Are Hidden Sugars Poisoning You?

No matter what you do you can't lose weight, your fatigued, cold, depressed, and pain seems to be a constant companion. You're sure there's a physical explanation for all of this but your doctor tells you “your tests are all ‘within normal’ don’t worry; why not try Cymbalta.” But you are worried because this is not the life you had planned for yourself. No one likes to look fat and out of shape but the piling on of those pounds around the middle may be a more serious indication that your metabolism is being poisoned. I see patients every day with complex health problems relying on multiple drugs to get them through the day. Their health issues involving weight gain, depression, chronic pain and fatigue are commonly caused by undiagnosed metabolic poisoning and insulin resistance.

The primary causes of metabolic poisoning are hidden sugars in your diet and toxic chemicals in your environment. With this poisoning your ability to efficiently get energy from your foods at the cellular level has been damaged. The cells of your body need an abundance of energy to properly perform their work, when energy is inadequate symptoms will rise. When metabolic poisoning takes place in your muscle cells they become easily fatigued and sore, in brain cells you experience brain fog, depression and anxiety, and in the digestive track you end up with maldigestion and malabsorption problems. Eventually this metabolic syndrome with insulin resistance leads to type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's and early death!

Today, metabolic poisoning is happening at epidemic levels. It affects you and your loved ones and according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 2 out of every 3 adults and 1 out of 3 children in the United States are now overweight or obese. Our diet high in refined carbohydrates and hidden sugars has created a modern plague of obesity and type 2 diabetes. There are 21 million Americans suffering from diabetes, and the National Institute of Health estimates that as much as a third of these individuals are unaware that they have diabetes. Astonishingly, the CDC announced on June 15, 2003, that one out of every three children born from the year 2000 and on will develop diabetes by middle age.

Conventional medicine would have you believe that controlling your blood sugar with drugs or insulin will protect you from organ damage and death, and that type II diabetes is not reversible. The truth is that if properly addressed this can be reversed. Furthermore, research shows that the medication and insulin approach can actually increase your risk of getting a heart attack or dying. To properly treat this metabolic poisoning and subsequent diabetes you must go beyond just treating symptoms and go after the real underlying cause of your disease process.

How do you know if your metabolism is being poisoned or if you're on the road to diabetes and cardiovascular disease? You will need a knowledgeable doctor of functional medicine who knows how to find your own personal underlying causes for metabolic dysfunction and then properly treat them.

Basic laboratory testing for this begins with, but is not limited to, fasting glucose, fasting insulin, Hemoglobin A-1 C, hsCRP, GGT, Fibrinogen, Homocysteine, Triglyceride to HDL cholesterol ratio (TG/HDL-C). These tests are important because you cannot always judge a book by its cover. Many times I am surprised to find that even some of my more slender patients experiencing fatigue and brain fog have quite abnormal blood tests showing that their metabolism is being poisoned by hidden chemicals and sugars.