Sugar and Health

This week our guest blogger Gillian Carroll Bouse shares her thoughts on a sugar-free Christmas and her efforts to purge the sweet-but deadly- stuff from her diet. 

“On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me, a partridge in a pear tree. La de la la…” and so it goes. I am afraid I am going to find it very difficult and vaguely uncomfortable this holiday season. You see, apart from leaving my home of many years and other major life changes, I have adopted the Sonoma diet (aka a Mediterranean way of eating) and gone on an all-out sugar detox. I do love sugar, but if I want my MS to love me, it’s got to go. Not surprisingly, the first part of the diet involved the TOTAL elimination of sugar.

As a western society, we eat roughly four to six times the amount recommended by doctors. As well as a number of other health related issues, sugar in the blood stimulates immune cells to release inflammatory molecules that travel throughout the body, causing damage and irritation. Other negative symptoms of sugar ingestion and withdrawal I experienced included headaches, tremors, low energy, muscle aches and pain, chills and sweats, insomnia, strange dreams, irritability, gas and bloating, just to name a few. Looking back, it is easy to see why I may have been experiencing many of these symptoms and interestingly, many of the symptoms are also common in people with MS as well.

Sugar is very addictive, but now I know exactly how addictive. Before I got married I ate very little sugar but as soon as the honeymoon was over, my intake increased. I treated it as if I was given carte blanche to pig-out on as many sweet things as possible and two stone later, I resembled a typical overweight and unhealthy person. After finally giving up the sugar I realised I had been out there with all the nutters: crazy, irritable and unable to concentrate. On the heels of my success with sugar detox, I soldiered on with the Sonoma diet and went on to replacing sugars with fruits, vegetables, lean meats and whole grains, while leaving out the dairy, fats, and other unmentionables.

Now that the hard work is done (or at least it's getting easier), it’s as if a veil has been lifted. Many of my MS symptoms have improved and some have disappeared completely since quitting sugar. My energy levels have increased, I have become a nicer person (if that’s even possible), I have lost almost all the excess weight gained over the years, and my skin has even improved. Along the way, I've also improved my cooking skills and saved money. Although my willpower is apparently a work in progress, it keeps improving even with a small nibble of a sweet now and then. 

I'm not sure I was prepared for quitting sugar to be on a level with quitting smoking but it’s been worth it, and has been one of the best things I have ever done for me and for my MS.

Love it or loathe it? How do you deal with sugar? Post your comments below or join the conversation on Facebook or Twitter.

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