Can you go for more than a day without eating sugar in any form? Do you drink soft drinks or milkshakes, eat Danish pastry, fruit yogurt (a 6 oz. cartoon has 7 teaspoons of sugar or honey), donuts, bagels, cakes, cookies, most bran muffins or many other sugary items. Can you go without any other foods that contain words ending in “ose” such as sucrose, fructose, etc., or contain corn syrup, corn sweetener, honey, barley malt, maple syrup, sugar cane solids, or rice syrup? Do you pig out on a carton of ice cream or a bag of cookies? If you find that sugar is part of your diet every day, you may have a problem.

The problem with sugar
The average person eats 153 pounds of sugar a year. That is equivalent to over 1/2 cup of sugar a day. The teenage boy eats twice that much. So you say, “Who cares?” What is wrong with sugar?
There is much scientific evidence written in many medical journals showing that sugar can ruin your health. Do you have any of the following symptoms? Do you fall asleep after meals, have allergies, gas, bloating, extended stomach after meals, joint pains, headaches, chronic fatigue, constipation, diarrhea, over weight, skin problems, high blood pressure or other symptoms? These all can be signs of a sugar problem.

Here’s the problem: The human body was simply not designed to handle refined sugars.Refined sugar is new to the human diet. Metabolizing refined sugar is quite a challenge, but if forced to, the body will struggle to cope with it. This struggle causes serious disturbances, and after time, disease is the guaranteed result.
We have evolved from early man having digestive mechanisms to digest foods. We do not have the digestive mechanisms to digest the glut of sugar that we are eating on a daily basis!

Sugar in your body
Recently, information has emerged as to what happens to the minerals in the body when sugar and other abusive foods are eaten.
Sugar throws body chemistry into biochemical chaos lasting for six to eight hours after consumption. During this period, hormone, fat, carbohydrate, and protein metabolism are greatly disrupted.

After consumption, refined sugar is rapidly absorbed by the body, which dangerously increases the sugar content of the blood. Excess sugar causes production of excess insulin, which signals cells to take up sugar. Cells then absorb sugar, to get it out of the bloodstream. This solves one problem but creates another: Now the body’s cells have too much sugar. To correct this imbalance, cells turn the sugar into saturated fats and cholesterol.

Increased insulin levels not only tell the body to store fat, but they also tell it not to release fat. This makes people get fat and stay fat. It causes fat to be deposited in our cells and organs, resulting in atherosclerosis, fatty liver and kidneys, and obesity.

These fats cause blood cells to become sticky thereby increasing the chances of blood clots, strokes and heart attacks. Sugar increases “bad” LDL cholesterol, decreases “good” HDL cholesterol, and increases triglyceride levels in the blood. If antioxidant vitamins and minerals are deficient, these triglycerides can be oxidized causing serious health problems. In addition, red blood cells are choked by the saturated fats and this reduces their ability to carry oxygen to our tissues.

Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) is another problem caused by sugar consumption. When insulin is secreted into the blood, it makes blood sugar levels fall rapidly. Insulin levels remain high however, so the body continues to take up sugar beyond the point where it needs to. The result is hypoglycemia. Symptoms include weakness, dizziness, crying spells, insomnia, aggression, and depression.

Sugar in breakfasts or lunches can cause children to do poorly in school. They become hypoglycemic about 60 minutes after eating sugar and this affects brain function. Many teachers claim that their students are “brain dead” after lunch, and this is why.

Sugar-induced hormone imbalances tax and weaken the immune system to the point where it can no longer defend the body. When insulin causes blood sugar to fall excessively low, the adrenal glands secret hormones that pump blood sugar back up. Daily consumption of sugar causes an overworked biochemical balancing act resulting in adrenal exhaustion, which in turn decreases the body’s ability to respond to future stress. Adrenal exhaustion is now a common problem in the chronically ill.

Sugar quadruples adrenaline levels, while increasing both cholesterol and cortisone. Cortisone is known to depress immune function. Studies show that the ability of white cells to destroy harmful bacteria is reduced as sugar consumption rises. This is why children, who eat lots of sugar, are more susceptible to colds, flu, and other infections.

Another point is Fiber Deficiency : Humans were designed to derive energy from complex carbohydrates, which are naturally high in fiber. By contrast, a high sugar diet provides calories without the fiber that is essential to human health. Insufficient fiber causes materials to move too slowly through the digestive tract. This can cause constipation, which is a big problem in our society. It also causes waste to remain too long in the colon where it can serve as food for harmful bacteria, thereby producing gas and toxins, and promoting intestinal inflammation and bloating.

Conclusion
The bottom line is that sugar upsets the body chemistry and suppresses the immune system. Once the immune system becomes suppressed, the door is opened to infectious and degenerative diseases. The stronger the immune system the easier it is for the body to fight infectious and degenerative diseases.
Sugar is implicated in the following diseases and many more: allergies, arthritis, diabetes, hypoglycemia, osteoporosis, gallstones, kidney stones, headaches, yeast infections, and cataracts.

So if you have any of the symptoms or diseases mentioned, remove all forms of sugar from your diet for two weeks, I think that you will be pleasantly surprised. Not only will some of those symptoms disappear but you will be strengthening your immune system, allowing it to do the job it was meant to, defend you against foreign invaders.

