Over the weekend I had the privilege of continuing my Institute of Integrative Nutrition health coach training with many of the doctors who have greatly influenced my path to wellness. It is a holistic and empirically-supported path that continues to nourish and heal me, and it is the path that I now bring to the rescue of others. Yes, rescue. When your health suffers, everything suffers. That’s just the way it is. Fortunately, health coaching is truly a gift that keeps on giving.
I had the honor of studying with Deepak Chopra; Christiane Northrup, M.D., a pioneer in the field of whole-woman healthcare (a heroine in my book); Dr. Walter Willett, M.D., Dr.P.H., the Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition and the chair of the department of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health; Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., couples therapist and author of many bestselling books, including Getting The Love You Want; and Kristi Hughes, ND, Naturopathic Physician and International Speaker on Functional Medicine/Medical Education; and Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author of The Happiness Project.
While each one of these individuals have a different area of expertise and study, they share two important threads of commonality, these two threads are integral to my practice as a certified holistic health coach: the role of relationships in personal health, and the debilitating (and still under-recognized) toxicity of sugar in every single system (and cell) in our body. Interestingly, just like in my private practice, a nutritional component is paired with a lifestyle component.
The nature of your connectedness is a predictor of health. Our relationships, in fact, are a critical component of good health. Harville Hendricks discussed at the length the “Nutritional Power of Connection.” Dr. Kristi Hughes says that the cornerstone between patient/client and practitioner, is their connection, the building of a relationship, based on trust and in the creation of a safe space to be vulnerable. The illustrious Deepak Chopra said, “Love is the highest intelligence in the Universe. It is the glue.” Gretchen Rubin suggested that one of the keys to happiness is broadening and deepening our relationships. Both Christiane Northrup and Harville Hendricks believe our very “early wounds of childhood” define our relationships to others, as well as to ourselves.
Take a look in the mirror, what do you see? I am willing to bet that those that see a pillar of health are connected with friends and family and do good deeds on a daily basis without expecting anything in return. They treat a barista or a doorman with the same respect at they would give the president of a university. They don’t judge. A person who is a pillar of health cares about other people.
It all comes down to this: Our relationships, our connectedness, (or lack of relationships and connectedness), are a driving force in our physical and mental health. Improve your relationships, broaden and deepen your connections to others, and watch your health improve. Research shows over and over that community is a predictor of longevity. In the Blue Zones, Dan Buettner and National Geographic, found those communities with people with the highest life expectancy, or with the highest proportions of people who reach 100. In these five areas (found in Sardinia, Greece, Costa Rica, Loma Linda, CA and Okinawa) nearly all of the centenarians have social circles that have lasted a lifetime, put their loved ones first, and belong to a faith-based community.
The Blue Zones also shows us that these vibrant communities eat a diet where sugar is absent. They eat fat, they eat protein, they eat complex carbohydrates, they drink alcohol. They don’t eat sugar.
Harvard’s Walter Willett says the number one problem in the American diet is sugar and points directly at sugar-sweetened beverages (this includes fruit juices, by the way). Dr. Kristi Hughes administers a cardiometabolic eating plan to essentially reduce the effects of sugar on the body. Dr. Christiane Northrup points out that sugar is 8x (yes, eight times) more addictive than heroin.
The proof is in the pudding. Literally.
146 Reasons Why Sugar Is Ruining Your Health
- Sugar can suppress the immune system.
- Sugar upsets the mineral relationships in the body,
- Sugar can cause hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children.
- Sugar can produce a significant rise in triglycerides.
- Sugar contributes to the reduction in defense against bacterial infection (infectious diseases).
- Sugar causes a loss of tissue elasticity and function, the more sugar you eat the more elasticity and function you loose.
- Sugar reduces high density lipoproteins.
- Sugar leads to chromium deficiency.
- Sugar leads to cancer of the ovaries.
- Sugar can increase fasting levels of glucose.
