By Penelope A. Domogo, MD
Refined sugar (white or brown) has become so affordable and available that many people cannot live a day without it. Try serving brewed coffee and the next second, your guest will look for sugar. It is like an automatic behavior. The food industry knows this craving for sweet so it has produced these 3-in-1, 5-in-1, 8-in-1, etc. coffee and tea mixes. This makes sugar intake so easy….. you don’t have time to decide whether to add sugar and cream (read “milk”) because it is already there. This, in turn, makes addiction to sugar so prevalent. Test yourself if you can live a day without sugar.
But before you reach for that sugar container, remember the following research findings.
As early as 1973, a study entitled “Role of Sugars in Human Neutrophilic Phagocytosis” (A. Sanchez, et al, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, November ) showed that consuming simple sugar lowered white blood cell activity within ten minutes after intake. This effect lasted up to FIVE hours after. When we say “lowered white blood cell activity” this means your immune system is adversely affected. Your body’s ability to fight infection and other diseases is paralyzed. It is like making the police or army drunk while on duty. The researcher in this study used processed honey, table sugar and processed orange juice. Processed honey and orange juice means these have been pasteurized or heated. Heat destroys live enzymes and diminishes the vitamin and mineral content of food.
Take note that this paralyzing effect on the immune system lasts for 5 hours. Let us see how this translates to our everyday life. How do many adults eat these days? Kopiko and pandesal at breakfast, kopiko at 10 a.m. (that’s 3 hours later), coke at lunchtime (2 hours later), kopiko and sweet bread or cookies at 3 p.m. (3 hours later) and kopiko at supper (4 hours later). The detrimental effect of your first sugar intake at breakfast hasn’t waned yet and you take in another dose of sugar at snack time and so on till midnight. How about our children? What are we feeding them? All throughout the day into the night, your body’s immune system is compromised. It is no wonder that we see a lot more infections in our clinics and hospitals- pneumonia, sore throat, UTI, etc. We also see a lot of other diseases. We now have knowledge that our immune system is our overall defense against many diseases – from infection to cancer.
In 1991, a study by T.W. Jones et al. showed that sugar intake increases adrenalin, a stimulating hormone produced by the adrenal glands. (“Independent Effects of Youth and Poor Diabetes Control on Responses to Hypoglycemia in Children”, Diabetes, Volume 40, pages 358-363). They also found out that this increase in adrenalin was more pronounced in children than adults and this might account for the hyperactivity in children who consume refined sugars.
How about the effect of sugar on our pancreas? We have discussed this in an earlier issue regarding diabetes. For sugar to be metabolized in our body and cleared from the blood, it needs insulin which is produced by the pancreas. Think again of the sample diet mentioned above. All throughout the day, you feed your body with sugar. Meaning your pancreas must constantly produce insulin. Well, apparently, our pancreas is not designed to work that much, so eventually it will wear out. If there’s no more insulin to metabolize the sugar you took in, then that sugar will stay in your blood and you develop diabetes.
I am into the second page of this column and I would think those adverse effects of sugar mentioned are enough reasons already to cut down or cut off our intake of refined and processed sugar. But if still you are not convinced, here are more dangers of sugar intake.
Sugar leaches calcium from the body. A study in 1988, “Acute Effects of Dietary Caffeine and Sucrose on Urinary Mineral Excretion in Healthy Adolescents” by L.K. Massey (Nutr. Res 8(9)) showed that “calcium loss through the urine doubles when a soft drink containing sugar is consumed. Cola drinks containing both caffeine and sugar caused the greatest calcium bone loss in these subjects.” Sugar needs calcium to be metabolized and regular consumption of refined sugar would need a lot of calcium. Your body will leach this mineral from the bones starting from your teeth. So when your teeth or your child’s teeth start to decay, this means you are taking in excess sugar.
White sugar is made white using chlorine bleach which may be good for your clothes but may not for your insides. Chlorine, when it combines with organic compounds, converts to dioxin, a known carcinogenic.
Then there is “high fructose corn syrup” which is found in many bottled or canned drinks. Drinking a can of soda does the same thing to your liver that drinking a can of beer does and yet we allow our young kids to drink these daily. Excess sugar causes fatty liver. This makes sugar a liver toxin.
What about artificial sweeteners like aspartame? Well, they are unnatural also and they are neurological toxins.
It is now your choice and mine – tooth decay, infection, diabetes, liver toxin or neurotoxin or giving up soft drinks and other sugary food and drink.
When I choose not to serve sugar in my house, it is not because I am nagtitipid but because I care for you.**