Some of the other effects of sugar on the body are:
* Increases overgrowth of candida yeast organism
* Increases chronic fatigue
* Can trigger binge eating in those with bulima
* Increases PMS symptoms
* Increases hyperactivity in about 50% of children
* Increases tooth decay
* Increases anxiety and irritability
* Can increase or intensify symptoms of anxiety and panic in susceptible women
* Can make it difficult to lose weight because of constantly high insulin levels, which causes the body to store excess carbs as fat.

An estimated seven million people in the UK have early warning signs of diabetes, researchers warned today.

The condition – called prediabetes – means their blood sugar is higher than normal and makes them up to 15 times more likely to develop full blown Type 2 diabetes, charity Diabetes UK said.

Many of those at risk are overweight or obese, have a family history of prediabetes or have high blood pressure and cholesterol.

The charity said prediabetes could be countered by losing weight, upping physical activity levels and adopting a healthier diet. This in turn reduces the risk of developing the full-blown version by 60%.

Recent figures show that more than 145,000 new cases of mainly Type 2 diabetes were diagnosed in the past year, bringing the total number of people with diabetes in the UK to 2.6 million.

Diabetes UK chief executive Douglas Smallwood is calling on people to be more aware of their health.

He said: “It’s staggering that seven million people in the UK have prediabetes, which is often a precursor to Type 2 diabetes, a serious condition which can lead to long term complications such as heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, amputation and blindness.

“Identifying and educating people with prediabetes is vital as it’s not too late for many to make healthy lifestyle changes, reverse the condition completely and reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes.”

Diabetes is where the body produces too much blood sugar.

Type 1 usually develops in childhood and sees sufferers requiring insulin injections as soon as they are diagnosed.

Type 2 is linked to obesity and inactive lifestyles and managed by diet, drugs or insulin injections.

if you want to know more head to http://www.diabetes.co.uk/

Tomorrow i’ll follow up with some more articles on Diabetes..

“Cigarettes and alcohol will take 10 years off your life,” announced The Independent on the 18th of September.

The newspaper reported that for the first time doctors have quantified the effects of smoking, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, described as “the three major killers of middle-aged men”. Failing to give up smoking or to control blood pressure and cholesterol were reported to reduce life expectancy by 10 to 15 years.

The Whitehall study that provided the data set for this new publication is a large cohort study that started in 1967. It provides over 30 years of follow-up data for cause-specific mortality in a large population of civil servants.

This study found that there has been a clear improvement in rates of cardiovascular deaths across the decades, and also an improvement in the control of high blood pressure and high cholesterol, in addition to a reduction in smoking rates.

However, despite this, those with the combined risk factors of smoking, high cholesterol and high blood pressure when aged 50 were found live an average of 10 years less than those without.

The study has only been conducted in a specific population of men but the findings concur with the numerous other health studies demonstrating the impact of smoking, blood pressure and cholesterol upon health and mortality. The study did not specifically assess alcohol use.

Where did the story come from?

This research was conducted by Robert Clarke and colleagues of University of Oxford, University College London Medical School and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

What kind of scientific study was this?

The Whitehall study is a large cohort study collecting many types of data from workers in the civil service. It used data collected from 19,019 men aged between 40 and 69 years. Subjects were entered into the study from 1967 to 1970 and 99% of the subjects were followed up to 2005.

What were the results of the study?

The WHO data showed that between 1950 and 2005, standardised rates of UK mortality due to cardiovascular causes in middle-aged men were about twice of those for middle-aged women. However, for both men and women there has been an improvement in mortality rates over time, with a decline of about 2% a year from 1970 onwards.

At the start of the Whitehall study, 42% of the men currently smoked, 39% had high blood pressure, and 51% had high cholesterol. At a re-examination stage in 1997, 13% were current smokers and 58% were ex-smokers, with an average quitting age of 52 years). Only one-third of those smoking at study start were still smoking.

About a quarter of all deaths in the cohort occurred before the age of 70.

What interpretations did the researchers draw from these results?

The researchers conclude that, despite substantial changes in the risk factors of smoking, cholesterol and blood pressure over the 30 years, baseline differences in risk factors were associated with 10 to 15 year shorter life expectancy from age 50 onwards.

NHS findings

The findings concur with the numerous other health studies that demonstrate the impact that smoking, blood pressure and cholesterol can have upon health and mortality. While this will be unsurprising to most people, the study has strengths in providing an estimation of the size of this risk. As the authors conclude, continued public health strategies to lower these risk factors could result in further improvements in life expectancy.

A recent report from the National Academy of Sciences has recommended that people get at least 60 mins of moderate activity on a daily basis.

Is this new? YES because beforehand a report from 1996 was recommending at least 30 mins of moderately intense activity on most or all days of the week.

I agree with you 60 minutes a day seem a bit much.
“The concern is that individuals will see this call for 60 minutes and think, ‘My gosh, now it’s 60 and I can’t even do 30,’” says Edward T. Howley, Ph.D., president of the American College of Sports Medicine. “Sedentary individuals might be dissuaded from physical activity altogether.”

However these are the benefits cited by the new report :

· Reduce the risk of premature heath, particularly from cardiovascular disease
· Reduce the risk of developing diabetes & colon cancer
· Reduce the risk of developing high blood pressure or reduce already elevated blood pressure
· Promote psychological well-being & reduce depression & anxiety
· Control weight
· Build & maintain healthy muscles, bones & joints
· Improve the strength of older adults & their ability to move without falling
Happy sports to all of you