- Sugar causes copper deficiency.
- Sugar interferes with absorption of calcium and magnesium.
- Sugar can weaken eyesight.
- Sugar raises the level of a neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine.
- Sugar can cause hypoglycemia.
- Sugar can produce an acidic digestive tract.
- Sugar can cause a rapid rise of adrenaline levels in children.
- Sugar malabsorption is frequent in patients with functional bowel disease.
- Sugar can cause premature aging.
- Sugar can lead to alcoholism.
- Sugar can cause tooth decay.
- Sugar contributes to obesity
- High intake of sugar increases the risk of Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis.
- Sugar can cause changes frequently found in person with gastric or duodenal ulcers.
- Sugar can cause arthritis.
- Sugar can cause asthma.
- Sugar greatly assists the uncontrolled growth of Candida Albicans (yeast infections).
- Sugar can cause gallstones.
- Sugar can cause heart disease.
- Sugar can cause appendicitis.
- Sugar can cause multiple sclerosis.
- Sugar can cause hemorrhoids.
- Sugar can cause varicose veins.
- Sugar can elevate glucose and insulin responses in oral contraceptive users.
- Sugar can lead to periodontal disease.
- Sugar can contribute to osteoporosis.
- Sugar contributes to saliva acidity.
- Sugar can cause a decrease in insulin sensitivity.
- Sugar can lower the amount of Vitamin E (alpha-Tocopherol in the blood.
- Sugar can decrease growth hormone.
- Sugar can increase cholesterol.
- Sugar can increase the systolic blood pressure.
- Sugar can cause drowsiness and decreased activity in children.
- High sugar intake increases advanced glycation end products (AGEs)(Sugar bound non-enzymatically to protein)
- Sugar can interfere with the absorption of protein.
- Sugar causes food allergies.
- Sugar can contribute to diabetes.
- Sugar can cause toxemia during pregnancy.
- Sugar can contribute to eczema in children.
- Sugar can cause cardiovascular disease.
- Sugar can impair the structure of DNA.
- Sugar can change the structure of protein.
- Sugar can make our skin age by changing the structure of collagen.
- Sugar can cause cataracts.
- Sugar can cause emphysema.
- Sugar can cause atherosclerosis.
- Sugar can promote an elevation of low density lipoproteins (LDL).
- High sugar intake can impair the physiological homeostasis of many systems in the body.
- Sugar lowers the enzymes ability to function.
- Sugar intake is higher in people with Parkinson’s disease.
- Sugar can cause a permanent altering the way the proteins act in the body.
- Sugar can increase the size of the liver by making the liver cells divide.
- Sugar can increase the amount of liver fat.
- Sugar can increase kidney size and produce pathological changes in the kidney.
- Sugar can damage the pancreas.
- Sugar can increase the body’s fluid retention.
- Sugar is enemy #1 of the bowel movement.
- Sugar can cause myopia (nearsightedness).
- Sugar can compromise the lining of the capillaries.
- Sugar can make the tendons more brittle.
- Sugar can cause headaches, including migraine.
- Sugar plays a role in pancreatic cancer in women.
- Sugar can adversely affect school children’s grades and cause learning disorders.
- Sugar can cause an increase in delta, alpha, and theta brain waves.
- Sugar can cause depression.
- Sugar increases the risk of gastric cancer.
- Sugar and cause dyspepsia (indigestion).
- Sugar can increase your risk of getting gout.
- Sugar can increase the levels of glucose in an oral glucose tolerance test over the ingestion of complex carbohydrates.
- Sugar can increase the insulin responses in humans consuming high-sugar diets compared to low sugar diets.
- High refined sugar diet reduces learning capacity.
- Sugar can cause less effective functioning of two blood proteins, albumin, and lipoproteins, which may reduce the body’s ability to handle fat and cholesterol.
- Sugar can contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.
- Sugar can cause platelet adhesiveness.
