It’s Not The Fat But Sugar That Has Been The Silent Killer

FitnessNovember 22, 2017

According to some doctors, sugar is the number one silent killer in America. Well, they also have a valid point, although they may sound like a stretch, however, you can see why they say so. Heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and obesity can all be partially credited to too much sugar.

Smith Jones, 52, was an athlete all his life. Like everyone he thought he was doing everything right with his diet and exercise, however, when he suffered a heart attack just over six years ago.

“I had carbs all the time, not knowing that they are bad for you until I had some medical issues, then I found out otherwise,” he said.

Jones was a ticking time bomb.

“I know factually it is my diet,” said Jones. He thought that he was following a healthy eating lifestyle: low fat, with low calories food, however, loads of carbs – which indirectly gives out a lot of sugar.

Jones revealed he would load up on pasta before a ride or a run and he did for decades. After an hour, he would be hungry again, leading him to eat more.

This is one of the main symptoms of a carbohydrate addict. You are just unable to stop eating, particularly after a high carb big meal, because carbs turn into sugar. If any sugar sensitive person has just one piece of candy, he will then have intense cravings for more.

So, after his health scare, Jones cut out all carbs and started having fattier, more calorie dense nosh.

“My energy level is too higher, my mental acuity. My weight has also gone down about 25 pounds, as well as I have sustained that weight loss,” he explained.

And, his test results back that up.

“I was a pre-diabetic. I am not anymore. My cholesterol level is down tremendously since being on this diet,” Jones said.

Dr. Rick Lehman, Orthopedic Surgeon and Director with the U.S. Center for Sports Medicine in Kirkwood, daily works with athletes. And, he too agrees that sugar addiction is a huge problem.

“I think sugar in and of itself one of the worst kind of foods you can possibly eat,” Dr. Lehman expressed.

While research also says sugar affects the brain in the same ways as the cocaine or heroin does. Scans show identical areas of the brain light up when exposed to sugar or drugs.

“Sugar addiction is really no different than the opioid addiction. People have looked at all these things much similar to opioid addiction,” Lehman told. “It is a real effort which not as easy as saying, ‘Hey, I am going to eat junk food.’”

So, the question is how did all the companies get it so wrong with the low-fat craze?

According to the American Medical Association Journal, last year sugar companies paid their researchers in the 1960s and 1970s to minimize the role sugar has on health. And, with that research, the entire blame was shifted to fatty foods. So, to make low-fat foods taste good, sugar-based additives were added in most everything.

“When we all believed that fats are bad and the carbs were good, so we were eating low-fat cookies as well as low-fat food, then what happened to America in the first place? We got immense. We got giant,” told Lehman.

And, for people like Smith Jones, who have cut carbs out of their life, since then life has got so much sweeter.

“For me personally, it’s all about quality of life. I now have the ability to exercise at not quite the intensity I used to do once but without worrying about having a heart attack,” Norton said. “So, for me, that gives me a level of freedom that I didn’t have prior to being on this diet.”

We all know sugar addiction is a cop-out for people who simply don’t have the willpower to say no to certain tempting foods. Doctors also told that’s the same excuse made in the 70s era when the research started coming out about smoking.

When we engineer foods to fulfill companies greed by making you dependent upon them, then we can really see how hard it becomes for some people to avoid it and live a happy life.