The Sugar Addiction Epidemic - Who's Killing the Kids?

Back on the soap box !

I just received an email from a teacher in California. Here's a snip. While I'm sure it won't surprise you, the crux of the matter is just that. Few of us are surprised, yet little to nothing happens. My question throughout the years has been "Why?"

I have taught bunches of kids for decades. I've been totally fed up with the amount of sugar the school district puts in their food. Yesterday's breakfast was waffles (with sugar in them), syrup, a pale hot dog, milk (not chocolate, thank goodness), and reconstituted orange juice. Today's breakfast was a bun the size of two hamburger buns, made of white flour and lots of sugar, further sweetened with a coating of sugar over the whole thing; milk; reconstituted orange juice ~ nothing else. Every breakfast every day is made of basically white flour and sugar, with processed meat sometimes. How can the kids expect a healthy life with such an insane start?

I'm been researching & clinically working in the field of sugar addiction management for the past two decades. As a nurse & clinical hypnotherapist, I'm acutely aware of the tremendous problems facing our nation & the industrialized world. Every single day I treat clients who are seriously addicted to sugar, many of whom are already too far gone for prevention, being already in the acute disease phase. These clients include children & adults alike, all of them sick & if they don't change, they are going to get a lot sicker.

The need to manage sugar in our society is vital. The health problems related to sugar addiction and poor lifestyle behaviors are much more complicated than they appear on the surface. The numbers are startling & yet, I've not been able to interest publishers in my book as they don't see a market for it. This is both interesting & frustrating. Yes, there are some days when I simply feel like screaming out loud.

We are a nation of people in deep trouble. Our lifestyle behaviors are taking us swiftly down the road towards the killer diseases with many people arriving long before they should. Stress related problems fill the doctor’s office while emptying the business office of healthy and creative employees.

Everyone pays the piper for this from employer to employee and the family unit as well. Stress-related disease could be called the no-name disease, for rarely does it have a specific diagnosis. Most patients are simply told to change their lifestyle behaviors or they will become sicker. But here is the irony. The behaviors that need to be changed are often those utilized to manage stress such as sugar, food, alcohol, smoking and drugs. So how does the patient change the behavior, manage the stress while keeping these changes in place permanently, or at least long enough to have it become a solidified habit.

The number of people addicted to some substance is beyond belief. However, it is only the top of the iceberg. What’s below is even more frightening as few people pay attention to their lifestyle behaviors until a crisis presents itself. Addictions are dangerous outside of themselves as they lead to killer diseases. Lives are changed and lost simply because of lack of self-responsibility and self-care. The question is how to help people wake up and change before it’s too late and the cost too great.

The large majority of people spend the day sleep-walking. They are simply not awake to observe their lifestyle habits nor the corresponding emotions that build killer stress in the body. The things I'm addressing here can and will only be found through a very special type of inner-looking & self-appraisal.

My work is to help individuals get on the merry-go-round of life somewhere & focusing on the nutritional intake is one of the best. Truth be known, we are a nation lost in a wide variety of eating disorders. Most people are not even aware of the seriousness of their individual situations. Even people who think they eat well are often making very serious mistakes that are taking them down some very dangerous roads, simply because they don’t understand the needs of their body as dictated by their family and personal medical history.

Sugar addiction & the multi-syndromes of poor nutrition are true illnesses & accelerate the killer disease diagnoses. They are also responsible for many other problems, physical symptoms, stress including sleep disorder, anxiety & depression, decreased cognitive function, lack of productivity and creativity.

These problems actually keep people from eating correctly and they can be found under every addiction. They rob the quality of life. To make matters worse poor nutritional choices & behaviors are everywhere and like wallpaper, blend into the scenery of life.

Sugar and food addiction is simply accepted as the American way of eating and drinking. Our people are plagued by poor choices, huge portions & even the fear of eating. People binge & starve. They purge. They want to thin & perfect. Few talk about being healthy. Heads are buried in the sand, secretly hoping that the body will forgive & forget all the indiscretions. Unfortunately that is fantasy living &statistics highlight this outrageous human error.

Here in this blog-workshop I'm looking at sugar & the multi-syndromes of poor eating, but perhaps even more important, how the individual body responds to the behavior. Most readers will be familiar with how their body feels when they eat sugar or follow a less than healthy eating plan. Unfortunately, seeing the problem usually isn’t enough because most people are fearful of change for many reasons. Sugar is often a stress-releaser food & many have tried & failed in the past, becoming more stressed in the process. Managing the fears around stress is paramount to success of any eating disorder, be it mild or major.

Keep in mind that minor eating disorders can have very negative outcomes as well. Those who never tame them will pay the price in the future because the body remembers & is keeping score.. Even in an educated society, few understand the depth of the problem, nor how to manage without it. There are some people who question whether or not there is a need to manage it, preferring to see it as just a small problem sitting in a sea of bigger & more important health problems. I am working daily in my writing, with my clients & my online groups to open their eyes to what they are doing to their mind & body each and every day. My job is to teach them new ways to release the fears surrounding the management of their stress.

Throughout my research I have interviewed a few thousand people and less than 2% have any knowledge of how their family and personal medical history play a role in the way they make food choices and manage stress.

It is clear that sugar and certain carbohydrate foods react differently in each individual. The reaction also has a tendency to change at different times of life, depending on the lifestyle behaviors of the individual & where they are “hormone-wise.” Stress also plays a big part in how one responds to the food or beverage choice. Individuals need special education so they will come to understand that if a family medical history is positive for reacting to sugar, the early child eating habits do take a toll in the present, as well as in the future of that child.

My clients & readers become familiar with other known medical indicators as well. The addictions history of the individual, as well as that of the family will alter the body and mind reactions to sugar. If the family medical history is positive for alcoholism, smoking, drugs, or other substances that particular individual will have a tendency towards over-reacting to sugar & high glycemic carbohydrates. To wit, if the family medical history is positive for diseases that hyper-react to sugar, the tendency towards what is called “sugar addiction” is very high. The same holds true for the addictions component, and if both medical indicators are present, there is a very high tendency towards this major problem.

Few people have high level awareness concerning their food intake, many not even remembering what they consumed over the last twenty-four hours. This is incredible, as food reacts as a drug in the body & mind. Most people tend to laugh at poor eating habits as if they had no dire outcomes. Connections to other addictions, uncontrollable moods, low productivity, accidents and the like are missed completely as if there was no connection at all to what was put in the mouths and how often. As a nation, we seem blinded to the fact that we are speeding down life's highway, giant slurpy in hand, straight into the arms of killer diseases.

Several books have been published in recent years addressing the sugar and high glycemic carbohydrate issue, a few even becoming bestsellers. This tells us that millions of people are very concerned about their health in relation to what they eat. While many readers have gone on to experience some level of food-management success, just as many have failed, the reason being that while the problem appears to be about food, it is actually about the complex issue of lifestyle change. This awareness helps us to understand why the problems still exist in our society.