- Sugar can cause hormonal imbalance; some hormones become underactive and others become overactive.
- Sugar can lead to the formation of kidney stones.
- Sugar can lead to the hypothalamus to become highly sensitive to a large variety of stimuli.
- Sugar can lead to dizziness.
- Diets high in sugar can cause free radicals and oxidative stress.
- High sucrose diets of subjects with peripheral vascular disease significantly increases platelet adhesion.
- High sugar diet can lead to biliary tract cancer.
- Sugar feeds cancer.
- High sugar consumption of pregnant adolescents is associated with a twofold increased risk for delivering a small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infant.
- High sugar consumption can lead to substantial decrease in gestation duration among adolescents.
- Sugar slows food’s travel time through the gastrointestinal tract.
- Sugar increases the concentration of bile acids in stools and bacterial enzymes in the colon. This can modify bile to produce cancer-causing compounds and colon cancer.
- Sugar increases estradiol (the most potent form of naturally occurring estrogen) in men.
- Sugar combines and destroys phosphatase, an enzyme, which makes the process of digestion more difficult.
- Sugar can be a risk factor of gallbladder cancer.
- Sugar is an addictive substance.
- Sugar can be intoxicating, similar to alcohol.
- Sugar can exacerbate PMS.
- Sugar given to premature babies can affect the amount of carbon dioxide they produce.
Decrease in sugar intake can increase emotional stability. - The body changes sugar into 2 to 5 times more fat in the bloodstream than it does starch.
- The rapid absorption of sugar promotes excessive food intake in obese subjects.
- Sugar can worsen the symptoms of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
- Sugar adversely affects urinary electrolyte composition.
- Sugar can slow down the ability of the adrenal glands to function.
- Sugar has the potential of inducing abnormal metabolic processes in a normal healthy individual and to promote chronic degenerative diseases.
- I.V (intravenous feedings) of sugar water can cut off oxygen to the brain.
- High sucrose intake could be an important risk factor in lung cancer.
- Sugar increases the risk of polio.
- High sugar intake can cause epileptic seizures.
- Sugar causes high blood pressure in obese people.
- In Intensive Care Units, limiting sugar saves lives.
- Sugar may induce cell death.
- Sugar can increase the amount of food that you eat.
- In juvenile rehabilitation camps, when children were put on a low sugar diet, there was a 44% drop in antisocial behavior.
- Sugar can lead to prostrate cancer.
- Sugar dehydrates newborns.
- Sugar increases the estradiol in young men.
- Sugar can cause low birth weight babies.
- Greater consumption of refined sugar is associated with a worse outcome of schizophrenia.
- Sugar can raise homocysteine levels in the blood stream.
- Sweet food items increase the risk of breast cancer.
- Sugar is a risk factor in cancer of the small intestine.
- Sugar may cause laryngeal cancer.
- Sugar induces salt and water retention.
- Sugar may contribute to mild memory loss.
- As sugar increases in the diet of 10 years olds, there is a linear decrease in the intake of many essential nutrients.
- Sugar can increase the total amount of food consumed.
- Exposing a newborn to sugar results in a heightened preference for sucrose relative to water at 6 months and 2 years of age.
- Sugar causes constipation.
- Sugar causes varicous veins.
- Sugar can cause brain decay in pre-diabetic and diabetic women.
- Sugar can increase the risk of stomach cancer.
- Sugar can cause metabolic syndrome.
- Sugar ingestion by pregnant women increases neural tube defects in embryos.
- Sugar can be a factor in asthma.
- The higher the sugar consumption the more chances of getting irritable bowel syndrome.
- Sugar could affect central reward systems.
- Sugar can cause cancer of the rectum.
- Sugar can cause endometrial cancer.
- Sugar can cause renal (kidney) cell carcinoma.
- Sugar can cause liver tumors.
My heartfelt thanks to Nancy Appleton, Ph.D. for her comprehensive list. She backs up each one of these statements with empirical research.