and overstated, but
hear me out. Once you understand the forces at play in food addiction, you
will never think the same way again about Snapple, Diet Coke, and processed
snacks, cookies, and cake.
We need to acknowledge our addiction, face it and address it squarely head-on,
both as individuals and as a society. We need a big solution that reaches deep
into what is offered in our supermarkets, restaurants, schools, and workplaces.
We need a solution that address the policy roots in agriculture, food marketing,
dietary recommendations, and how doctors are trained to diagnose and treat patients.
But first, we need to take back your own health. And I’m here to help you
do exactly that.
In order to break free from these addictive substances and reprogram your biology,
you need to detox from the drug-like foods and beverages you’ve been hooked on.
We now know — because it has been scientifically proven — that that sugar is
more powerfully addictive than alcohol, cocaine, or even heroin (and if you’re
thinking about going for diet soda instead, take note: artificial sweeteners may be
more addictive than regular sugar). When we treat alcoholics or cocaine addicts,
we don’t say “practice moderation” and advise them to cut down to just one drink
or snort one line of cocaine a day. We know they must clear the brain and body
of these powerful drugs completely, ideally through a well-designed program
that supports the detox process.
That’s precisely what we’re going to do here. In just 10 days, you’ll have a whole
new level of clarity, both physically and mentally. You’ll know with certainty that
you can regain control, feel good, and change your life forever.”
So, you may want to take a look at Dr. Hyman’s book:
Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet
Previous related articles:
The Exploitation of Your Pleasure Center
Blessings,
Dr. Jo