“I decided to cut my sugar intake by switching from sugary drinks to diet drinks. But I’m drinking more now, and I can’t go a day without my diet coke. What happened? How can I be addicted to a diet drink?”
If this is you, then congratulations for trying to cut your sugar intake, but you may be in an even worse situation with the zero calorie sweeteners. When you take in sugar, your body detects the sugar and calls out insulin to deal with it. While this reaction can lead to weight gain and insulin resistance, it is at least a natural and appropriate reaction to the sugar. Since sugar provides easy calories to your body, it will abandon fat burning and sugar scavenging in favor of running on the easy sugar. Do this often and you are going down the road of insulin resistance and diabetes. But your body is responding as it was designed to do in the presence of sugar. What happens when you take in artificial sweeteners? Your body tastes “sweet”, and it has been successfully fooled by the sweetener that is going to activate the same metabolism as the sugar would. But the sugar isn’t there. Now what happens? The insulin has been summoned to take on the sugar and drive it into the cells, but the sugar is missing. It grabs what sugar it can find, driving your blood sugar abnormally low.
Low fuel light is flashing
That isn’t the end of the process. Low blood sugar tells your brain that you need more sugar. Almost immediately it swings into action, because your body, knowing how dangerous low blood sugar can be, will trigger appetite. Your lowered blood sugar means you are hungry. If you respond to your hunger, you either eat sweets or more artificial sweeteners to satisfy the hunger. You may even feel the low blood sugar energy drop and get desperate to eat something. If you eat sweets or even simple carbohydrates, you provide the sugar your higher insulin level requires, but that means you are storing the sugar — storing it as fat. If you eat or drink more fake sugar, you fool your body further and make the problem worse. So you think the sugar-free foods are helping you lose weight, but you may have the opposite reaction. And you are addicted to the sugar-free food and drink. Either way, you have a sugar addiction!
You thought you could fool your brain into satisfying its desire for sugar by giving it fake sugar. It’s true that you lowered your calorie intake initially, but the boomerang reaction will try to lead you into increased sugar intake. Sugar is addictive. Fake sugar is addictive because it triggers the same reward circuits in your brain. Addiction is defined as “a chronic, relapsing brain disease characterized by a compulsive, persistent, and often harmful engagement with a substance or activity, despite negative consequences.” Why might you engage in harmful behavior? It’s because some part of your brain tells you that you need to do it. The rational side of your brain tells you it’s a bad idea, but your primal reward circuitry doesn’t pay attention to rationality. It nags you relentlessly to get your sweet fix and wears you down despite your knowing it is bad for you.
Drugs to the rescue — but at what cost?
With the failure of artificial sweeteners, many who are struggling with sugar addiction are turning to new prescription drugs. Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) antagonist drugs — the “GLP-1’s” you’ve probably heard about in the news — continue the pharmaceutical game of substituting a fake substance in the path of body metabolism, to alter it in a desired way along with multiple undesired side effects. These drugs act on the GLP-1 receptors in the brain, especially the hypothalamus, to decrease appetite. This turns down the primal urge to eat more, and normally leads to weight loss. Many people are clamoring for GLP-1’s because they seem an easy path to weight loss instead of changing lifestyle. But do two wrongs make a right? Or is it yet another pharmaceutical trap where the patient takes more and more drugs, getting more and more unhealthy?
Back by popular demand
Sugar feeds the brain reward circuitry. In the wild, we could not forage for enough sugar to feed this addiction, and that would limit us from consuming that much sugar. Animals respond only to their brains’ reward systems. If they could get easy sugar in their environment, they would, but the conditions of the wild make that difficult. They are constrained by nature. When we feed our pets with processed carbohydrates, we get fat pets. We have been able to circumvent nature and make sugars and carbs cheap, highly available, and desirable — even honored in society. We can let our reward systems run wild, and when we reap the consequences, we can turn to drugs to save us. Today, sugar is easy to produce, cheap to buy, and laced into many of our foods. People demand the sweetness.
Now addicted, those alarmed by their weight gain might turn to artificial sweeteners. Instead of breaking the addiction, the fake sweeteners feed it. The addiction cycle must be broken, not appeased: that is the only way out of the trap. Drugs are an answer only if you are willing to accept the long-term damage that they cause. If you wonder at your older friends who take a massive number of pills, and you figure you will never be doing the same, you may already be headed down that road. That could be your future, unless you break the addiction naturally.
