Day 97 – Is Sugar Deadly?

“I like rice. Rice is great if you are hungry and want 2000 of something.”

~Mitch Hedberg

179.8 lbs.

Yup. Passed the 180 barrier. I wonder how scrawny I’d be if I hadn’t stalled out for 3 weeks… but considering I can now sometimes see my heart beat, I think I’d rather not know.

I ate an entire greek salad today. Though it was mostly lettuce, it was bloody filling. I’m looking forward to having more variety in my diet in just a couple of days! A UK reader who has become a friend of mine through this blog was kind enough to ship me some Quorn to try out, but I doubt it’ll get here in time for me to review in this section. Look for it in ‘reviews’ later, I suppose.

Another friend of mine has offered to bring me a cupcake at midnight on day 100, right at the end of my 100 days. Mmmm…. cupcake…

The temptation is going to be to indulge for a while but I know I’ve got to take it easy. Not only is my metabolism moving roughly at the same speed by which mountains rise, but even with a ‘normal’ BMR, multi-day binging on sugary sin food isn’t good for anyone.

In 1493 Christopher Columbus, on his second voyage to the West Indies, brought back cuttings of sugar cane from the Canary Islands, which ended up having a huge effect on the world structure of imperial power and on the political shape of the world itself. Sugar was a commodity which revolutionized European habits of consumption and, like tobacco and gold, were commodities the Spanish colonizers who followed Columbus could make a fast buck off of. They brought with them a supremely confident belief in European right and power and a formidable arsenal of cultural domination with which they proceeded to plunder the entire region.

The after-effects of sugar-motivated colonialism are shown in the excellent documentary Big Sugar (not to be confused with the Canadian band of the same name). It shows how sugar was at the heart of slavery in the West Indies in the 18th century, and how we’re still slaves to a sugar-based diet.

But now there are even more reasons to break the sugar addiction. A new study published in the Annals of Epidemiology points out yet another danger of eating a lot of things that cause rapid blood-sugar spikes. When researchers studied 1,000 Italian adults with and without pancreatic cancer, they found that those whose ate “high glycemic index” things had a higher risk of pancreatic cancer than the ones whose diets were relatively low-glycemic index.

“Glycemic index” is a term that refers to how fast a food makes your blood sugar level go up. High glycemic index foods (like white bread , potatoes, and of course candy) give you a quick burst of sugar in your blood while low-glycemic index foods (like lentils, soybeans, yogurt and many high-fiber grains) still increase your blood sugar but over a gradual period rather than a spike.

When they focused on fresh fruit, the researchers found that those who ate more fruit had a lower risk of the cancer. When they focused on candy, honey, and jam they found a definite relationship. This suggests that processed carbohydrates, unlike the ones from grains, fruits, and veggies, pose more of a pancreatic cancer risk.

Even without diabetes, HGI foods make your body release the blood-sugar-regulating hormone insulin – and insulin encourages the growth and division of cells in the pancreas. Too much “over stimulation” of that growth could be what causes the cells to go from micro-tumors (which we all have) to full blown cancer.

The good news is pancreatic cancer is relatively uncommon, so having a sweet tooth doesn’t guarantee you’ll get it. The bad news is for those who do get pancreatic cancer, it’s ultra deadly. Only about 5% of people with the disease survive more than 5 years after getting it, and early on it doesn’t cause any symptoms other than vague things like indigestion. How many of us are going to rush out and get checked for pancreatic cancer any time a meal doesn’t sit well in the gut?

Meanwhile, people who eat brown rice and other whole grains have a lower risk of diabetes. A researcher team from the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital studied 200,000 adults for as many as 22 years, and found eating more refined white rice was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 is the diabetes where you get high blood sugar levels because your body’ can’t process sugar properly. It’s often linked to obesity and poor diet.

Kind of backing up the refined sugars causing bad things angle of the pancreatic cancer study, Dr. Qi Sun wrote in the type 2 diabetes study that  “…the public should pay special attention to their carbohydrate intake and try to replace refined carbohydrates, including white rice, with whole grains.”

They found that replacing 1/3 of a person’s white rice intake could lower their type 2 diabetes risk by 16%, and replacing the whole shebang with brown rice decreased risk by 36%.

This doesn’t mean rice is bad. It’s an example of how refined carbs cause havoc on your system that can be reduced by eating other carbs instead.

Me, I have a sweet tooth. But that just means having the occasional small treat. My friend Rick has no sweet tooth whatsoever. He actually doesn’t like sweets at all; so he’s probably at a lower risk than I am for pancreatic cancer. Then again, Rick smokes cigarettes.

We all have out vices.