Sugar Suppresses the Immune System

Sugar Quiz – Questions 4. Orange juice helps me get well faster when I have an infection.

Take the Sugar Quiz before reading this article.

Keeping the immune system healthy keeps you healthy.

How Strong is Your Immune System?

Would you like to know a simple way to strengthen your immune system?

Can it withstand the daily sugar assault? Or will you succumb to the flu and other infections or even cancer?

Think about this study when those sweets tempt you.

Concentrated sweets suppress the ability of our white blood cells to gobble up bacteria that enter our bodies as shown in a study published in November of 1973 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 26: November, 1973, pages 1880-1884, entitled “Role of Sugars in Human Neutrophilic Phagocytosis.”

Phagocytosis is the ability of the white blood cell (neutrophil) to engulf the bacteria.

In this study, each person had their blood drawn at fasting and one, two, three, four, and five hours after a glucose load. The people in this study ate different forms of carbohydrate to supply 100 grams of glucose. One group drank 100 grams of plain glucose. Other groups drank 100 grams of fructose, or sucrose, or honey or orange juice.

Then, their blood was drawn at one, two, three, four, and five-hour intervals after eating the glucose load.

After their bodies came back into balance from the prior glucose load, they would rotate to drink a different glucose load for the next round of tests so that everyone was eventually tested with each different type of glucose load.

All of these concentrated sweets significantly decreased the capacity of their white blood cells to engulf bacteria.

That means sweets can weaken your immune system.

In general, the white blood cell could engulf 16 bacteria in a fasting state, but two hours after ingesting a concentrated sweet, they could only engulf 9 to 10 bacteria. The greatest immune paralysis occurred between one and two hours after drinking the glucose load but was still significant five hours after eating one of these concentrated carbohydrates.

Take note:

Even fresh squeezed orange juice partially paralyzed the white blood cell’s ability to gobble up bacteria, hobbling the immune defense system against infection.

So, is orange juice a good thing to drink when you’re sick?

Any fruit becomes a concentrated sweet when it’s turned into juice and acts in the same way as soda pop to depress your immune system.

However, eating a starch (complex carbohydrate) did not cause a drop in the white blood cell’s ability to engulf bacteria. Fasting for 36 to 60 hours significantly increased the ability of the white blood cell to engulf and destroy bacteria.

After learning about this study, I began to realize why January was the biggest flu season of the year. Prior to that time, I thought we all got the flu in January because we traveled around so much visiting family and friends during the holidays. Therefore, we just were exposed to a lot more germs.

However, after reading this study, I began to realize that not only were we possibly exposed to more germs, but our immune systems were suppressed by all the sweets that we were eating, making our bodies less capable of defending themselves. The first holiday season that I got through without eating sweets was a great victory for me.

What Can I Do?

Start decreasing you intake of sweets.

Try setting some priorities for yourself so you can strengthen your immune system:

  • Ask yourself how much you want to enjoy all of the activities of the season. In other words do you choose to avoid sickness by keeping the immune system healthy. Maybe when you realize how kind you’re being to your body by avoiding sweets, it will be easier to turn them down. In other words, do you want to be miserable and in bed, or up and having fun?
  • Limit the amount of sweet food you eat.
  • But really enjoy any sweets you choose to eat. Eat them slowly, savoring every bite.
  • Learn to enjoy the smell of sweets without having to eat them.
  • Focus more on enjoying the other aspects of life.
  • Eat wholesome balanced meals before going to a party. Your body will feel like it’s been fed and won’t crave the sweets so much.
  • Have meals prepared ahead of time and take them with you so you won’t be tempted to indulge in those ever present sweets. Prepare a meal balanced with protein, good fat and complex carbohydrates once per day. Make it big enough to divide it into 5-6 small meals that you can take with you to work. Then eat a small meal every 3 hours to keep your blood sugar level normal. That goes a long way in overcoming the temptation to snack on sweets.

You can have a lot of fun preparing these meals by following the healthy eating plan in Dr. Jo’s Natural Healing Cookbook .

Congratulations on working on enhancing your immune system.

Need help with ideas for those healthy meals? Order Dr. Jo’s Natural Healing Cookbook . I wrote it especially for you to make healthy meal preparation easy.

Take a look at these other recommendations too.

Be blessed with happiness every day of your life.

Review the sugar articles on the right before taking the Sugar Quiz a second time. After reading all of these articles, take the Sugar Quiz again. See if your answers are different.