We all know about cocaine addiction, if only through movies and the news. We consider such drug addiction to be in a totally different class than sugar addiction: it’s a much more serious condition, right? Surely cocaine is much worse; and besides, it is a drug, not a common food element. But the reward circuitry of the brain is involved in both. In fact, the same circuitry in the nucleus accumbens (NAc or ACB) of the brain, part of the ventral striatum located in the basal forebrain, is responsible for both addictions. This is explained in a review article published in Translational Psychiatry, where researchers used single-cell whole-brain imaging to determine what neurons were firing in cases of sucrose and cocaine addiction. “On the cellular level, in the ACB, repeated exposure to both cocaine and sugar triggered identical hallmarks of synaptic reorganization.” The difference was the pattern of activation. Although the patterns were distinctively different, the same brain circuitry was signaling the same cellular receptors. Both caused dopamine release — dopamine is a neurotransmitter and hormone which provides a major sense of pleasure when released. Sugar, and to a somewhat lesser but still significant extent, artificial sweeteners, cause release of dopamine. Cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, and various opioids also increase dopamine.
Sugar coating the problem
While relatively few have a drug addiction, many have sugar addictions. Attempting to deal with the addiction using artificial sweeteners isn’t much help since the same addiction reward responses are triggered in the body. Unlike cocaine addiction, people freely admit they have a “sweet tooth”, which is a nice way of saying that they crave sugar. What we are seeing here is that the craving is really addiction because the mechanisms involved in the brain are the same. Perhaps if we called a sweet tooth an actual addiction, we would be more determined to free ourselves of it. Instead, we are having to deal with insulin problems and possibly diabetes because we give our sugar addiction a level of acceptance and even honor. We turn down foods that don’t have a certain level of sweetness. We even breed fruit to be sweeter and consider a high sugar content to be a sign of food quality.
Published in Science Advances is further proof that cocaine addiction is very much like sugar addiction. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing conducted animal studies in which GLP-1 levels were measured during cocaine administration, and GLP-1 antagonist drugs were successfully used to reduce cocaine-seeking behavior. Sound familiar, similar to handling insulin problems? The same drugs used to block GLP-1 receptors squelched addictions to either cocaine or sugar. In the study, GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid, a key neurotransmitter in the brain that acts as a primary inhibitory neurotransmitter) neurons in the VTA (ventral tegmental area) of the brain were reacting to the GLP-1 receptor drugs. GLP-1 agonist drugs appear to be the modern answer to both cocaine addiction and obesity, simply by interfering with the brain reward process. So why not just turn to drugs instead of reigning in our addictions, since the pharmaceutical industry has given us an easy alternative?
We have yet to create a drug with no side effects. GLP-1 drugs are relatively new, and we may not even know what harm they may do long term, but we already know that they can induce tachycardia (excessive heart rate), inflammation of the pancreas and gallbladder, kidney damage, thyroid tumors, intestinal blockage, gallstones or gallbladder inflammation and an increased risk of depression, anxiety, and suicidal behavior. All for something that can be controlled quite naturally if we are willing to deprive ourselves of a little fleeting pleasure for a long term gain. Unfortunately, we aren’t very good at saying no to the reward system of our brains. Maybe we can “just say no” to drugs, but we don’t just say no to a piece of cake, candy, or soda. If we realize that sugar is just as addictive as cocaine, and maybe more so simply because of its being so readily available — an ongoing and frequent temptation in today’s society — maybe we would exert more energy to avoiding sugar. Or we can let the drugs do it for us, but they will demand a toll that will harm our health.
Addictions are serious. They damage health. That damage may take time, but it will take its toll. Drugs “rob Peter to pay Paul.” The toll they take can mean serious damage to your health. There is only one path that will be a win-win. Say no to sugar, sugar substitutes, and drugs — say no to your fickle primal reward system: the pleasure is for a brief moment, but the effects are long lasting.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
So sugar, artificial sweeteners, and cocaine all affect the brain neurotransmitters in the same way. This means these three need to be avoided. They are not health promoting in any way, shape, or form.
What is the take home message?
Break the addictions in your life, pure and simple — there is no other way. There is no drug. There is no quick fix. There is no easy path. In the world today, people are constantly looking for quick fixes. These are dangerous long term, not only because they have multiple side effects, but also because they never treat the cause. The worst area in your body to have out of balance is your brain. Your brain controls every cell in your body and if your brain is out of balance, then your entire body is out of balance.
Modern medicine and technology
You can see when the new craze of easy arrives. Its promises great results with minimal effort.
