How Sugar Hijacks Your Brain And Makes You Addicted Causing Health Problems and Hindering Future Generations

(Stillness in the Storm Editor) Addiction is one of the things that most of us either have direct experience with or know someone who has. 

What if the number one addiction on Earth wasn’t drugs, but sugar?

Sugar is added to almost all foods, especially processed ones. And it hides in seemingly innocuous places, like cereal, bread, rice, and even fruit. 

Almost all our food has a significant amount of sugar and through selective horticultural techniques in place since the dawn of the modern human age, many of the crops we raise for consumption also contain a lot of sugar. 

The toll that this has on the body and mind is astounding. And because over-consumption of sugar is so pandemic we lack the perspective to see just how much this addiction has ravaged our health as individuals and as a civilization. 

High sugar diets feed bacteria that take over beneficial microbes, which are essential for proper immune function and overall health. This leads to all manner of disease, from acne to cancer, from mental illness to chronic digestive problems. And what’s worse, the genetic expression (epigenetics) of the body literally changes and is passed on to future generations—called transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.

What this means is that for generations high sugar diets have been slowly transforming the human organism, making us sick, diseased, and unhealthy as time goes on. And the advent of the industrial age has only magnified the problem. 

But many who want to be healthy are beginning to understand what past generations seem to have forgotten, which is that sugar is highly addictive and destructive, as the following article details with scientific precision. 

The solution is to begin the long and often hard process of arresting a high sugar diet. It means having to deal with addictive cravings that are arguably just as powerful as any drug dependency. 

As I wrote about in the below article, while there are many forms of addiction, substances we consume in order to boost our mood, mimic the body’s natural systems for making us feel good. 

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A restoration technique often involves a holistic mind/body process, fueled by education and motivated by an ideal clearly envisioned within the mind. Once we know what true health looks like, we can come to understand how sick we are, and probably have been all our lives. And with this much-needed contrast, we can motivate ourselves to become healthy—developing a greater appreciation for what the body and mind can do when it isn’t ravaged by sugar addiction.

Consider that the highly-popular baby formula Similac is loaded with sugar, all but guaranteeing children start off life addicted to sugar, and as a result they develop immune systems that are out of balance—ripe for sickness and poor health. 

Fortunately, there are ways to eat better and restore the balance, but since most of us have never experienced what this feels like, it will take a lot of motivation to climb the mountain ahead of us. 

On a personal note, I started limiting my sugar intake last year after realizing the connections mentioned above. I didn’t do it all at once. It was a slow and careful process. In this case, moderation really is something that can help us. I had to start appreciating what my body felt like when it wasn’t flooded with sugar. One of the things I noticed is that I stopped getting sick, I could think more clearly, and my energy levels were more consistent on a low sugar diet. Instead of chasing one sugar high after the next, I could actually eat low sugar foods, feel energized and not be as distracted by what used to be an ever-present feeling of tiredness and lack of motivation. 

So while getting off of sugar might just be one of the hardest things we do—especially given all the temptations in our modern-day world, it’s within our grasp and well worth the effort. If not for ourselves, then our children, who will have a much healthier epigenetic compliment when we pass down our genes to future generations. 

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Source – Authority Nutrition

by Kris Gunnars, BSc, 2015