Although sugar has been with us for barely a thousand years, from which man has learned to process a variety of grass called sugar cane to add taste to his food, records show that sugar has been less than three hundred years since he made it an inseparable ingredient to his diet. From the simple act of extracting juice from that sweet-tasting grass we call “tubo,” sugar production has become a multibillion dollar industry that almost all the food we eat has sugar or is laced with sugar.
Unfortunately, alongside with the increase in demand for sugar is the steady growth of medicines to fight back the debilitating effect of a disease attributed to sugar and alternative food that allegedly will help reduce our intake of sugar. This, today, represents a multi-billion dollar industry. This indicates that sugar has been attributed to our erratic blood pressure and why all of a sudden our organs fail to function. As they say, there is nothing to worry about because we now have the medicines to fight back diabetes without telling us that sugar is the real culprit.
To detract us, people behind this multi-billion dollar industry, including their army of learned endorsers, they point to other factors like salt as the one causing to rot our kidneys. They blame our native food and delicacies like bagoong and daing as the culprit without admitting that men, since the dawn of civilization, have been taking salt to supplement and add taste to their food or to preserve them. Ancient armies like the Roman legions and the Mongols travel distant places only with a pack of salt to keep them moving. Even big herbivore animals have been observed to regularly slurp chunks of rock salt to keep them from dehydrating.
Today, diabetes is the number one killer in the country, if not in the world. It is the nastiest form of disease. It will not only allow the person to suffer like losing his eyesight, cause him to have high blood pressure to cause his heart to palpitate, but eventually cause his kidneys, heart, pancreas and liver to malfunction.
Before the person dies, the disease makes sure that he and his family are financially ruined. This one could see because the array of medicines lined up for him, including the daily injection of insulin but either way he will die.
On the average, the cost of maintenance of a diabetic patient, not to include his on-and-off confinement, far exceeds the pension he receives. This I say because on the average, retired persons are the ones afflicted with an acute stage of diabetes. Given the age bracket of people diagnosed to be diabetic, some are beginning to think that the disease was intentionally done by food manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies.
If their daily dosage could no longer normalize their blood sugar, doctors readily suggest they inject insulin until the body finally gives up, and the dying will have to cross the Rubicon of undergoing kidney transplant which is expensive and contingent if there is an available donor. We also overlooked that cancer cells thrives most when the body has very high sugar content. This explains why patients diagnosed with cancer are often required to avoid sugar or any fruit with high sugar content.
In one article, the writer gives valid reasons why sugar is bad. 1. Added sugars (like sucrose and high fructose corn syrup) contain no essential nutrients. There are no proteins, essential fats, vitamins or minerals, just pure energy. When people eat up to 10-20 percent of calories as sugar (or more), this can contribute to nutrient deficiencies.
2. Sugar is high in fructose, which can overload the liver. Before sugar enters the bloodstream, it is broken down into two simple sugars… glucose and fructose. Glucose is found in every living cell. If we cannot get glucose from our diet, our bodies produce it. Fructose is different. The thing with fructose is that it can only be metabolized by the liver. The fructose will be turned into glycogen and stored in the liver. However, if the liver is full of glycogen, eating a lot of fructose overloads the liver, forcing it to turn the fructose into fat leading to fatty liver and all sorts of serious problems.
3. Sugar can cause insulin resistance, a stepping stone towards metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Insulin is a very important hormone in the body. It allows glucose (blood sugar) to enter cells from the bloodstream tells the cells to start burning glucose instead of fat. Having too much glucose in the blood is very harmful and one of the reasons for complications like blindness. The cells that become “resistant” leads to many diseases, including metabolic syndrome, obesity, cardiovascular disease and especially type II diabetes.
4. The most common cause of kidney disease is diabetes. The bodies of people with diabetes do not use the hormone insulin properly or does not make insulin at all, so insulin injections or other diabetes medications are required.
5. Sugar could produce cancer. Many scientists believe that having constantly elevated insulin levels can contribute to cancer. Multiple studies show that people who eat a lot of sugar are at a much higher risk of getting cancer.
6. The problem with sugar and many junk food is that massive dopamine is highly addictive. For this reason, people who have a susceptibility to addiction can become strongly addicted to sugar and other junk foods.
7. Sugar is a leading contributor to obesity in both children and adults. Many studies have examined the link between sugar consumption and obesity and found a strong statistical association.
8. For many decades, people have blamed saturated fat for heart disease. However, new studies show that saturated fat is harmless. The evidence is mounting that sugar, not fat, as the one leading to heart disease via the harmful effects of fructose on metabolism.
To be sure, sugar is addictive just like any of those addictive medicines. All those banned medicines used by athletes are sugar-based medicines. Thus, if you are fat, it is because you have too much sugar in your body, and once people realize you are thinning fast like a balloon that has just been pricked, that is symptomatic that one is diabetic. So, if you want to remain sexy, beautiful, slim and alert, reduce your sugar intake and you will see the difference.
rpkapunan@gmail.com