I have a friend in California who sends me articles about health issues occasionally.  About 5 years ago, she sent me one that I will never forget , which warned about the ill effects of eating processed sugar.  I particularly remember it because one of the key points that stuck in my mind was sugar makes you look older.  I investigated that because I don’t like looking any older than the 50 plus years that I am (I’ll be 54 in July), and I’m a little bit obsessive about face wrinkles.  What I found out was that processed sugar r causes a loss of tissue elasticity and function; the more sugar you eat, the more elasticity and function you lose, which is why skin is more likely to sag and wrinkle.  That information, just by itself was enough to make me give up sugar.   There are so many healthier alternatives to using processed sugar in recipes, and the natural sweetness of fruits and some vegetables offer lots of reasons not to eat any sugar at all.  So, what’s my problem then?  Why did I eat donuts at work the other day or Milk Duds at the movie?  To be honest, everyone else was having fresh, hot Krispy Kremes, and my husband was having Milk Duds.  So, I deserve what everyone else is having, don’t I?  No one brought fruit to work as an alternative to the donuts.  The movie theater doesn’t offer sugar free chocolate or fruit as an alternative purchase either.  So, I gave in to my desires, and I ate the sugar.  And for me, once I start eating it, I have a hard time stopping.  I crave it.  Let’s face it:  I’m a sugarholic!  And I’m also a Type 2 diabetic.  The two don’t mix very well.  So, it’s time to remind myself of all the reasons it’s unhealthy to eat processed sugar besides making me look older than I have to look.

Going back to my childhood, I remember the dentist warning that sugar causes tooth decay.  I found that out when I went to the dentist for the very first time when I was 6 years old, and my mouth was full of cavities.  Even now, with my adult set of chompers, most of my molars are more dental filling than actual natural tooth.  Every once in a while, I have to have the fillings replaced because what is left of my tooth will break away from the filling.  Still, I have managed, in spite of all the sugar over the years, to keep all my natural teeth, unnatural though they be now !  And for the last several years, I have had no cavities at all!  I see a definite relationship between the years I was eating a lot of sugar and the more recent years when I have periodically eaten none or at least eaten little. 

Another negative effect of being addicted to sugar as I am is that processed foods, which contain vast amounts of sugar, are expensive!  Buying cookies, candy, cakes, donuts, ice cream, and all those things laced with sugar make a big hit on the consumer’s pocketbook.  Yes, fresh fruit is also expensive, but an apple is much more filling and satisfying than a whole bag of cookies, and compared to a whole bag of cookies, a fresh apple costs much less.  I’m speaking only for myself here, but if I buy a bag of cookies, I want to eat the whole bag, and before the day is over, I will.  But, I’m a sugarholic.  And so are a lot of Americans!  I read somewhere that the average American used to consume about 20 pounds of sugar in a year back in the 1920’s.  That seems like an awful lot, but then consider what the average American consumes today:  we consume our weight in sugar (so the heavier we are, the more we consume) plus another 20 pounds of corn syrup!  All that sugary food is running our grocery bills up much higher than they have to be.

And what does eating all that sugar do to our bodies (besides make us lose skin elasticity and look older and more wrinkled than we need be)?  Sugar has no nutrient value, no vitamins, no minerals, no fiber, no proteins, no enzymes, just empty calories.  And when our bodies are exposed to a lot of this, they have to take these needed nutrients from our organs to be able to process the sugar.  I read about several studies showing that refined sugar consumption can lead to osteoporosis because our bodies need calcium to process the sugar, and so much calcium can be leached from our bones that we end up with the brittle, breakable, porous bones of osteoporosis. 

That’s only one more ill effect of too much sugar consumption on our bodies.  Another thing that goes wrong in our bodies while it tries to process this incomplete food is an overacidic condition called carbonic poisoning.  I don’t really know the scientific details, but basically our bodies are not able to cleanse our cells of waste products, causing cells to die more rapidly, and the waste products build up in our brains and nervous systems because we aren’t able to get rid of them.  That can’t be good!

Other scientific studies show that eating excess refined sugar can lead to arthritis, thick, sticky blood that can not sufficiently supply our capillaries, gallstones, diabetes, hypoglycemia, and even mental illness.  It’s very similar to a drug, one that is harmful to our bodies.  Sugar is processed from a plant, sugar cane, until nothing is left but the pure crystals of the substance, much like processed cocaine.  And sugar even acts in our bodies much like cocaine does.  So, no wonder I’m addicted to it!

In all my reading about sugar and its effects on the human body, not once did I read that it did anything good for us.  It tastes good.  But so does a juicy bite of apple or watermelon or peach.  And we get plenty of vitamins and minerals and enzymes that our bodies need to be healthy from those natural sweets.  So, to get healthier and to look younger and to save a lot of money, I’m on the wagon again.  No more sugar for me although it does hide in products that I might not otherwise suspect are full of sugar.  But I can recognize the ones that are full of sugar, the ones that blatantly try to seduce me.  Get thee behind me, Satanic donuts!  I want to be healthy, young, and richer!