Sugar: The Path to the Dark Side

There’s a bag of chocolate chips in my cabinet and I swear I can hear them calling out to me, “You don’t know the power of the Dark Side…”

I believe I am addicted to sugar. I don’t feel good in the morning if I don’t have some sort of cake/muffin/donut/pastry. I get cranky – no, downright nasty – if there isn’t some sort of cookie or ice cream in the house to snack on. And when I eat it, I feel that sugar rush and all is right again with the world.

The problem, besides the fact that all this sugar is likely leading me to diabetes and an early grave, is that I feel lousy. I’m achy, bloated and tired ALL THE TIME. I have little energy to keep up with my children. (And before anyone comments that I might have some other health problem: I’ve seen my doctor for a physical and the only thing wrong with me is insulin resistance. Solution? Stop eating sugar.)

It should be an easy sell. Just change your diet and you could feel 100% better. But this is an addiction and I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t feel strong enough to kick it. I asked my doctor if I could adopt the “one free day per week” plan where I could eat anything on that one day. His response: “Do you think an alcoholic could have just one drink per week?” Hmph.

Is it really that bad? Are donuts in the same category as heroin? Not quite, but recent studies suggest that sugar can indeed act on the brain as a drug. Consider the following from the Society for Neuroscience:

“Scientists suspect that sweets, like drugs, can activate an “incentive system” in the brain that helps reinforce behaviors. Activation by food is generally beneficial. It makes us want more and keeps us alive. Sweets, however, packed with calories, may create extra activity that helped us in primitive times when food was scarce, but is not needed today. Some also believe that gorging on sweets may alter the system so that it caters to addiction rather than survival, propelling some people to repeatedly binge.

“Recent behavioral tests in rats further back the idea of an overlap between sweets and drugs. Drug addiction often includes three steps. A person will increase his intake of the drug, experience withdrawal symptoms when access to the drug is cut off and then face an urge to relapse back into drug use. Rats on sugar have similar experiences. Researchers withheld food for 12 hours and then gave rats food plus sugar water. This created a cycle of binging where the animals increased their daily sugar intake until it doubled. When researchers either stopped the diet or administered an opioid blocker the rats showed signs common to drug withdrawal, such as teeth-chattering and the shakes. Early findings also indicate signs of relapse. Rats weaned off sugar repeatedly pressed a lever that previously dispensed the sweet solution. ”

This web page also offers further facts to ponder: 76 Ways Sugar Can Ruin Your Health.

So the answer seems simple. Just say no to sugar. But I can feel myself start to shake just thinking about it…