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By
Colleen
Huber
The Nagging Sweet Tooth
If you've got a sweet tooth, you know that it doesn't let you ignore
it for very long. At least once every day or two, the boss lets
you know who's in charge. You rummage around the kitchen for sweets,
check the back of the refrigerator and dart out to the store if
necessary.
A sense of sugar/chocolate deprivation sets in, and demands that
you do something about it. In a perfect world, a sweet tooth would
be satisfied for weeks at a time by an especially large dessert
or other massive binge. Wouldn't that be convenient!
Why does this happen? How does a person who regularly indulges
their sweet tooth end up feeling more deprived than those insufferably
serene types who don't eat sweets?
It has to do with a process called homeostasis. When you eat a
lot of sugar, your body notes that your blood glucose level is higher
than normal. As a result, the pancreas secretes insulin, which packs
this sugar away into cells that process it, in order to bring your
blood sugar back to normal. When a lot of sugar is ingested, a lot
of insulin comes out and packs it all away, which overcompensates
and swings your blood sugar too low for a while.
This accounts for the afternoon brain fog (transient hypoglycemia)
often experienced after a high-carbohydrate lunch. And this is when
the sweet tooth (really, just a euphemism for a sugar habit plus
a fluctuating blood glucose) wakes up and reminds you who's really
the boss.
Quieting the Sugar Addict in you
Of course it doesn't have to be this way. Sugar cravings, like
all others, can be overcome by substituting equally satisfactory
foods of better quality. You just have to know exactly what
kinds of good foods can satisfy which kinds of urges.
Cravings are actually the manifestation of a mild malnutrition,
certainly not with severe overt consequences, as say scurvy or rickets.
Rather, a great many people on the Standard American Diet (SAD in
more ways than one) suffer from a milder malnutrition from eating
only depleted, processed foods and not enough whole, nutrient-rich
foods.
As a result, we end up craving the vitamins, minerals and other
nutrients that we lack. But while your body may know that you are
missing say for example magnesium, your conscious mind is not aware
of the flavor of magnesium.
Instead, because of familiarity, you can reminisce and feel hungry
for the flavor of chocolate, which is high in magnesium. It also
has its appeal partly rooted in its magnesium. The chocolate that
your conscious mind desires has the greatest ability to quench those
cravings due to chocolate's high magnesium content.
Of course, the sugar in commercially prepared chocolate is another
desperate desire after you have ridden the sugar-insulin roller
coaster long enough to plummet to the abyss of hypoglycemia.
Fruit: Not Just Another Sweetener
People often ask, "Isn't fruit just as bad for you as desserts
with its refined carbohydrates and concentrated sweeteners?"
The answer: Definitely not! Refined carbohydrates, such as sugar
and flour are only fragments from original whole foods that contain
all of the molecules necessary for their optimal digestion.
What's left by the time it's packaged and sold to you as a dessert
is something quite different, an artery-slathering, fibreless, nutrient-robbed
shadow of its former self.
Fruit, on the other hand, has the fiber necessary to slow down
the entry of natural sugars to the bloodstream, which keeps your
insulin at moderate levels. Insulin is what is particularly important
not to let spike too high.
Some fruits are better at this than others. For example, mangos
and papayas tend to spike blood sugar and insulin, more than apples,
because apples contain the natural sugars that are slowed down by
the accompanying fiber. Another advantage of fruit is that it has
not been stripped of its inherent vitamins, minerals and enzymes,
many of which are necessary for its complete digestion.
This article is continued
in Part 3
 Colleen
Huber, 46, is a wife, mother and student at Southwest College
of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe, Ariz., where she is training
to be a naturopathic physician. Her original research on the mechanism
of migraines has appeared in Lancet and Headache Quarterly, and
was reported in The Washington Post.
Her
double blind placebo controlled research in homeopathy has appeared
in Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy, European Journal
of Classical Homeopathy, and Homeopathy Today. Her website Naturopathy
Works introduces naturopathic medicine to the layperson and
provides references to the abundant medical literature demonstrating
that natural medicine does work.
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