It has been a while since I last posted something here. I have been busy fighting in the front lines of the war against bacteria that consume sugar and then use it to put mushy brown holes in your teeth. I have done more than 20,000 fillings in my fight to control tooth decay in the 8 years I have been a dentist. Sugar is everywhere. Avoiding it will not only help you have less tooth decay. It may save your life so you can spend more time with your grand kids...
There have been some very compelling documentaries produced about the evils of Sugar when it comes to our health. Sugar is implicated in some of the nations leading killers such as heart disease and cancer because of sugars affect on obesity and diabetes.
When I was growing up in the 80's and 90's the common wisdom was that fat in the diet is what causes you to become fat. The implication was that if you removed fat from your diet you would be much healthier. We consumed large amounts of fruit juice such as orange and apple juice under the guise that it would be healthy because it contains vitamins and it comes from a fruit. We consumed fat free cookies, low fat chips, low fat everything.
I was a little overweight until my parents encouraged me to run on the cross country and track teams in high school. The idea was that if you exercised enough and ate a low fat diet you would be healthy. At my age of 14-18 this intense exercise regimen worked because I was highly motivated as part of a team to perform at a high level and I could basically eat whatever I wanted because I was a distance runner. At age 16-18 I was very lean and fit and was not overweight at all.
Later in my life (while in dental school as posted on this blog) I ran a marathon and even ran over 700 miles in training for it. I was in good shape, healthy, and not too much overweight but I was not as lean as I was in high school despite all of the exercise. My body as a 28 year old was not the same as it was at age 17. I literally did not loose any weight while training for the marathon despite running 700 miles. I had to eat a high calorie diet in order to function on long distance running. I probably continued too many of my old habits of consuming too much sugar. I developed habits (or addictions?) of juice and carbohydrate consumption at an early age that made any weight loss extremely difficult despite intense marathon training and distance running.
Research has found that diet makes a much bigger difference in weight loss than exercise does. Exercise is amazing for keeping your brain healthy and maintaining your weight but it is very difficult to loose weight through exercise alone. Exercise is one of the best anti-depressants and anti anxiety treatments available. I believe in exercise but in order to stay healthy diet is also critical.
Enter Sugar. Sugar has been found to be powerfully addictive. It causes huge rapid spikes in your blood sugar and your body releases insulin to help control these spikes in your blood sugar. Sugar consumption is not safe. It is a toxin to your liver in high doses. Sugar causes tooth decay. Sugar and sugar substitutes stimulate your apatite. For more information about sugar I recommend watching the following documentaries:
That Sugar Film: A funny and well made documentary advocating a low sugar diet and showing that even consuming hidden sugars in supposedly healthy items like juice and yogurt can have a big negative health affect: This one can be streamed on amazon.com for free if you have a prime membership. http://thatsugarfilm.com/
Fed Up: A well made documentary similar to That Sugar Film showing kids who are struggling with obesity and how high carbohydrates and sugars in foods are the main culprits of the diabetes epidemic in our kids. This one is a general overview of what sugar does to your body. This documentary can be streamed on Netflix. http://fedupmovie.com/#/page/home
Sugar Coated: An interesting documentary about the politics involved in the sugar industry. A dentist researches into the way the sugar industry funded research to promote sugar as healthy and support the false idea that a high fat diet is the cause of heart disease. They basically say that the sugar industry is similar to the tobacco industry in hiding the research about how bad sugar is just like tobacco companies tried to hide how bad smoking was for lung cancer. This movie was streamable on Netflix too. http://sugarcoateddoc.com/
I showed these documentaries to my oldest son a few years ago and he became the sugar enforcer in my home. He would tell me: "Dad don't eat that cookie! It's going to kill you!!!" To which I would respond: "It's too late for me son! Save yourself!!!"
And then there is this amazing article found on the Harvard Medical School's Harvard Health Blog...
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-sugar-increases-the-risk-of-dying-with-heart-disease-201402067021
Where they quote an important study that shows a direct link between sugar consumption and dying from heart disease. Heart disease is a disease of sugar consumption.
Julie Corliss disects the study as follows:
This was also excellent by Julie:
One more amazing quote from my friend Julie:
Here is the link to the study she cites in her article:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1819573
IF YOU WANT TO LIVE LONGER DON'T EAT ADDED SUGAR. I put this in all caps because I'm yelling at myself: I am still a little addicted to sugar. I have cut out fruit juice, soda, and most any sugary beverage, I have cut back on sugary cereals, I try not to buy foods with a lot of sugars. I think the grocery store is the best place to fight this battle. Go (on a full stomach) to the grocery store and don't buy foods with a lot of added sugar. (This is harder than you think. Sugar is in a lot of foods). I am bad at turning down a "free" desert of a sugar cookie or treat that someone brings to church, our home (we have nice neighbors), and even our dental office where other offices bring us treats. The struggle is real. I sometimes watch the documentaries listed above as motivation to fight the good fight. At least knowing how toxic sugar is to my body is helpful in reducing my consumption.
There have been some very compelling documentaries produced about the evils of Sugar when it comes to our health. Sugar is implicated in some of the nations leading killers such as heart disease and cancer because of sugars affect on obesity and diabetes.
When I was growing up in the 80's and 90's the common wisdom was that fat in the diet is what causes you to become fat. The implication was that if you removed fat from your diet you would be much healthier. We consumed large amounts of fruit juice such as orange and apple juice under the guise that it would be healthy because it contains vitamins and it comes from a fruit. We consumed fat free cookies, low fat chips, low fat everything.
