Would you like to get high... On sugar?

Is sugar addiction real? Yes. Have you ever seen Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or read Hansel and Gretel? All is edible, made of sugar and spice, and everything nice (and not in a good way, like the Power Puff Girls). A gross exaggeration far less than we think; the gastronomical landscape we live in today is not that far from these fairytale-ish, wonky worlds of prediabetes. Sugar is everywhere, and added sugar laces over 2/3 of all foods in an average store. It is no wonder that most of us are sugar addicts, riding the blood glucose and insulin dragon from dawn to bedtime, with sugar addiction weaving itself into our days.

Sugar Availability From Cave to Convenience Store

For our hunter-gatherer ancestral line, finding sweet things to amuse their palates was not that easy. It was, in fact, bloody difficult, and they would have had to fight bees for honey, wait for those precious few months of fruit abundance to fatten up before winter, or dig around and hope they had stumbled upon an edible carb-bank of a tuber. Carbs were rare treats designed for fast fuel and to fatten up before deprivation.

All carbohydrates are made out of chains of sugars and will break down into glucose and/or fructose as they get metabolized. While all cells of the body can use glucose, fructose can only be processed by the liver, and overconsumption of fructose is linked to NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease), basically packing fat into an overworked small organ and disrupting hundreds of vital functions that the liver performs for the body.

We love carbs and are programmed to search for them for simple survival purposes. It is not difficult to see how this natural affinity could fuel a global addiction to sugar and has us all thinking about a sugar detox a few times a year. 
 

Running through the woods as a hunter and doing heavy physical activities all day (the only available lifestyle at the time) made finding something sweet (and therefore high-calorie) a jackpot for our ancestors. Still, they burned it off and fasted by necessity when the hunt was a bust and foragers came empty-handed. Food was not readily available; it was something you worked for, hoping the nutritional reward would be worth the energy spent.

But today, our lifestyle has glued our glutei maximi to the chair for hours upon hours a day. We don’t need to break our backs to find morsels of food; we’re comfortable and conveniently fed on every corner. That corner store with its rows of long, long shelf-life products has a catch, and you are probably not even aware of it - it's a sugar addict's paradise. There are 262 names for sugar on food labels, and although a healthy digestive system can get rid of a maximum of 4-6 teaspoons of sugar a day, the daily average intake is 22.

So, from having no to very little sugar in our diet, we suddenly switched to eating at least our own body weight in sugar each year in some countries. We cannot be completely sure about our cave-dwelling ancestors, but we know that people in 1700 consumed about 4 pounds (2kg) of sugar in a year. This number grew to 22 pounds (about 10kg) in the next hundred years, only to almost quintuple to 90 pounds (40kg) in the 1900s, leading us to our current position of some countries consuming over 360 pounds per capita (about 165kg).
 

Over the last half-century, the food industry has slowly, perhaps out of ignorance in the beginning, but consciously now, turned the whole world population into a gasping, bug-eyed sugar addict just looking for their next hit. How addictive is sugar? So much so that we'll beg to be poisoned and enjoy every step of the way! 

What does insulin do? 

What does insulin do, and why do we need it? Is insulin a hormone, and what organ produces insulin? Yes, insulin is a hormone our pancreas makes, and it is necessary to manage blood glucose.

The carb-burning metabolism is designed for a quick burst of energy and to be interchanged with fat burning (the so-called "feasting and fasting"). Once we ingest some dietary carbohydrate, insulin comes to tell the cells to take in energy from sugar and to mop up the excess sugar molecules (because they are dangerous to the body if left free-floating) and store these extras as fat for later use, stocking up for the upcoming starvation of winter. But winter never comes nowadays. We’re always feasting and packing, but never releasing what we’ve stored.

Occasional sugar consumption is not really the problem. The problem arises when sugar use is chronic and constitutes most of our diets. Here, the insulin never goes back to baseline, and the cells of the body decide they can't take any more sugar and ignore the insulin signal, leading to insulin resistance. This only makes insulin work harder, trying to do its job, until it's unable to keep the blood sugar under control anymore. 

Sugar is addictive, and refined sugar and its synthetic buddies are toxins. This is why insulin desperately tries to get it out of the bloodstream. Insulin function is crucial in the body. It is not a villain here. There is a state when the body is unable to produce and use insulin (diabetes type 1), and before insulin discovery, people were doomed. They didn’t live very long, basically burning their reserves and bodies to death with no possibility of storing the energy they had consumed.

