Month: April 2008

Sugar and Stress, Part II:

offwhiteliving6 Comments

This is your body being healthy:

This is your body on sugar:

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I posted. Clearly a sign of being just too busy and not balanced…and what do ya know: my desire for sugar has been higher the past week than in a while.

Stress is an odd little monkey in my body . While the real solution to excessive stress is relaxation, deep breathing, fun, peace….yada yada yada……my body-mind seek things that keep the perpetual wheel of anxiety going: more activity, more stimulation…and more sugar.

Life is so clever. It never ceases to amaze me how I’m always being brought little lessons that remind me to pay attention and keep doing my personal growth work. Just as I decided to blog about sugar and stress, more of “that” kind of stuff pops up in my life. We teach what we need to know, don’t we?

This week really wasn’t too bad, however. I did dive in a bit and add sugar to my hot chocolate (a rarity, usually I use stevia) and I did have some frosting on Friday. Yes, I said frosting…not cake with frosting, just frosting. A birthday celebration at lunch yielded left-over cake with white frosting AND sprinkles. Hello!!! By Friday afternoon, running off of 5 hrs of sleep for several nights, I just gave in. Thank GOD there was only a small amount of cake left. I can’t say for sure what state of affairs my ability to say “no” would have been in had I been staring down 1/2 a cake and nobody in sight to see me take a monster piece.

Some of you readers might still wonder why I am even mentioning what may seem like “small” amounts of sugar. I’m an addict. A sugar addict. There are no small infractions, no small treats. Each tiny morsel stimulates in me a desire for more that sometimes feels larger than life. I will blow off social engagements, isolate from my husband, buy crappy junk food that I don’t even like…all to feed this unsaitable craving. That is, if I’m not mindful, grounded and have done the self-care to stop this from happening.

What is the physiology of this crazy addiction? Am I alone? No way – I see sugar/carb addiction everyday of my life. I see it in my clients who don’t understand why they are so able in many aspects of their lives, but have a complete weakness for some kind of refined food. I see it in our children, who would rather zone out with video games and suck down 4-6 sodas/day (the average # of sodas an American kid drinks, according to some), and who can’t concentrate at school. I see it at the grocery store when I watch people, who look tired and unwell, load the cart with frozen pizzas, boxed cereals, bread, crackers, and maybe 1-2 fruits or veggies. We are so close to it, we can’t even see it. It is both completely socially acceptable (c’mon…just have 1 dessert) and totally unacceptable (hatred of obesity) to be a carb junkie today. American consume about over 120 pounds of sugar. What to know more about that? Check out this article by Nutritionist Dr. Nancy Applegate.

What does sugar do:

Step 1: Seek out some refined carb food and put it in your mouth. You feel stoked, happy, and can’t wait to taste the sweetness (even breads register as sweet in the body)

Cookies…mmmmm……..

Step 2: you chew that food item and your body starts to prepare for digestion of sweet. This is thanks to amylase, a mouth enzyme that breaks down sugar. Now, the design is clever: send a signal to the hypothalamus (in the brain), which signals the pancreas/stomach early so it can be prepared with some insulin. After all, these whole grains/fruits our body has been eating for thousands of years take time to break down, so amylase helps get the ball rolling.

Problem: refined sugar needs no breaking down. It is absorbed quickly in the blood stream. It hits hard, fast, and all at once.

Step 3: lots of insulin is produces once the signal of “sweet” is sent from the mouth (really its the brain experiencing the sensation of sweet) and when the sugar hits the blood stream.

Problem: Too much sugar at all once! Complex carbs break down slowly. Its like putting one box at a time on the conveyor belt. Remember the “I LOVE LUCY” episode from the YouTube video above? She couldn’t keep up, so she stuffed all the excess chocolates in her mouth/pockets, etc. It became an overload. It was stressful. Your body is Lucy when you feed it to much sugar.

Step 4: This excess sugar has to go somewhere. The liver takes some of it and stores it as glycogen. But it can only store 3-400 calories (about 100g of sugar max) at once. Over time, excess sugar consumption will stress the liver and engorge it, as it tries to force more storage of sugar while also trying to deal with all the other stuff it does. When it maxes out, it sends the sugar back into the blood stream as fatty acids. This is partly why excess sugar consumption raises triglycerides, perhaps more than fat consumption.

At the same time, this sugar now stimulates “fight or flight” response. Your adrenals start working. you get a little “high”. But it never lasts long, now does it? You can’t function as well b/c all the blood is being distributed to your periperhy. Your body is prepared to fend for its life. But there is nothing to fend for. You are sitting at your desk entering data into the computer,or watching TV, or anything else non-life threatening. Over time, the fight or flight activation stresses your body and makes you produce excess cortisol.

