Is Sugar Toxic?

Yesterday, ‘The New York Times’ Magazine’ devoted a large section to answering the question of whether or not sugar is actually a toxin.

Pretty scary if you think about the implications of the word toxin.

Anyone who has dieted knows sugar is the enemy of losing weight unless we eat it naturally in fruits and vegetables which encase it in fiber.

Sugar in soft drinks, cakes and candies seems to be unhealthier than we can imagine without the proper scientific explanation. It puts a strain on our livers…which help digest it.

Sugar forces our bodies to produce more insulin to deal with it. All of this makes our other body systems respond as well.

The results of scientific research seem to indicate that sugar unless it is naturally acquired in vegetables and fruits, can lead to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and CANCER.

Cancerous tumors thrive on sugar…

As it was explained to me by Craig Thompson, who has done much of this research and is now president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the cells of many human cancers come to depend on insulin to provide the fuel (blood sugar) and materials they need to grow and multiply. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor (and related growth factors) also provide the signal, in effect, to do it. The more insulin, the better they do. Some cancers develop mutations that serve the purpose of increasing the influence of insulin on the cell; others take advantage of the elevated insulin levels that are common to metabolic syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Some do both. Thompson believes that many pre-cancerous cells would never acquire the mutations that turn them into malignant tumors if they weren’t being driven by insulin to take up more and more blood sugar and metabolize it.

via Is Sugar Toxic? – NYTimes.com.

I would encourage you to make time to read this quite lengthly article about sugar and its effects on the body. If it makes you cut out some of the sugary treats that you eat and serve to your children and family it will be well worth it.

Dr. Lustig the ‘sugar’ researcher has a mantra that I want to share with you.

Lustig’s Mantra:  When G-d made the poison, it was packaged with the antidote–like fruit–which is fiber and juice.

Wherever there’s fructose in nature, there’s way more fiber.  The only exception is honey,  and that’s guarded by bees!  G-d made it hard to get “fructose sugar” without eating the fiber.

The problem is:  Man figured out a way to extract it!  Not only has man made it easy to get–but the food industry has made it impossible to avoid!

via Happy Healthy Long Life: Dr. Robert H. Lustig and the Bitter Truth About Sugar – It’s the Driving Force Behind Obesity, Type-2 Diabetes, Hypertension, Small Dense LDL Cholesterol and the List Goes On. What’s the Cure?.

About lorettelavine

Wife, mother, grandmother, registered nurse, licensed clinical social worker, blogger. Parent and child advocate, involved in life.
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1 Response to Is Sugar Toxic?

  1. Pingback: Sugar… « ParentingInTheLoop's Blog

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