It is unfortunate that the utterly opposite problem of having too much insulin due to constant carb overloading is also called diabetes (type 2). And it is quite strange that you would force high blood sugars down (masking the symptoms) with more insulin when there is already so much insulin around that the cells have become deaf to the signal (insulin resistance). A more logical course of action would be to lower the intake of dietary carbohydrates, allowing the insulin to take a break, which will sensitize the cells to its signaling again, as is explained in the newer theories debunking diabetes as a chronic, incurable disease. 

What Happened to Our Food?

The demonization of healthy, natural fats as an international nutrition guideline may be considered one of the most criminal swings of the pendulum that led to the sugar addiction problem we have now. In the 1980s, the whole world officially got scared of fat as the cause of cardiovascular diseases and increasingly alarming health crises (when this policy was conceived way back in the 1960s, everybody and their grandma smoked 3 packs a day, but that was conveniently glanced over).

A wide variety of low-fat this and that hit the shelves, and as a result, we got fatter and sicker. The only way to make something we’ve taken the fat out of taste good and therefore make it appealing to the customer is to add sugar; lots and lots of it. 

The process of removing the fiber paralleled the addition of sugar, and we went from consuming 100-300g of fiber per day to about 12g/day on a refined diet. Why do we de-fiber food? Because taking the fiber out lengthens the shelf life, refined food can be cooked faster and frozen longer, providing convenient, albeit metabolism- and youth-destroying foods. We need fiber. Fiber reduces the intestinal carbohydrate absorption rate and lowers insulin response to sugar, as you don't get hit all at once. 

 

The low fat content and extremely low fiber mean less satiety signaling to the brain that you're actually full, while you can just keep eating simple refined carbs to the point where you get ill. It would be challenging to eat another whole steak after you've just had one, but you'd have no problem with a cookie. You couldn't eat 6 whole oranges in one sitting, but remove the fiber by juicing, and you can easily drink all that fructose. "There's always room for dessert," people say with an insatiable itch of a sweet tooth (which is the word we use as an endearing name for our sugar addictions). What happened to our food is that it is no longer grown or raised, but designed as a product with the sole intent to bring income. 

Addiction to Sugar: A Sticky Loop

Today, we eat more than a century ago, and most of our food is carbohydrate-based. We weigh approximately 20 pounds more, and our insulin levels are three times higher than they used to be. The higher the insulin, the worse the brain gets at recognizing leptin (satiety hormone), according to Dr. Robert H. Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist.

We won’t argue that life has also become much more chronically stressful today, enhancing cortisol secretion, which makes us crave sugar and carbs as if our life depends on it, because the brain wants a quick mood-altering fix. We overload on sugar and feel better for a while, like scratching an itchy mosquito bite, but then the pancreas releases insulin to mop up the free sugar and put it safely into storage. High blood sugar crashes and leaves us tired and exhausted, looking for another food high, but the insulin, which is still not at the baseline, does not allow us to use the already stored energy, and the cycle starts again. 

Suddenly, we notice love handles. After a certain number of those sugar binges, the skin seems duller and older (that’s due to a process called glycation), breakouts and acne appear, and our midsection is growing. The body got used to the fast energy hits and is now craving those, and we keep marching deeper into the oh-so-sweet darkness of sugar addiction.

Sugar Addiction & Type 2 Diabetes

Here is a shortcut to understanding how chronic processed carb (which we've learned quickly breaks down into sugars) overexposure can break a healthy metabolism over time and lead to hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, prediabetes symptoms, and diabetes.

Carbohydrates raise insulin (proteins raise it a bit, but fats have no effect), and insulin tells the body to store all we can’t use. We can’t store and burn at the same time; it would be like pressing the gas and the brake simultaneously. While in storing mode with elevated insulin (a normal state after a meal that contains carbs), the body can’t release the already stored fat energy until the meal is processed and the insulin drops.

What is insulin resistance? 

Frequent meals high in carbohydrates (especially refined ones void of fibre) ensure insulin never goes down and continues to pack more fat into storage. Once at the point of bursting, like a water balloon that cannot take anymore, the fat cell refuses to cooperate. Fighting for its life and not wanting to burst, the fat cell decides to ignore the insulin signal and becomes insulin resistant. Imagine a tone that never goes away. After a while, you’d just not hear it anymore; your brain would tune it out as irrelevant, so you don’t go insane. 

