Sugar withdrawal is like opioid withdrawal. That's what I'm gonna talk
about today. I'm Dr. Tracey Marks a psychiatrist and this channel is about
mental health education and self-improvement today. I'm going to talk
about sugar addiction. I put that in air quotes because technically it's not
really in addiction by psychiatric terminology, but behaviorally it's like
an addiction so I'm going to talk about ways you can determine or recognize if
you have a sugar addiction and how you can break free of this. Why is this
important from a mental health standpoint? Because with sugar withdrawal
not only do you get the physical symptoms like headaches, bloating
tiredness, but you can also get irritability sadness even. It can even
feel like depression or anxiety. If you research this topic you'll see that
excessive sugar increases the endorphins that your body makes. Endorphins are the
body's natural opioids. It's what you experience with intense exercise like a
runner's high. Your body actually produces chemicals that are same
structure as opioids. So how do you break this cycle? It gets a little tricky here.
Sugar addiction is not always about consuming too many sweets. In fact you
can get addicted to sugar even if you don't have what you consider to be a
sweet tooth. Many foods that we consume on a daily basis have added sugar and
some examples of these would be things like pasta sauce, soup, yogurt, salad
dressing. Anything that says fat-free has added sugar to help it taste better. Then
there's also sauces and condiments like ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, even crackers.
I mean it's all over the place and what's even a shame are the prepared
frozen foods like Lean Cuisine and those types of things they also have added
sugar. So it's the presence of sugar in these foods that can contribute to you
having or developing a sugar addiction. And here's some signs that
you're addicted to sugar. You find it really hard to say no to sugary treats.
You regularly crave foods even when you're not hungry. You get a short term
mood or energy boost when you eat the food and then it quickly crashes. If you
try and cut back, you get really strong cravings or maybe even get withdrawal.
And remember this can apply to starchy foods as well like french fries because
the high starchy foods have lots of carbohydrates that break down to sugars.
So let's talk about how to reduce your sugar. You can always try and stop cold
turkey, but that probably won't work as it's just too hard. What you want to do
is retrain your taste buds to prefer savory foods and you can do this by
slowly eliminating the foods with the added sugars. Now this will require you
to read labels and when reading labels you want to look for any of the
following items and that will tell you that your food has added sugar. And some
of these things are agave nectar, brown rice syrup, high fructose corn syrup,
dextrose, evaporated cane juice, lactose, malt syrup, molasses and sucrose. Now some
of these sugars are considered to be healthier types of sugar or at least
healthier than table sugar because they have more nutrients in them and they're
less refined. Table sugar goes through a refining process from sugar cane or
sugar beets whereas honey and agave nectar are
usually consumed more in their original form so that makes them healthier, less
refined. But don't be fooled into thinking you've made a good move because
you've switched from table sugar to organic raw honey at least not if you're
trying to reduce your sugar intake. Sugar sugar and all you've done really is
substitute one form of sugar to another form of sugar even if that other form it
has more nutrients in it. And remember almost all packaged
it has some type of sugar in it and this would be things like lunch meat or the
frozen meals or even breakfast sausage. So it'll take some discipline and work
to remove these things from your diet but just as with any habit it'll get
easier and more routine and automatic for you the more that you do it .So how
about trying this; this is a good start. Over the next month try and substitute
your high carb high sugar meal with something closer to whole food. So for
example if you're used to eating toast with Jam for breakfast or bagel or
muffin, try adding in or even replacing that with a boiled egg. When you add in
proteins and healthy fats you get satisfied quicker and you lose the need
to want to fill up with the high sugary meal. So the idea is if you feel full
sooner you won't need or won't crave more toast to feel satisfied. So a word
on sugar substitutes if you're looking to drastically reduce your sugar intake
you don't want to substitute or use sugar substitutes to help you do that.
Why? Because sugar substitutes like stevia, aspartame, agave for example all
keep your your food still tasting swee.t They don't help you reset your taste
buds and that's really what you need to do. But more importantly sugar
substitutes are linked to metabolic syndrome and I'll have a reference to
that in the description. Metabolic syndrome is a set of symptoms that
include high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol and abdominal fat.
And if you have any or especially all of these conditions it increases your risk
of developing diabetes and heart disease. So drinking several diet sodas a day
doesn't mean you've won the sugar war. In fact, you've just switched from one
poison to another one. So if you're gonna reduce your sugar intake, you need to go
all the way. Go full boat. Don't rely on the sugar
substitutes. So you're gonna need to do this gradually and you could start with
the big things like the desserts and then gradually go into eliminating the
processed foods with the added sugars in them. Now you do need to take that step
because if you don't eliminate it eliminate the the processed foods you'll
still crave those desserts and other sugary foods that you worked really hard
to get rid of. My last point is you do need to keep your expectations realistic.
It's not possible to consume zero sugar. We still get fructose from fruit and
glucose from the breakdown of carbohydrates such as vegetables and
grains. So what you're trying to do or accomplish here is reducing the added
sugar sources so that you don't over consume sugar. And once you get
accustomed to only consuming the natural sugars that are found in fruits and
vegetables, it'll be hard to tolerate the added sugar that you get from the
processed foods. And that would be a great place to be where things just
taste too sugary and you don't even want them anymore. I hope you can make some
headway with this. I'm still working on it myself. It's really hard to let go of
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