Among the many food cravings we can experience, the most common and detrimental to our health can be the craving for sugar. Most of us know by now that sugar attributes to disease in the body, including cancer, diabetes, and various forms of accelerated aging.
The “Not so Sweet” Side of Sugar
To save you from the complexity of a science lesson, I will break down “the bad” about sugar for you. When we consume sugar, the dietary sugar molecules bond to protein molecules and create what is called “cross-linked proteins.” This means the proteins in your body that normally create muscle tissue, organs, digestive tissue, skin, hair, nails, and so on are instead bonding to each other. This is also called glycosylation a theory of aging. The basic theory is that because the proteins bond to each other, they cause old tissues to stiffen instead of creating new, elastic, and healthy tissues. This causes the tissues to dysfunction: digestive problems, arthritis, joint pain, wrinkles, osteoporosis, and clogged arteries.
Sugar essentially weakens the body, which leads to toxic accumulation due to the body’s increased inability to remove toxins and function efficiently. This causes a “brutal sequence” effect in the body. Once the body becomes stiffened and weakened from sugar consumption, the endocrine system weakens. The hormonal system is disrupted from having to constantly balance the blood sugar, increase immunity, ward off bacterial overgrowth, and, in simple terms, keep the body alive from the “attack” of sugar.
The cycling effect occurs once the body’s energy becomes so low—from constantly striving to offset the imbalance—that it loses its ability to digest, assimilate, and eliminate. Toxic overload sets in, and eventually the body becomes constipated with undigested matter. We no longer successfully absorb the nutrition we are taking in, and this is where things get ugly. Once the body’s hormonal system is tampered with and we are not properly digesting our foods, we enter a vicious cycle. Without proper hormone function, the body doesn’t digest well, leading to malabsorption of the nutrients needed for proper hormone function. Even worse, bacterial imbalances occur that make us crave more sugar!
Overcoming the Crave
Though the evidence points all fingers at sugar as the culprit to dis-ease in the body, the problem here is not the sugar itself. In a healthy body, sugar is metabolized effectively and used as energy. Though I do not recommend the consumption of refined sugars, natural sugars in fruits, vegetables, and grains are life supporting.
The real offender is the sweet addiction to sugar. If we were balanced physically, mentally, and emotionally, we would be more capable of moderating our sugar consumption. We have discussed how the ingestion of sugar can lead to a cycling effect that causes us to want to only eat more sugar. There is hope for breaking this cycle, but knowing where to start is the secret to really succeeding in breaking the sweet addiction. Because of the domino effect sugar can have in throwing the body out of balance, we have to work systematically to bring ourselves back into balance.
3 Step Process to Kick the Craving
Defeat the Desire: Going straight to the root of the sugar craving—healing the digestive system—will fail to remove the craving, as healing is a process. Healing the hormonal system and gut are not an overnight process. Therefore, we have to work step by step to master the craving.
Dealing with the situation at hand (the burning desire for sweet and sugary food), we can more effectively handle the problem as a whole later on. For now, we remove the desire for sweet food. There are a few tactics we can use to do this.
One is to replace sweet foods with sour foods, such as fermented foods like raw kefir and raw cultured vegetables like sauerkraut. Once you start to add these fermented foods into your diet, you will notice the craving vanish. Not only do they provide a sour taste that eliminates our taste for sweets, but these fermented foods provide the body with healthy bacteria to start the process of healing the body holistically.
Lemon and lime juice in water with a dash of stevia is another great way to get your sugary fix without the sugar.
Sweet vegetables such as carrots, squash varieties, onions, coconut, and gluten-free grains like quinoa, buckwheat, millet, and amaranth provide the palate a sweet taste without the damaging effects. They also offer a whole lot of beautifying and healing nutrition!
HYDRATE! One of the most probable causes of sweet cravings is dehydration! Not only can minor dehydration cause serious sweet cravings, but more severe cases of dehydration are usually the cause of the more serious problems of bacterial infection and hormonal induced cravings.
This is simple stuff, folks; drink water! You will be amazed by how fast your cravings for sugar vanish just by spending a few minutes sipping on some mineral rich water instead of giving way to your sugar hankering. It’s important to get mineral rich water so you absorb the water more efficiently. Sparkling mineral waters are great, and a surefire way to increase your mineral content in your spring water is to add some minerals to it!
My favorites are humic and fulvic blends like Sunwarrior’s Liquid Light. A capful of this in your water with some lemon juice and stevia, and I promise you freedom of sugary cravings.
Heal the Gut: Once you have relinquished your taste for sugar and found ways to replace your craving instead of suppressing it, you are well on your way to healing that sugar craving once and for all. The final step is to work at healing your gut.
When your digestive system is not working accurately, you run into nutritional deficiencies. A deficiency in magnesium for example, can attribute greatly to sugar cravings. What your body really wants is the magnesium so it can create neurotransmitters, but your body doesn’t know how to tell you the difference between magnesium and sugar. It just sends the signal that your brain function needs a kick and whatever will get it there the fastest will do.
Healing your gut is a step by step process within itself, but here are a few simple things everyone can do to start the process. The first things you want to do are steps one and two in this article. From there, here are four simple things you can do to improve your gut health:
Remove gluten and any other un-sprouted grains, dairy, sugar (minimalize fruit sugar), and any processed foods.
Implement probiotic foods like raw kefir and cultured vegetables, sauerkraut, and kimchi.
Consume raw coconut products like virgin coconut oil, raw coconut cream, and raw coconut.
Supplement glutamine, humic and fulvic minerals, and mineral rich greens powders like Ormus Supergreens.
