More on Sugar

Hey y’all,

I’ve been talking a lot about sugar recently, and I’m going to do it again just because sugar is so inflammatory.

So, I’ve mentioned that sugar triggers insulin levels, and when insulin is present your body can’t heal itself. That’s true. But why does sugar cause problems? I’ve only talked about how sugar prevents the body from fixing problems.

Well, taking in too much sugar can overwork your insulin system and cause it to not work right; everything needs a rest after a while. When your insulin system breaks down, this causes that excess sugar to hang around in the blood stream for awhile until the insulin system can take care of it (Bloom Holistic).

Sugar particles have rough edges (think of exfoliating sugar scrubs). When that sugar is floating around in the blood stream, it scratches up blood vessels and organs. Those tiny scratches are the inflammation.

Inflammation in itself is a natural process. If you get a scratch or a scrape on the skin, the area gets hot, swells, and gets itchy. This is the inflammatory response. This is helpful for the short term, but it’s not good if your body is in a constant state of repair. At some point, something will go wrong. It’s just like when we go to work. Things usually run smoothly, but if there is construction being done on the building, things get cramped. If the construction only lasts a week or two, things are almost always ok, but if the construction lasts long enough, eventually someone gets burnt out (usually it’s new guy) and messes something up royally.

Inflammation is also a major cause of high cholesterol. Cholesterol is like the body’s plaster (Bloom Holistic). When there’s inflammation (or tiny scratches) in the body, cholesterol comes and patches it up so you don’t end up bleeding internally. High cholesterol becomes a problem whenever it goes on for too long. When people have heart disease, they have cholesterol plaque/”plaster” in their blood vessels. Bad things happen when a piece of this plaque breaks off (that’s like the new guy messing things up).

On top of all the inflammation, sugar is addictive!

On the outside, sugar seems pretty harmless, but sugar is actually more addictive than cocaine (Healthline). Plus, we put it in absolutely everything! So it’s actually pretty difficult to not get chronic inflammation (and all the lifestyle diseases that go with it).

Sugar is a socially acceptable drug, and it’s killing us.