Also at this time, the hormone insulin swoops down and scoops up all that extra blood sugar so your brain can stay alive. Yay! Another day to live. However, that sugar ain’t coming out for free. Insulin converts sugar to fat. Lucky us- even if your meal was low in calories, if it was high is SUGAR it may go right to our rears. It took me a long time to believe this, until it started happening to me.

Problem: too much cortisol suppresses the immune system, so you get sick more easily . It also contributes to fat storage around the abdomen, in response to potential life-threatening stressors. It does not know the difference between stress caused by food and lifestyle and real, physically threatening stress.

Step 5: You crash. Your blood sugar dips too low and you get lethargic. Your pancreas is stressed b/c its having to play this insulin game all the time and its over it! It stops working well or your cells stop being as responsive.

Problem: Excess insulin production leads to weight gain (insulin stores sugar as fat in the hips, buttocks, abs, and thighs). The system poops out after a while too, which contributes to Type II diabetes, often associated with high-carb lifestyles. You also feel like garbage.

Step 6: The body is a system of habits and patterns. It comes to rely on certain processes, good or bad. After your crash and your “fight or flight”, you’ve now “up-regulated” certain processes in the body. They want to keep on working, so they now stimulate a new desire for more sugar. And the cycle continues.

Problem: some people are HIGHLY sensitive to this little phenomenon. In fact, for some people, sugar binds with other neurotransmitters in the body and moves into the brain to create “euphoria”. This high is similar to heroin. I’ve talked to ex-drug addicts who have told me kicking sugar was harder than kicking drugs. Some people (myself included) experience withdrawal when they get off sugar. Symptoms include:

  • headaches
  • dizziness, nausea
  • overwhelming urge for sugar. You think you “need it”
  • energy highs/lows
  • rapid heart beat
  • insomnia
  • constipation/diarrhea as the digestive system attempts to rebalance itself
  • change in appetite
  • anger, anxiety, irritability
  • thirst
  • skin breakouts

So you think your body needs sugar to live?

“Although the body does require sugar (glucose), as this is the only fuel the brain can use, it is important to remember the physiology of digestion. The properly functioning human organism can produce all the glucose the brain needs through the digestion of whole, natural, unprocessed foods” Dr. John Yudkin of Queens College, London, states “all human nutritional needs can be met in full without having to take a single spoonful of white or brown or raw sugar.”

All this just for some lousy sugar. And the high doesn’t even last. I also hate the feelings of guilt, tiredness, boredom, lethargy and low self-esteem that I get from too much sugar. It just isn’t worth it, for me.

I’m so thankful that others folks are starting to talk more freely about their carb addiction. Last night I came across an awesome book at Borders:

Confessions from a Carb Queen

Check out her blog

Okay, I’ve been blogging for way too long (these posts sure do take some time). I gotta get movin!
Have a happy, refined sugar-free day, if that’s your thing 🙂

Sugar and stress, part I

offwhiteliving2 Comments

So I’ve decided to do a little piece on sugar and stress, since it is SUCH a big aspect of my life and I see a lot of the effects of s&s everyday with myself and others. One benefit of having this affliction AND being a nutritional counselor is that I get to experience the impact of food and mood or many levels.

I’m gonna do this in 3 parts because I have a lot to say about this topic, and I think its worthy of a few posts.

Here’s where I’m going to start: WHY do I emotionally (people) crave sugar when I am stressed?

When I was young , the only thing I ever wanted was sugar, sugar, sugar. I obsessed over Halloween candy. I was glued to mom’s side when she was baking, so that I could score some free licks off a spoon or spatula. I always voted for “The Sizzler” when we were picking restaurants, exclusively for the strawberries and whipped cream at the salad bar. I was a junkie.

How did this all begin? First off, did you know that sugar is the first taste we develop? Mamma’s milk is sweet. We are held when we are fed. We feel safe. It goes on and on. Sometimes new mom’s and dad’s are told to bring sugar water to the doctor’s office when their baby gets an immunization, to help calm the pain. Sugar numbs us out. It makes us high. Physically, we do not need sugar to survive. We need carbs, but not necessarily simple sugars. We might then speculate that some of us are not so equipped to handle the impact of sugar. More on that in post #2.

For as long as I can remember, sugar has been a best friend to me. It is always there, in so many shapes, colors, sizes and textures. Its cheap, its socially acceptable, and it makes me feel SOOOOOOOOOOOO good….or does it? I went years harmoniously co-existing on this continuous sugar buzz without a hitch. I bragged about the fact that I could eat a pound of red vines while grocery shopping and not gain any weight. I think I kind of liked being the candy girl. It had a certain charm. My ego devoured the attention I got over sugar. “How cool is this?” I would think to myself. Turns out, not so cool.

