I am very pleased to let you know of an upcoming guest post by Dr. Keith Lewis of Healthy Life Doctors in Upper Arlington. I have asked Dr. Lewis, who many of you will remember is the one responsible for me being able to keep my gall bladder when my symptoms were misdiagnosed by my family practitioner, to write about the effects of eating refined sugar on our bodies. He is so very knowledgable and I am eager to be able to share with you what he knows about this important topic. So be watching!
I love to cook and bake! I guess I always have. However, when I developed the digestive issues that prompted me to give up all grains and refined sugars (see my post on my history), I had to learn a new way to cook and bake which included eliminating ingredients that were inflammatory and processed with ingredients that were harmful to my healing. The first of these ingredients I will deal with is refined sugars.
Even though I don’t normally have a “sweet tooth”, giving up refined sugar was difficult for the baker and the mom in me. If you are unsure how much sugar you and your family intake, just take a walk through the grocery store and read the labels of your “go-to” processed food items.
Let’s start with breakfast cereals. Check out the sugar content on processed breakfast cereals and let’s start with a one-cup serving of Special K Cereal, the cereal that many people eat if they are trying to lose weight. Special K has 4 grams of sugar per one cup of cereal. Four grams is approximately equal to one teaspoon. Now let’s compare a “kid” cereal. Trix has 12 grams of sugar per one cup serving. That is equal to three teaspoons of sugar.
Now let’s look at an old classic cereal: Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes. Let’s also consider the difference between a serving (3/4 cup as listed on the box) as opposed to a bowl of cereal. If the man in your house eats a bowl of cereal like my husband does (when I have it in the house), he is eating far more than a one-cup serving; maybe more than double, depending on the size of the bowl. One serving of the Frosted Flakes has 10 grams of refined sugar…that doesn’t sound bad until you figure out that a bowl is more than double that serving amount. If your bowl is perhaps 75 grams, that puts the sugar intake up to 25 grams per bowl and that 25 grams equals more than six teaspoons of sugar.
Ok, so let’s say you just “grab a bar” on your way out the door. A Nutrigrain Cereal Bar (sounds healthy, right?) has 13 grams of sugar, more than three teaspoons. If you start adding up the sugar you are consuming just from processed foods and then add it to the sugar you add to your foods, you will start to see why some studies estimate that the average American consumes approximately 19.5 teaspoons (82 grams) of sugar each day which translates into about 66 pounds of added sugar each year, per person!
Reading the labels and educating yourself about what is in the processed foods you buy is the first step to lessening the sugar in your diet. You will also need to educate yourself on the many aliases that sugar goes by: dextrose, fructose, dextrin, fructose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), lactose, maltose, maltodextrin, mall, mannose, panocha, and many more. As you begin the process of reading labels, you will be surprised how many of your staple items contain sugar: ketchup, pickles, pasta and other meat sauces, mayonnaise, and salad dressings, just to name a few.
Now, I do not have a medical degree, so feel free to do your own research and draw your own conclusions. However, I found that from the day I stopped eating refined sugar, it took my body about two weeks to get through what seemed like a “detox” period and for the sugar cravings to stop. I discovered that once I was past that time period, food began to taste different…better. I did not crave sweets and foods tasted sweeter to me without sweetener and typically “sweet” foods were too sweet for me. I also had more energy and definitely fewer “highs and lows”.
natural sweeteners of choice
That was 2013, and to this day, I do not eat refined sugar. Occasionally, someone will beg me to “taste” something…and if I do, I wish I hadn’t. My sweeteners of choice are natural and/or organic maple syrup (NOT pancake syrup), local raw honey (I use it sparingly, mostly just in my cup of green tea in the morning, because although it IS natural and has many wonderfully healing properties, it does have a high glycemic index), organic stevia powder (use sparingly due to extremely sweet taste) and organic coconut sugar (I use this in place of brown sugar in baking).
Hope you have found this post thought-provoking as well as helpful as your journey to a healthier you! Till next time, when I talk about flour: the good, the bad and the choices you have.
I have had quite a long journey through many scary and painful experiences to reach my current state of health. I have learned a lot over the past few years and I hope by sharing my story, my experiences and the knowledge I gained by them, information on products and ingredients, and recipes for healthier eating, that I can encourage you on your own journey to better health.
My digestive issues began after I had knee surgery and was given oxycodone for the pain, which was excruciating at times. I didn’t realize it then, but for some reason it seems that the oxycodone was the beginning of my digestive problems. It was so acidic and because I was healing from surgery, I was very sedentary. I began experiencing such burning and piercing pain in my upper abdomen that it totally immobilized me and at times the pain was so intense that it caused me to pass out.
These attacks went on for awhile so I finally made an appointment with my family’s conventional medicine physician. She ordered several tests and I received a call late on evening from her telling me that I needed to contact this specific surgeon THE NEXT DAY and schedule surgery to have my gallbladder out. However, before I made that call, I began doing some of my own research and realized that my symptoms did not match the symptoms of a diseased gallbladder.
It was then a friend of mine who was being treated naturally for her digestive issues told me about her doctor, Dr. Lewis. I made an appointment with him immediately and after reading my ultrasound results, he discovered that although I did have some small stones, my gallbladder was not diseased. He diagnosed me with a sliding hiatal hernia. There was a small tear in my esophagus and when I would bend over, especially after recently eating, my stomach would slide up into that tear and get caught, causing an esophageal spasm which produced heart attack-like symptoms. My digestive system was so inflamed that I couldn’t even lift a gallon of milk or a laundry basket and I walked around feeling like I had a cinder block affixed to my stomach.
These attacks began happening more frequently and the episodes began lasting longer and longer. One Sunday, an attack began while I was sitting in church and continued through the afternoon until I could no longer stand the pain. I texted my new doctor and even though he was at a convention, he responded and told me to go to Urgent Care and get an “anti-spasmodic cocktail”. Shortly after drinking that concoction, I had relief from pain. Needless to say I carried a small bottle of this cocktail with me at all times for a many months.
Dr. Lewis provided me with a chart of anti-inflammatory foods as well as a chart of acidic/alkaline foods. With the implementation of these two charts, along with some natural supplements to help heal my digestive system, I began the path of healing my gut. This new way of eating was like stepping into a different world. I was overwhelmed! But, I knew that I had no choice but to learn how to eat differently if I wanted to get better and heal my body.
I stopped eating all grain: no wheat flour, no rice or corn products (many people don’t realize corn is a grain and not a vegetable). I also stopped eating refined sugar including organic cane sugar and refined sugar. You may recognize the term “paleo”. I didn’t know the term at the time and several years ago there were absolutely no products available to aid this kind of diet. As a result, I began to heal and have now been four years without an attack. I not only have been able to resume the “mom” tasks, I now live on my farm and do all kinds of manual labor. I am thankful to be a long way from the woman who couldn’t do laundry or lift a gallon of milk.
I want to be able to share the knowledge I have gained so that it may help someone else. There are so many common cooking ingredients that are not beneficial and may even negatively impact your health and digestion. I will share ingredients, brands, recipes and sources I have come to trust. When I started this journey I wasted a lot of money and effort on recipes that just didn’t make an edible item.
I hope that you will find the information shared here to be helpful and I hope that you will share comments if you find something is helpful to you.