Now, if the tone changes, you’ll pay attention again. Similarly, if the constant insulin tone stops for a while (if we allow insulin to drop), the cells will regain their sensitivity to it. Suppose the sugar overload doesn’t stop even after the cells have become insulin resistant. In that case, the insulin has nowhere to put the sugars mopped up from the blood, and blood glucose gets high enough to be diagnosed as a prediabetic or type 2 diabetic. You are not lacking insulin; it just has nowhere to put the sugar because the cells are not listening due to overexposure. 

However, years or even decades before noticing the high blood sugar, insulin was already working overtime to try to protect you. Basically, too much of anything will make you lose sensitivity to the over-abundant “thing,” and you’ll need more to get the same effect. This is called “tolerance” in pharmacology and addiction. 

How Addictive is Sugar?

In a world designed to grab our attention by chemical or pixel, food addictions have never been taken quite as seriously as the more fun and glamorous addictions we can publicly repent for. A private 3 AM cupboard raid due to insatiable sugar cravings is far less edgy. Food addictions were dismissed as minor problems and considered more a personal flaw or lack of self-control than a true addiction. However, the diseases resulting from a broken metabolism will claim more lives globally than cocaine, heroin, or alcohol ever did. We wouldn’t feed our pet candy all day long, but we’re happy to go through our day on just coffee and sugar.

The body is a furnace with specific needs that get chronically neglected. Is sugar more addictive than cocaine or nicotine? Refined carbohydrates and sugar act as mood-altering drugs through similar reward mechanisms as other addictive drugs. They enhance serotonin production, which then regulates the release of dopamine and endorphins, the natural feel-good chemicals in our body. We tend to stick to things that make us feel good, even if the damage they cause is way more significant, which is basically the definition of addiction. 

Semblaces of food, designed to look pretty on a shelf, create addicts and train us out of free will, one delicious bite at a time, overriding normal satiety mechanisms. 

Signs You Might Need a Sugar Addiction Detox

There are signs to tell us if we might be developing a problem or already have a full-blown sugar addiction. It might be a subtle feeling that something is off or a sinister monster driving our actions and intermingling into our daily decisions to feed the addiction. 

• Maybe you can’t imagine skipping dessert because you feel unsatisfied with the meal of mixed macronutrients you've just had, or you are irritated, depleted of energy, get extremely nervous, or lethargic, and can't concentrate if you don't eat something sweet.
• You crave a glass of wine or a cocktail daily and feel a powerful need to do so if you try to skip a few days (alcohol is produced by fermenting sugars, and mixed drinks combining sugar and alcohol, like cocktails, are the worst for you).
• You might hide food around the house or the workplace and eat when no one is watching, feeling shame afterwards. Or you can’t think properly without your daily sugar rush and feel like your frontal lobe is somehow numb and wrapped in cotton candy.
• Are you always sleepy and exhausted, even though you get enough rest?
• Are you prone to migraines, inflammation, or frequent yeast infections? 

If you’ve had a few yeses, start paying attention. Limiting or eliminating sugar and refined carbohydrates is not going to be easy if you choose to do so, but the rewards will outweigh the difficulties. The good news is that once you're past the initial withdrawal, you'll notice that the less you consume, the less you crave. Breaking the sugar loop may feel torturous while you're doing it, but it is one of the best decisions you can make for your long-term health and to minimize the chances of chronic diseases plaguing the developed and overfed world. 
 

Different Types of Sugar

Not all sugars are made the same. Just as a quick glance: Glucose is not that sweet; fructose is sweeter, but a sugar supplement, saccharine, is 300 times sweeter than table sugar. 

Sucrose (Table Sugar)

Natural sugar is obtained from sugar beets or sugar cane, yet once refined, it is precisely the same and is called table sugar (sucrose). Refining eliminates all the other nutrients and destroys 64 beneficial compounds to get the pure, infinitely stable white crystals made of glucose and fructose (50/50). 

