Thursday, December 07, 2006

I just received a status report on my hit counter and see that I consistantly have 10 hits a day.
Thank you to all who are continually coming back to my humble little space on the web.
I wish it was more exciting.

That being said, I must share with you a book I'm reading. It's no secret I've done a lot of reading on sugar and it's ill effects on health. The more I educate myself on this white "drug" the more I become aware of WHY my body is falling apart. I'm not getting old!!! I'm slowly poisoning myself and my body doesn't know what to do with it.
The latest book I'm reading is called "Lick the Sugar Habit". I highly recommend this book to everyone, whether you believe you need to "lick the sugar habit" or not. It is profoundly informative on nutrition and allergies! I am amazed at what I am learning. She goes into detail about what an allergy is and how it affects your body. She quotes endless research studies and lists them in the back of the book if you doubt her. And my favorite so far is the section on what sugar does to your immune system. Here is a quote on some research done:
Two different research projects that evaluate the effets of sugar on the phagocytic index have been done at Loma Linda University. The phagoctes are those white blood cells of the immune system that eat up foreign invaders and debris; they are the Pac-men of the body. The more bacteria eaten by each phagocyte, the stronger the immune system becomes and the less chance the body has of becoming diseased. The phagocytic index indicates the average number of invaders engulfed by a phagocyte.
One of the Loma Linda studies, conducted in 1973, examined the effects of sugar(sucrose), glucose, fructose, honey, orange juice, and starch on the phagocytic index. Except for starch, all the substances were simple sugars. The starch was the only substance to cause a rise in the phagocytic index--the phaocytes actually ate up more bacteria after starch was ingested. The index was highest approximately thirty minutes after the volunteers ate starch. The sugars, on the other hand, caused the phagocytic index to decrease greatly. The index was lowest 2 hours after ingestion. In other words, the sugar had a negative effect on the amount of bacteria removed by the immune system.

The average American eats 10 pounds of sugar each month! That's 30-33 teaspoonfuls everyday! No wonder we are so laden with disease and so many new degenerative diseases on the rise!!!!

James would say, "Well, if sugar is so bad for you why doesn't the medical world tell us that? Why isn't it made illegal?" The authors answer to this is basically job security. If we aren't sick than the pharmaceutical companies are out of business. If we all go on a whole foods health kick, which is what we need to be healthy, then what would happen to companies like Kellogg, General Mills, Kraft!, Betty Crocker, Nabisco, not to mention the huge soda pop companies. Our entire economic system would drop out of the bottom of the bucket.

Sorry so long.

This is a book I'm definitely going to buy.

4 comments:

Mimi said...

Very interesting.

I definitely have a sweet tooth.

Anonymous said...

very interesting

fdj said...

Well now I would not need to see sugar made illegal to believe that sugar can have ill effects. However the more clear evidence of tobacco related diseases has in fact resulted in a government and private campaign that has taken a HUGE bite out of many economies that depended heavily on tobacco, thus I do not believe that there is a conspiracy to hide the ill effects of sugar from the public.

Honestly, if warning labels appeared on "Chocolate-covered sugar bombs cereal" do you think your average American would really refrain from eating it? I doubt it.

That being said, I would be interested in reading more of the cited research because one thing that was left out of the example was whether or not the decreased activity of the Phagocytes could be shown to actually resulted in a greater incidence of disease. Logic would tend to make us assume that it would, but the human immune system is extremely complex.

I will do a pubmed search to see if there are any more recent studies related to this sort of stuff.

layne (herman) said...

Susan I am such a sugar addict... I remember when Juliana and I were attempting to not eat sugars, even ones that occur naturally in food or convert (is that the right word?) into sugars... I was so grumpy --it felt worse than Clean Week. I had to eat a Snickers bar to feel normal.

I have such a sugar-jones.