1. Remember the Atkins diet — it was the latest craze. It seems so easy. You can eat all the animal products and animal fat you want, just cut out the carbohydrates. A lot of people lost weight and felt good for a period of time, but then the research caught up with the craze and found what really happens long-term on the Atkins diet: increased risk of heart disease, cancer, kidney problems, gout, arthritis and osteoporosis. Some individuals also experience issues like constipation, fatigue, and negative changes in gut microbiome, and gaining the weight back very quickly. So, like all crazes, they always have a short term gain and a long-term loss.
2. Next in line, the ketogenic diet: it produces fatigue, headache, nausea, vomiting, and dizziness. Constipation, diarrhea, and stomach upset are common due to the low fiber and high-fat content of the diet. It increases the risk of kidney stones, elevated blood pressure, blood sugar imbalances, and — very important — cognitive decline, including brain, fog and mood swings. Most importantly, it increases risk of heart disease, cancer, fatty liver, and osteoporosis leading to bone fractures. With all that, quick regaining of weight may occur. This sounds similar to the Atkins diet with all its side effects possible.
3. Now let’s move to the next craze, the carnivore diet. This diet is the most restrictive of all, leading to the following: increased risk of heart, disease, cancer, kidney disease, gout, arthritis, fatty liver, osteoporosis, increase bone fracture, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and extreme bowel dysfunction. This diet is very detrimental to the digestive tract because you eat no fiber, no complex carbohydrates — the bowels need fiber and complex carbohydrates to move properly and to restore the normal microbiome, which is essential for not only proper digestion, but also vitamin, mineral, and protein absorption in the body. When you damage the gut with no fiber and no complex carbohydrates you open the door to immune dysfunction, autoimmune disease, increased levels of full-body inflammation because of the leaky gut syndrome — you eventually bottom out, with chronic infections, because of the weakened immune system and potentially cancer.
4. Finally, GLP-1 peptide craze. Desperate people pay money for things that appear to be miracles, but they get nothing more than drugs with long-term detrimental side effects. GLP-1 peptides fall in this group. Everyone wants to lose weight fast and that’s what GLP-1 will do, but like all the other crazes, there are long-term very detrimental health effects from quick fixes, and they don’t break addictions. As already stated, GLP-1 peptides can induce tachycardia (excessive heart rate), inflammation of the pancreas and gallbladder, kidney damage, thyroid tumors, intestinal blockage, gallstones or gallbladder inflammation, plus an increased risk of depression, anxiety, and suicidal behavior.
The blind leading the blind
Haven’t we grown enough in our lives to know, in this world, you don’t get something for nothing –especially something that makes such huge claims and is so easy to do? Just use a little common sense and you will understand that all these crazes don’t make sense: eating nothing but meat and animal products makes absolutely no sense — it can make a short-term gain yet a long-term loss, and this is the case with every craze.
How do you break the addiction? Two ways:
First way
This is the old-fashioned way. This is the no pain, no gain way. This is when you use your will to say no, because you understand the benefit you will gain in 90 to 120 days once you break the addiction. This is the way everyone has always done it since the beginning — there were no magic drugs. There was no crazy diets. There was just choice. You choose what you want: short-term gain and long-term loss, or do you want short-term pain and long-term permanent beneficial effect?
In our lukewarm society today, everyone’s afraid of pain. It’s so sad to see everyone wants to cover up every pain, every deficiency with a pill, drug, food, or harmful activity because it’s easy. Stop seeking easy: start seeking total health of mind, brain, heart, body and spirit.
How did people break smoking, addictions, and alcohol addictions in the past? By saying no –absolutely not for 120 days in a row. After that, it becomes a program in the brain and it’s no longer any work.
Second way
At Revolution Health & Fitness, our specialty is balancing the brain-heart-mind-body connection. We do this with our advanced 3-D brain imaging and advanced neural reprogramming protocol, which has outstanding results setting people free, not only from addictions, but also stored subconscious programs in their past (especially with people in their early life like mother, father, sister, brother, or relatives) and subconscious stress programs from throughout their life. All these stress programs can be rewritten with advanced neural programming protocols. We’ve been doing this for over 40 years at Revolution Health & Fitness, and the results are transformational in body, brain, heart, mind, emotion, and spirit.
So whatever you do, whatever path you choose, you absolutely must get off the quick fix craze bandwagon, and get on the path to total health, life and longevity.
There is a way that seems right and easy to a person, but in the end it leads to death of the body, of the brain, of the heart — mind and spirit.
You are not meant for easy, but for awesome. You are so much more than you appear to be. Rise up! You’re sleeping in a nightmare. Wake up to your true identity and stop looking for quick, easy, and painless. It’s nothing more than a hook to reel you into complete bondage and a total lie.
Be who you truly are: sons and daughters of your Father in Heaven.