Stevia

Stevia is a sugar supplement extracted from the leaves of the Stevia rebaudiana plant. It is calorie-free and doesn’t raise blood sugar levels, making it a good choice for diabetics, those with insulin resistance, and people who follow a low-glycemic diet. You will also get some vitamins A, B3, and C and minerals, including magnesium, potassium, selenium, and zinc.

Saccharine

Saccharine gained popularity during WWI and was branded Sweet-and-Low in the mid-20th century. The FDA attempted to ban it in 1977, but due to Congress's intervention, food only had to be labeled as containing it. In 2000, the label was revoked. But there are still worries that larger amounts might damage your gut flora and lead to other related immune and inflammatory problems.

Aspartame

Aspartame is a sugar that’s been a center of debate in the last couple of decades due to its being linked to certain types of cancer, but it is still used as a common additive in our food. There has been so much smoke around this one that there must be a fire burning somewhere. Avoid if you can.

Sucralose

Sucralose is a variation of common sugar, but it contains some chlorine particles and can, therefore, not be metabolized. Due to its ability to withstand high temperatures, it is used as an additive in baking.

There are many other natural and artificial sugars and sugar substitutes in use, and even more names for sugar in modern food production which we should educate ourselves on.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

Our bodies had never had to deal with fructose corn syrup before its discovery in 1966 in Japan. Now, most items that sport a barcode are laced with high fructose corn syrup, and this fructose overload becomes a large burden on the liver. 

It is more obviously present in soft drinks, which also contain caffeine and salt to dehydrate you, and the large amounts of sugar are often there to mask the salt. The more dehydrated you get, the more you’ll crave another drink and the more products you will buy, so it’s not just addiction at play.
 

We’re very proud of ourselves on days when we use sugar that has no caloric value, but this may actually be confusing to your metabolism. Persistent use of only artificial sweeteners plays a trick on your brain, which associates the sweet sensation on the tongue with high caloric value, but overloading on artificial non-caloric sugars, that never deliver what the sweetness promises, may make the brain struggle to discern the hunger and fullness signals and tell when the body has had enough. This is the ideal jump-off point for overeating, as the body doesn’t really recognize artificial sugars as food.
 

When it comes to addictive aspects of food, just like other addictions, biochemistry will govern behavior until the stimulus is removed and the system can return to balance, and there are more important issues to deal with when it comes to sugar than fitting in your skinny jeans.

Conclusion

Eat less frequently with meals composed of real food that comes to you in its original form or as close to it as possible. It is a good idea to prioritize protein and not to fear good quality fats (coconut, avocado, olive oil, tallow, ghee, baking grease...) and fats that naturally come with your protein. Anything with a barcode, read the ingredients, and be sceptical unless you’ve understood what you've just read. 

Choose quality animal protein, such as meat, cheese, cottage cheese, eggs, fish, seeds, and nuts, such as sunflower, sesame, poppy, hemp, and pumpkin seeds, and a variety of lentils and legumes (excellent plant sources of protein). Whole grains are barely better than refined ones when it comes to a glycemic load. A bit more fiber will slow down the absorption of the starches, but consider getting carbs mainly through veggies; tubers are excellent (carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, celery, turnips, beets... ).

Don’t stuff or starve yourself. Starving will only lead to cravings that result in filling your body with junk, and it will slow down your natural metabolism. The body you’re not feeding will believe it is famine and that it's time to start conserving energy and saving up for later. It will continue to do so as you stop your crash diet, often making you gain more than you’ve lost. This is the mechanism behind the yo-yo effect of restrictive diets.

Carbohydrates are not essential to the body like fats and proteins are. You can make glucose (that every cell in the body can use) from fats and protein, and it's called gluconeogenesis. Void of nutrients, sugar forces the body to deplete its own vitamins, minerals, and enzymes, leading to the rise of acidity in the body. This acidic environment is a “sweet spot” for the pathogens and disease to thrive. So the next time you feel that doughnut calling you, just stop and think. Do you really want your life to be controlled by the interests of profiteers and those of a broken gut flora? Will you sacrifice your health for a few seconds' ride on a sugar rollercoaster? 

 

Maybe it’s time to consider a sugar detox. Every decision matters, and what we choose to do each day will become habits. Habits can translate into a life-supporting or life-threatening lifestyle. We hope we’ve helped you make some more informed choices and that you’ve learned something today. Choices matter, and the future matters. Stay curious, stay beautiful, stay sweet, and enjoy living in your skin.