But, like all good addictions, it catches up. It turns out that my physical and mental body don’t like being fueled by fructose and glucose 24/7 and that as I get older, my tolerance for sweet is much less, yet my attachment to it is much greater.

The past couple days I’ve been wanting for sweet because I am afraid of change. What? How do sugar and change relate? Well, when you are trying to heal the body-mind from something that was like an old friend (sugar) in your life, and then new variables (like possibly moving to California, and making major life changes) pop up, it sends me running back to mamma’s arms: AKA hot chocolate, oatmeal raisin cookies, or anything warm and sweet.

This desire to soothe is so deeply imprinted in me, and others (I think?!), that it almost seems like the right thing to do . My brain is so good at taking the path of least resistance that I trick myself into believing that I actually need sugar to survive. When uncertainty triggers feeling of aloneness, I need security. It feels deeply carnal, like a survival instinct. My emotional body actually thinks that I will not survive without it.

In the past few years, I’ve done a lot of soul searching and book study about this crazy, wacky phenomenon of sugar-stress. Here’s what I know:

  • Sweet is the first taste we experience, and nearly all people find “sweet” palatable. Sweet includes breads, pastas, fruits and even meats, such as red meat or lamb.
  • The average American consumes 140 lb/ year of sugar in some form. That is 44tsp/day. That means we pretty much get it all the time, so it becomes a major physical and psychological habit.
  • Most kid’s can identify brands like “McDonalds”, “Starbucks”, or some sugar cereal characters before they can actually read. When our sub-conscious mind is wide open, we are bombarded with messages that these companies will provide us with fun, friendship, love and excitement if we just eat what they are peddling.
  • As a kid many of us develop the association of sweets with reward, soothing our pain, celebrating and drawing attention to ourselves (ever have mom bring in cupcakes on your b-day? Didn’t you just feel like the cool kid at school, even if just for that day?)
  • When white sugar was first developed, European conquerers used it to over-power the people they were invading. They claimed that it made wise, motivated men “stupid and lazy” (from the book Sugar Blues).
  • Sugar depresses the nervous system. If you’re a nervous nancy, like I am, you want to stop those neurotic thoughts. What a better way than some cookies and milk, or a piece of favorite cake, or some candy, or whatever…..

ARE YOU EMOTIONALLY ADDICTED TO SUGAR?

  • Do you find yourself going for breads, cookies, cakes, candy, Starbucks ‘stuff’, fruit, honey, granola bars, power bars, etc when you have had a long day, are over tired or bored?
  • Are your favorite foods in the dessert category?  Would you rather skip dinner and have dessert first?
  • Do you get edgy or cranky if you don’t have sweets/fruit/breads for a couple of days?
  • Do you fantasize about sweets, or did you used to do so?
  • What’s in your cupboard?  Lots of boxed, processed foods? Refined cereals?  energy/granola bars?  Dried fruit?  Do these items tend to get eaten first?
  • Does the thought of never having those favorite sweet treats again feel really sad or scary to you?
  • Is the concept “portion control” non-existent when it comes to certain, refined carb-based foods?
  • Are you turned off to bitter or sour foods, like dark green veggies, lemons, saurkraut, relish, etc?
  • Do you hide stashes of sweets in your car, room, desk or anywhere that nobody can see you eating them?

I’m certainly no expert on your life, but for me, I can answer “yes” to far more of those questions than I’d care to admit to.  However, when I do face my truth, I can release the guilt, shame and frustration and move forward.  There is life after refined sugar, and I’m learning how to make friends with it, one day at a time.

For those who are curious about unrefined sweeteners:  I use them in my life, but they are still sugar.  If I’m spooning agave syrup into my mouth, I’m still getting high on sugar, it just doesn’t take as much of a toll.   It’s really about why I am seeking out sweet stuff to fix my life.  It never works.  It never makes me feel better, but my brain has 31 years of conditioning to release.

If you are just starting out your sugar-free life, I have some insight and advice, based on what has worked for me:

  • Get SUPPORT!  Friends, special groups, spiritual groups, blogs like this, etc
  • Be gentle with yourself and realize it is a process
  • Begin to replace as much refined carbs with veggies, protein and water.  Protein is your friend, as are anti-oxidant rich veggies.  more on that tomorrow.
  • One day, one meal, one moment at a time.  Progress, not perfection.
  • If it’s serious, talk to your alternative health practitioner about getting food allergy or GI function tests done.  I learned  a TON about the physical reasons I crave sugar when I had tests done by Diagnostechs.   They rock!

PS: for the curious – yes, I did have some sugar today.  I made hot  chocolate w/ rice milk and cocoa.  I used sucanat instead of stevia.  Not the best  choice, but could have been worse.