Hello Health Champions. I think everyone today is aware that sugar's not all that great for you
but because it's everywhere, it's just so easy to slip up. So today I want to talk about what
really happens in your body when you eat sugar so you'll understand exactly why to just say
no. Coming right up. Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete
and if you want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works
make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss anything. When people talk
about sugar they're generally talking about small pieces of carbohydrate and it's interesting that
even though this is something that's very very natural and it's very abundant and it's in
almost every food in small amounts it's okay and in larger amounts it's devastating
so small pieces of carbohydrate that means disaccharides meaning two molecules
linked together and monosaccharides meaning a single molecule the most common disaccharide
is sucrose that's what we're talking about when we say table sugar white sugar refined sugar they're
all sucrose which is a fructose molecule and a glucose molecule linked up together
and even though that's a super tiny molecule it's still too big to get into your bloodstream
so we need an enzyme to split that down the middle so that we have individual molecules before
it can get into your bloodstream the other common disaccharide is maltose and carbohydrate can be
strung together in thousands of little units together and then when we eat them as a form
of starch then the body lops them off two at a time and the result is maltose so that's a glucose
linked to a glucose now once we split them up we get glucose and glucose is what we're talking
about when we're talking about blood sugar so when we mention blood sugar blood glucose when we
measure that we're talking about how much of this molecule is floating around in your bloodstream
and the glycemic index that's a measurement of how quickly the glucose in your blood increases after
you eat something for glucose that's a hundred because that's a benchmark that's the reference
of glycemic index fructose on the other hand has a glycemic index of only 20. so 100 is really fast
and 20 is really slow so a lot of people thought for the longest time that fructose was
great for diabetics they used it to sweeten candy and desserts and treats because it didn't trigger
blood sugar they thought blood sugar was the only problem and we'll talk about in a moment why it's
not the only problem sucrose has a glycemic index of 60 and that's because it's half fructose half
glucose so it ends up right between 20 and 100 and maltose interestingly has a hundred and ten
so even though this is linked together for some reason when you eat maltose by itself
then it actually has a higher glycemic index than glucose now in reality we eat
maltose as starch so bread and rice and potatoes and all of the starchy things the comfort foods
they are starch which is long chains of glucose and we chop them up into maltose so it takes a
little bit of time to break this up and that's why most of those starchy foods have glycemic
indices in the 70s and 80s you want to stay away from starch because this very very quickly
becomes glucose now when we talk about health problems the consequences of eating sugar there's
two different problems and first we talk about glucose and that has to do with how it affects
blood sugar levels and the body really likes to have a narrow level of blood sugar somewhere
around 100 so if you're on a low carb you probably want to be safe from 70 to 110 that's a good level
and if you eat low carb if you eat protein and fat and fiber and very little carbohydrate
your blood sugar is never really going to get outside this range at all after you eat it
will rise very slowly it will drop very slowly and it will be stable now when you eat sugar
and processed foods your blood sugar will start jumping because your blood sugar goes up very
very fast and now you get a blood glucose roller coaster and anytime it's high you're going to have
a stress you're going to have a threat to your nervous system so your body releases tons of
insulin to bring the glucose down so now you have hyperinsulinemia too much insulin in the
bloodstream and when you have a lot of insulin it's going to drop quickly so now at the bottom
end of this you get hypoglycemia when your blood glucose is too low and when you have hypoglycemia
now you have unstable energy you feel good certain times you have energy and the next moment you have
no energy and your mood follows that energy so you have mood swings the other thing that happens when
you have blood sugar swings is any time it gets low and it's unstable you get serious cravings
and hunger so that's the thing to keep in mind a calorie is not a calorie because sugar makes you
hungry the second problem is fructose which even though it doesn't affect blood sugar hardly at all
it is a stress on the liver it's a huge burden because the liver is the only tissue that can
metabolize fructose then all the fructose has to pass through the liver the fructose
turns into glucose the liver converts it and then that turns into fat and we end up with
a fatty liver a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and that goes hand in hand with insulin resistance
and type 2 diabetes then if you put the two together now you have a double whammy you have
the liver clogging of the fructose and you have the roller coaster blood sugar from glucose so
now you end up with weight gain the belly fat you get insulin resistance fatty liver type 2 diabetes
but also you get the whole slew of things associated with metabolic syndrome
which is hypertension high blood pressure as well as cardiovascular disease and even dementia but as
if it wasn't enough that sugar is directly causing the majority of things that kill us it affects a
whole bunch of other things as well your digestive tract for example it starts with the mouth and
it causes cavities that's what we tell our kids you can't have sugar because it causes cavities
well it also interferes with mineral absorption so it's related to mineral deficiencies
and then it gets really interesting because one of the most intricate one of the most central
pieces of human health is how our gut is doing our microbiome you have more life forms in your gut
than you have cells in your body and when you eat sugar you selectively feed everything you
don't want in your body so the pathogenic bacteria the yeast and the fungus and the parasites they
love sugar it's like a buffet when you feed them sugar so now you get an imbalance you get a war
zone down in your digestive tract where you're supposed to absorb all these nutrients and as
a result of that war zone you get a leaky gut and because of the leaky gut pieces that are too large
they're supposed to not pass through now they pass through that leaky gut and you get food allergies
which further sets you up for autoimmunity all because of sugar but it goes even further
sugar affects your hormonal system your endocrine system insulin is one of the most powerful
hormones in your body it has a tendency to sort of wipe out and dominate all the other hormones
hormones determine everything about your behavior as far as hunger and satiety and sleep cycles and
metabolism and so forth and normally we have really small amounts like parts per million
to parts per billion nanograms worth of this stuff so it's very sensitive it's very very delicate and
insulin is kind of like a sledgehammer in a china shop all right it just wipes out it flattens
all the other hormones and if you have some hormone imbalances i suggest you first fix insulin
and then you look at what all the other hormones are doing before you go and take any other measure
one common problem is hypopituitary, an underperforming pituitary because
insulin resistance is associated with a low grade inflammation which desensitizes it keeps the
pituitary from responding the way it's supposed to and as a result we also get hypothyroid when the
pituitary isn't issuing the proper orders to the thyroid and of course another cause of hypothyroid
is autoimmune Hashimoto's next we have adrenal fatigue anytime your blood sugar fluctuates
but especially at the hypoglycemic part and when you're stressed then your adrenals have
to compensate for those blood sugar swings and make cortisol so now you're stressing
out your adrenals as a result of that PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome very common in women
it is an insulin resistance problem it is a common cause of infertility as well as irregular periods
females start developing male traits such as hirsutism which is unwanted body hair such as
dark thick hair on the upper lip male pattern baldness and in men the opposite can happen so
men can start developing feminine traits like man boobs for example
and because this often happens later in life like 50 60 years old then a lot of times it's
like grandma starts looking like grandpa and vice versa so think about this and take care
of it because it's really tough on the grandkids when they can't tell grandma and grandpa apart
and here's a quick summary of everything that sugar causes and now because you're really smart
and you've watched a lot of videos on this channel you understand the amazing recuperative power
restorative powers of the body so if sugar causes all this then you now understand that stopping to
eat sugar has a really good chance of reversing all or most of this at least to some degree
so just say no if you enjoyed this video and you'd like to learn more about how to get truly healthy
i think that video would be a great one to watch next thank you so much for watching i'll see you
in the next video now if you've gotten some benefit from the information on this channel