It’s the end of January… how is everyone doing with the goals you set out for yourself a month ago?  Hopefully you’ve established new routines, thoughts and patterns that have helped you on your journey to improved wellness.

One goal many of us had was to be zero-sugar for the entire month of January.  I personally know a few who’ve done just that:  Joanne G, Lori S – congrats!  Please leave a comment to this message and identify yourself if you’ve reached this goal so we can all congratulate you!

For those that haven’t been sugar free every single day, don’t beat yourself up.  If you’ve managed more days than not, good for you!  Nothing is lost, only knowledge gained… so stayed focused, confident and strong.

Here’s a few more reasons (in additon to those discussed recently) why cutting out refined sugar is so important

*  Refined sugar is void of all nutrients, therefore it causes the body to deplete its own stores of various vitamins, minerals and enzymes to process it.  When you consume sugar, your body must borrow vital nutrients from healthy cells to metabolize this incomplete food.  Calcium, sodium, potassium and magnesium are taken from various parts of the body to make use of the sugar.

 

Many times, so much calcium is used to neutralize the effects of sugar that the bones become osteoporotic due to the withdrawn calcium.  Like, teeth are affected.

*  Sugar causes artery damage, inflammation of the arteries and hence weaker arteries.  This is due to the biochemistry of what it does as it travels through the blood stream in large, especially poorly regulated amounts, if our pancreas is stressed and having a hard time with the correct production and use of insulin.  This makes one more susceptible to clogged arteries, hypertension, weak arteries, strokes and heart attacks.

*  A recent article in the British Medical Journal, entitled The Sweet Road to Gallstones, reported that refined sugar may be one of the major risk factors in gallstone disease. Gallstones are composed of fats and calcium.  Sugar can upset all of the minerals, and one of the minerals, calcium, can become toxic or nonfunctioning, depositing itself anywhere in the body, including the gallbladder.

*  Sugar causes our pancreas to overwork in its production of insulin, leading to insulin resistance and other problems, which manifest as the known diabetes type 2.  So even if our pancreas has not reached the dysfunction of rendering us diabetic, excessive sugar consumption is undoubtedly none-the-less creating a degree of undue stress on the pancreas.

* The BIG Issue for many:  Weight.  Glucose is our body’s number one fuel or energy source, and generally speaking all sugar beraks down into glucose.  For many people, there is a huge discrepancy between how much fuel is needed and how much we provide.  Whenever there is an excess in energy, whether from sugar calories, protein calories or fat calories, they all get converted to and stored in fat cells.  Hence, it is no surprise that high sugar diets lead to weight problems.