Medicinal Sugar

[Bubu]

Paul, where do you get your knowledge in regards from? Whats the integrity of your source. My senses contradicts mostly what you wrote about sugar. I will go with my senses any time of the day as against any publish research results. Then there are the senses of almost all who agreed with mine. Sweetheart; honey or simply sugar are some words that proves to the goodness of sugar.

I've been consuming loads of sugar for 50 years and I am very healthy. So I am not going with your "sugar is not needed"

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Bubu (here)
I've been consuming loads of sugar for 50 years and I am very healthy. So I am not going with your "sugar is not needed"

That deduction, that consuming loads of sugar while remaining healthy disproves my assertion that "sugar is not needed", is not a logical deduction .

My "not needed" doesn't mean "necessarily and always makes everyone, obviously, unhealthy within 50 years."

My "not needed" means sugar is not an essential nutrient. People can live fine and healthy on a diet without any sugar.

When I just now did a Google search for "is glucose an essential nutrient", the very first result is from http://www.nutrientsreview.com/gloss...tial-nutrients, which states:

================

Essential Nutrients

What are essential nutrients?

Essential nutrients are those nutrients that are vital for your health, but they cannot be produced in your body, so you have to get them from foods or dietary supplements in order to be healthy.

Five, Not Six Groups of Essential Nutrients

Five groups of essential nutrients include 1. water, 2. all vitamins, 3. some minerals, 4. some amino acids (from proteins) and 5. some fatty acids (from fats).

Carbohydrates, frequently listed as an essential group of nutrients, are NOT essential. Your body can synthesize all carbohydrates it needs, including glucose, from proteins and fats.

================

My large intake of sugar and carbohydrates, over some forty years, eventually resulted in harming my metabolism sufficiently that I could no longer work at the very high level of productivity for which I was being paid in developing software, and I ended up retiring early, in order to focus on my health. I figured it was better to be old and poor and healthy, rather than wealthier and sicker.

It was not obvious to me, when I retired, over ten years ago now, why I was losing my high powered abilities. That wasn't really obvious to me until the last two or three years, by which time I had done substantial damage to my body, especially to my teeth and oral cavity.

Infections, often not even felt, in the oral cavity are the most common cause of chronic illnesses in the rest of the body, as documented by Dr. Thomas Levy in a series of works over the last decade. Levy's most recent book is Hidden Epidemic: Silent Oral Infections Cause Most Heart Attacks and Breast Cancers, which I am reading now.

As Weston Price documented a century ago, those on "traditional diets", with no sugars or processed carbs, but rather the plant and animal food sources available to primitive societies, often have perfect teeth, with no cavities or infections, their entire lives. They don't even know what a toothbrush or a dentist is. The same people, when they move to a town or city relying on the foods of Western Civilization, heavy in sugars and processed grains, start having their teeth rot and fall out.

Sugars and other processed grains are the major cause of the diseases of civilization, such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's.

[Strat]

Not sure where Paul is getting his info but I think most folks who research these things would agree with him. I do for sure.

I wont debate you on which is the best diet for you, but you may be interested to see the politics sugar played in the US. Big, big biz. 'Fat Politics' is a good book.

I agree that all sugars are more or less the same, the only difference is how quickly they're absorbed. That being said, this is why when folks go on weight loss diets they cut fruits. I don't agree with this method (weight loss shouldnt be primary goal) but it is what it is.

[conk]

Posted by Bubu (here)
But how does the body make sugar? wouldn't it expend energy in doing so. Would not it be better to have sugar when needed and save the energy and resources, in converting sugars from non sugar foods, for other purposes.

Paul pretty much covered it. The body is constantly working, converting, processing. The tiny bit of energy it takes to convert fats or proteins to sugar is just one of those normal functions. The sugars we add are not wholesome, adding no benefit. There is no reason, zero, for us to ingest any form of sugar. Sugar is essentially poison to the human body. I think it was Dr. Mercola who published an article with 144 reasons sugar harms the physical body. Close to the top of the list is how sugar hinders the body's ability to utilized B vitamins. Most heart ailments are a form of Beri-beri, a vitamin B deficiency. Nerves need B vitamins to send and receive properly. Consider that most people get few B vitamins in their diet anyway and there is a big problem.

So, no it doesn't matter if you get your sweetness from raw sugar, unprocessed sugar, beet sugar, cane sugar, maple syrup (although B grade maple syrup does contain excellent nutrition), corn syrup, HFCS, or any other form. Sugar is sugar is sugar. Except for fruit sugar, fructose. Someone more educated than I am can offer up the reason. One thing, the fiber in fruit slows the absorption of the sugar, minimizing insulin spikes. It also seems the liver knows how to safely handle fructose (HFCS is a totally different animal).

I'm guessing (praying?) that a few grams of sugar daily won't harm us too much. Certainly if the diet is exemplary in all other regards, especially quality fatty acids. Rancid fats may be more harmful than sugar, as the body's cells are built from fats. Fats are greatly misunderstood and are one of the most important aspects of a clean diet.

[spade]

I think Steve Jobs destroyed his pancreas on his fruitarian diet. Not sure which toxins killed the pancreas - but killed it it did.

I just drank a cup of sugar cane juice today for my lunch. It was delicious.