Is Sugar Causing Your Symptoms?
My Love Hate Relationship with Mini Eggs!
I absolutely love Mini Eggs! When they come in the shops on Boxing Day (how did that ever become a thing?), I have to look the other way when I pass them in the supermarket! Although I do allow myself as many as I need to get my tax return done (which is a good reason to leave it to the last minute), I don’t recommend this - it’s really not good for the stress levels!
But it isn’t only Mini Eggs. I love chocolate. And that makes Easter a real problem as I just can’t stop myself if it’s in the house, and have therefore just spent the last week grabbing a bit whenever I walked past.
The result of this is:
Waking between 2 & 4am and struggling to get back to sleep
Aching joints
Muscles feeling fatigued
Low mood
Cravings for more sugar
Leg cramps
Self-loathing (obviously!)
Which is why it’s a love hate relationship. Perhaps you are feeling the same after the Easter weekend?
Let’s look at why we can’t resist sugar, why it makes us fat, and why it causes all of these symptoms and more.
Historically, before agriculture, we lived off the land, foraging and hunting for our food and eating seasonally - meat when the hunters managed to catch something, but not all the time, roots, seeds and nuts, herbs and fruits. For those of us in temperate zones, this meant food was more abundant during the summer and less so during the winter and different foods being available at different times of year.
In the late summer/autumn, fruits would hang from the trees and bushes, full of phytonutrients and vitamins to nourish our immune systems but also full of sugar to make us fatter so we could survive the winter. Despite what the food industry will tell you, it isn’t fat (well, not natural fats anyway) which make you fat, it is sugar! And not only does it make us fat, it tastes delicious and is addictive - making us gorge ourselves through August and September so we lay down all that lovely fat to insulate us from the cold and provide fuel for those scarce winter months.
As time went on and we settled down in one place, we grew grains, learned to process foods for flavour rather than nutrition, and invented ways to store foods out of season. We can now eat fruit all year round, chocolate is only a phone call or short drive away, and we have refined grains and flours to make bread, cakes, biscuits and pastries to eat whenever we want! But our bodies haven’t changed all that much and when we eat sugar, we get fat! Our instinct is to gorge ourselves! No wonder Easter is such an issue and we can’t resist the Mini Eggs!
But why the symptoms other than putting on weight?
Well, as one of my previous blogs talked about, eating refined sugar (flours, cakes, pastries, soda, fruit etc) causes a rapid blood glucose spike which causes the pancreas to release insulin into the bloodstream to shuttle the excess sugar into the liver and muscles for storage, and any more than can be stored here is converted to fat and stored in fat cells - causing us to gain weight. This huge release of insulin inevitably ‘overshoots’ this glucose storage, leaving us with low blood glucose, which results in low mood and low energy and cravings for a quick food fix - again inevitably cravings for something sweet and us grabbing another bag of Mini Eggs!
We can end up on a real rollercoaster of eating sugar, having a high, releasing insulin, feeling low, grabbing a sweat treat, and as a result, our mitochondria - those little powerhouses in every cell of our body which use glucose to produce energy for our brain, our muscles and all our metabolic functions - become overwhelmed from the constant glut of glucose and become lazy, making us feel fatigued (on top of the fatigue brought on by low blood glucose levels) and making our muscles feel tired and weak.
All this metabolism of glucose uses huge amounts of magnesium, a vital mineral used for over 300 processes in the body. When magnesium is low, we can have a variety of symptoms from leg cramps to headaches, low energy, sleeplessness, restless leg and constipation.
Not only that, but sugar metabolism, like all metabolic processes produces free radicals. If the sugar is from whole fruits - berries growing on trees and bushes in our environment - then alongside the sugar, we get antioxidants which neutralise these damaging molecules, but if it is from Mini Eggs (other crappy chocolates and sweets are available!) then the free radicals are free to go around the body causing damage and inflammation, which we generally see as inflammation in the joints, causing stiffness and pain.
Finally on to sleep. The rollercoaster brought on by a diet high in sugar, and eating late into the evening (which in my experience is just when you want to grab that last handful of Mini Eggs because you’ve eaten sugar all day and now your blood sugar drop is really big!) can cause a big blood sugar drop in the middle of the night. Low blood sugar, as well as high blood sugar, is stressful to the body and therefore causes the release of adrenalin and cortisol by the adrenal glands as the body prepares to fight or run away. I don’t know about you, but I can’t run or fight in my sleep! The body is ready to get up and go, and so we wake, ready to move. This generally happens between 2 and 4am - classic witching hour - when the mind plays tricks on us and catastrophises everything, making getting back to sleep almost impossible!
Research tells us that a poor night sleep leads to up to 300 calories more being eaten the following day, many of these from sugary snacks, so you can see how we are not only on a sugar rollercoaster through Easter weekend, but stepping off that rollercoaster is a real struggle. If you are struggling this week, then I’m with you and am willing you to step off and get back into good eating habits. If however you have been on this rollercoaster longer term and need help to address any of the things I’ve talked about here, do get in touch or book a free 20 minute consultation through my website - I’d love to help!
#onehealth.