(no subject)

[thedreamisdead]

[There's no getting around it. It's an essay. About the dangers of sugar abuse on your health, linked to several medical articles. In it, she links the abuse of sugar to depression, diabetes, dopamine imbalances, fueling cancer cells and making tumors more aggressive, impotence, increased risk of heart attacks and heart disease, increased inflammation leading to joint pain and arthritis, increased risk of strokes, kidney failure, and rotting teeth.

Included in her essay is a list of signs of sugar abuse, including false teeth, rotten teeth, pupil dilation, jitteriness, mid-afternoon 'crashes', and other symptoms.

She wraps up with a plea for people to seek help and rehabilitation for their addictions and avoid anyone who might try to push such addictive substances on them.]

Comments

[thedreamisdead]

And yet people think that access to sugar is at a sane level.

[Disgusting.]

[captainbuzzkill]

Look, this is what I used to eat for breakfast until Wash told me I had to eat healthier, and other than doing it for a joke? I was fine going without it. It's not like I had to curl up in a ball somewhere and go through withdrawal.

But while I was eating lots of sugar, I didn't have diabetes, or kidney failure, or rotten teeth - especially since those sonic toothbrushes are so powerful they almost vibrate your teeth out of your skull.

Sugar's just bad for old people because once you get old, pretty much all the foods that actually taste good automatically turn to caulk in your blood stream. And it's bad for kids and teenagers who sit around play video games all day and don't run around saving the galaxy.

But Dr. Gym'll says that I'm supposed to eat 3,200 calories a day and that about 2,000 should be carbs.

[He holds up the spoon.]

Sugar? Is a carb.

[thedreamisdead]

The problem with that logic is that sugar is a simple carbohydrate rather than a complex carbohydrate. It only gives you a short burst of energy with no added nutrients as opposed to the longer term energy benefits found in vegetables, rice, wheat, and other grains and starches.

Insisting that sugar is a carb, and therefore good for you, is twisting the Doctor's words.

[captainbuzzkill]

Complex carbs and simple carbs all convert into glucose and the only reason complex carbs are better for some people is because it takes more work for them to metabolize, so that you're not eating more calories than your basal metabolic rate can handle, and so there's less of big sugar rush all at once that your body has to pump out insulin for.

So you're right, complex carbs are better for blood sugar regulation, and because they have more nutrients.

[Somebody did their research before starting the argument because he is a nerdy, know-it-all, smarty-pants.]

Buuut that means if you eat simple sugars alongside proteins or complex sugars, it'll basically have the same effect of some of it metabolizing right away and some of it metabolizing more slowly. And it'll offset the empty calories.

[Time for act 2. He pulls out a little cup of low-fat, low-sugar yogurt and starts eating that.]

Tada.

[He pops off the lid and licks the yogurt off.]

Dr. Gym'll said it was fine if I eat sweets at least sometimes, especially for the extra calories, but just not all the time.


So there.