Burst my Dubble Bubble®
Given what I know now, I understand the chemical addiction to sugar. It’s cocaine for some, or should I say, most. From NYdailynews.com, here’s a bit of an article written about just that:
Some people experience powerful cravings for sweets – internal messages telling them to eat sugar even though they know it’s bad for them – says Dr. Louis Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “These people get strong urges to consume sweets, and these cravings border on addiction,” he says. “When they eat sugar, just like when someone ingests cocaine, some people get that feeling of well-being, a rush that makes them feel good for a period of time. When the sweets are taken away, the people just don’t feel right.”
In the animals studied at Princeton, bingeing released a surge of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. “It’s been known that drugs of abuse release or increase the levels of dopamine in that part of the brain,” Hoebel said.
To really drill in the negative effects about sugar (do you hear the sound of the drill at the dentist?), here’s the top five of 76 ways sugar can ruin your health:
• Sugar can suppress your immune system and impair your defenses against infectious disease.
• Sugar upsets the mineral relationships in your body: causes chromium and copper deficiencies and interferes with absorption of calcium and magnesium.
• Sugar can cause can cause a rapid rise of adrenaline, hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children.
• Sugar can produce a significant rise in total cholesterol, triglycerides and bad cholesterol and a decrease in good cholesterol.
• Sugar causes a loss of tissue elasticity and function.
Check out the rest of the list, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll look at that bite of cake with a different eye. It all adds up later; not just the calories, but the quality of the food. Organic, unrefined sugar…or not; it all has similar effects on your body.
Face it, some of us have the sugar genes, but it can be a double whammy if we have a long history of sugar addiction passed down and if we culturally and socially grew up with it. And who didn’t!! If I wasn’t spending all my allowance on the penny candy store or going to Rexall for licorice rolls, I’d go to my gramma’s house and raid the cookie jar. It was years of addiction and wondering why I was so crabby, or the “b” word. I’m sure my mom would love to know now, and save her years of misery from a daughter who was sugar junkie. I eventually emerged as a different person with a real awareness of how food affects ME.
I totally understand that it tastes good and we all need a quick fix once in a while. I need to have my “vice”, so tomorrow I’ll hit on…
Bliss in a bite…or two, but no more!
(Dubble Bubble photo credit)
(Sugar photo credit)
