Sugary confections are now considered an essential and innocent aspect of holiday celebrations. I’m sure with Valentine’s Day this week, lots of you will be consuming some sort of refined sugary substance.

Sugar – there seems to be much confusion around this sweetener. Much of the confusion is around all the various types of sugar on the market today.

Let’s start with refined white sugar that is so prevalent in our food. In the processing of the sugar beets for our consumption, lime or carbon dioxide is added. Then bone-black (animal charcoal) is used as a filter to “purify” the mixture. The sugar is thoroughly heated twice and then it is brought to a boil. Bleach is next. A strong bleaching agent such as blue water is used to make it the white substance we are familiar with. Through this process, it becomes devitalized, de-mineralized and robbed of any life-giving qualities it once possessed.  It is empty calories with no nutritional value.

Refined sugar throws body chemistry into biochemical chaos lasting for six to eight hours after consumption. During this period, hormone, fat, carbohydrate and protein metabolism are greatly disrupted.

Using refined sugar promotes nutrient deficiencies. It must steal essential vitamins and minerals (chromium, magnesium, zinc and vitamins B and C) from our body in order to be metabolized. Sugar and vitamin C use the same transport mechanism. Excessive refined sugar intake overloads this transport system and causes vitamin C deficiencies. Sugar inhibits the release of omega 6 essential fatty acids from storage in fat tissues, thereby contributing to an essential fatty acid deficiency.

While refined sugar is being absorbed into the body, you may feel a quick pick-up as the adrenals are gathering every resource to deal with the sugar. The adrenals are concerned with keeping blood sugar levels up in the body. The pancreas is concerned with keeping the blood sugar levels down. This causes stress in the body. The glucose levels drop and you feel listless and tired or jumpy. Wanting another lift, most people eat more sugar. The adrenals end up worn out and eventually become damaged.  Adrenal exhaustion is now a common problem in the chronically ill.

Here’s the challenge: The human body was simply not designed to handle refined sugars. They are not whole food. They bring about a deadly combination of malnutrition and toxicity. Refined sugar is new to the human diet and people are eating an enormous amount of it — almost half a pound per day! Feeding refined sugar to a human body is similar to burning high-octane aircraft fuel in an automobile engine. Impressive amounts of energy, but after a while, you damage the engine.

Sugar was locked away in apothecary shops as a dangerous drug in the Middle Ages. It is a substance that breaks down the cells in the body, interferes with the chemistry of digestion, dulls the brain, clogs the system and hinders the working of the body. In my book, The Immune System Handbook, page 87, I talk about sugar as the single most underrated cause of immune impairment.

The evidence that refined sugar damages health is overwhelming. It has been associated with obesity, gout, atherosclerosis, heart attacks, increased triglyceride levels in the blood, high cholesterol levels and increase in blood pressure, liver enlargement, kidney disease, arthritis, stomach ulcers, mood swings or fluctuating energy levels and mental disorders, diabetes, hypoglycemia, tooth decay, bone loss, osteoporosis, cancer, Alzheimer’s and other diseases. In fact, the rise of chronic disease in modern societies has paralleled the rise in sugar consumption. Major health problems like hormonal imbalances and exhausted glands i.e. pancreases, adrenals, and thyroids are associated with the intake of sugar.

Dr. Abram Hoffer, a Canadian Doctor who is a two time Nobel laureate says, “Sugar causes addiction far stronger than what we see with heroin. It is the basic addictive substance from which all other addictions flow, including alcoholism.” Sugar has been found to be as powerful an addiction as alcohol, tobacco or drugs.

The bottom line; deficiency and toxicity are the two causes of disease and sugar is a leading contributor to both. This is why sugar is a major cause of our modern epidemic of chronic, degenerative diseases.

Let’s take this one step further and think about the energy of refined sugar.

If it is empty calories with no nutritional value, then the vibrational frequency will not be very high.

The vibration we are looking for is the one that keeps our energy high. So the more alive and untreated the food is, the more it will nourish us on all levels. In the next blog I will cover which complex sugars are more nutritious with a higher vibration and help cut through the confusion around all types of sugar on the market these days.

You can refer back to this Ideal Basic Diet chart from an earlier post for more ideas on good choices.

Health is a choice. If you want to vastly improve health, choosing whole food over adulterated food will do you the world of good.

To your good health!

Charlene