I was a little overweight until my parents encouraged me to run on the cross country and track teams in high school. The idea was that if you exercised enough and ate a low fat diet you would be healthy. At my age of 14-18 this intense exercise regimen worked because I was highly motivated as part of a team to perform at a high level and I could basically eat whatever I wanted because I was a distance runner. At age 16-18 I was very lean and fit and was not overweight at all.
Later in my life (while in dental school as posted on this blog) I ran a marathon and even ran over 700 miles in training for it. I was in good shape, healthy, and not too much overweight but I was not as lean as I was in high school despite all of the exercise. My body as a 28 year old was not the same as it was at age 17. I literally did not loose any weight while training for the marathon despite running 700 miles. I had to eat a high calorie diet in order to function on long distance running. I probably continued too many of my old habits of consuming too much sugar. I developed habits (or addictions?) of juice and carbohydrate consumption at an early age that made any weight loss extremely difficult despite intense marathon training and distance running.
Research has found that diet makes a much bigger difference in weight loss than exercise does. Exercise is amazing for keeping your brain healthy and maintaining your weight but it is very difficult to loose weight through exercise alone. Exercise is one of the best anti-depressants and anti anxiety treatments available. I believe in exercise but in order to stay healthy diet is also critical.
Enter Sugar. Sugar has been found to be powerfully addictive. It causes huge rapid spikes in your blood sugar and your body releases insulin to help control these spikes in your blood sugar. Sugar consumption is not safe. It is a toxin to your liver in high doses. Sugar causes tooth decay. Sugar and sugar substitutes stimulate your apatite. For more information about sugar I recommend watching the following documentaries:
That Sugar Film: A funny and well made documentary advocating a low sugar diet and showing that even consuming hidden sugars in supposedly healthy items like juice and yogurt can have a big negative health affect: This one can be streamed on amazon.com for free if you have a prime membership. http://thatsugarfilm.com/
Fed Up: A well made documentary similar to That Sugar Film showing kids who are struggling with obesity and how high carbohydrates and sugars in foods are the main culprits of the diabetes epidemic in our kids. This one is a general overview of what sugar does to your body. This documentary can be streamed on Netflix. http://fedupmovie.com/#/page/home
Sugar Coated: An interesting documentary about the politics involved in the sugar industry. A dentist researches into the way the sugar industry funded research to promote sugar as healthy and support the false idea that a high fat diet is the cause of heart disease. They basically say that the sugar industry is similar to the tobacco industry in hiding the research about how bad sugar is just like tobacco companies tried to hide how bad smoking was for lung cancer. This movie was streamable on Netflix too. http://sugarcoateddoc.com/
I showed these documentaries to my oldest son a few years ago and he became the sugar enforcer in my home. He would tell me: "Dad don't eat that cookie! It's going to kill you!!!" To which I would respond: "It's too late for me son! Save yourself!!!"
And then there is this amazing article found on the Harvard Medical School's Harvard Health Blog...
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-sugar-increases-the-risk-of-dying-with-heart-disease-201402067021
Where they quote an important study that shows a direct link between sugar consumption and dying from heart disease. Heart disease is a disease of sugar consumption.
Julie Corliss disects the study as follows:
Over the course of the 15-year study on added sugar and heart disease, participants who took in 25% or more of their daily calories as sugar were more than twice as likely to die from heart disease as those whose diets included less than 10% added sugar. Overall, the odds of dying from heart disease rose in tandem with the percentage of sugar in the diet—and that was true regardless of a person’s age, sex, physical activity level, and body-mass index (a measure of weight).Did you read that! A direct link with sugar consumption and dying from heart disease. Correlation is not causation but it is very compelling evidence. There is a strong correlation and this is not the only study showing this link.
This was also excellent by Julie:
Sugar-sweetened beverages such as sodas, energy drinks, and sports drinks are by far the biggest sources of added sugar in the average American’s diet. They account for more than one-third of the added sugar we consume as a nation. Other important sources include cookies, cakes, pastries, and similar treats; fruit drinks; ice cream, frozen yogurt and the like; candy; and ready-to-eat cereals.There you go. Avoid that stuff and you avoid the majority of sugar in our diets. You will probably loose weight and live longer too. AND you will have less tooth decay as a nice side benefit.
One more amazing quote from my friend Julie:
Could it be possible that sugar isn’t the true bad guy boosting heart disease risk, but that it’s the lack of heart-healthy foods like fruits and veggies? Apparently not. In this study, the researchers measured the participants’ Healthy Eating Index. This shows how well their diets match up to federal dietary guidelines. “Regardless of their Healthy Eating Index scores, people who ate more sugar still had higher cardiovascular mortality,” says Dr. Teresa Fung, adjunct professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.Thank you Julie! So the federal dietary guidelines are garbage for preventing heart disease. Reduce your sugar and LIVE!
Here is the link to the study she cites in her article:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1819573
IF YOU WANT TO LIVE LONGER DON'T EAT ADDED SUGAR. I put this in all caps because I'm yelling at myself: I am still a little addicted to sugar. I have cut out fruit juice, soda, and most any sugary beverage, I have cut back on sugary cereals, I try not to buy foods with a lot of sugars. I think the grocery store is the best place to fight this battle. Go (on a full stomach) to the grocery store and don't buy foods with a lot of added sugar. (This is harder than you think. Sugar is in a lot of foods). I am bad at turning down a "free" desert of a sugar cookie or treat that someone brings to church, our home (we have nice neighbors), and even our dental office where other offices bring us treats. The struggle is real. I sometimes watch the documentaries listed above as motivation to fight the good fight. At least knowing how toxic sugar is to my body is helpful in reducing my consumption.
