Daily Tip #9 Sugar and Inflammation: Daily Habit Challenge
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Functional Medicine with Dr. Var. This podcast is to help you explore the underlying root causes of your chronic symptoms and health challenges. Reset your health and reclaim your life.
VARSHA: Right now as you are listening to this, there is likely inflammation brewing in your body. Now. The scary thing is, is that it could be silent and you may not even know it inflammation could be affecting your joints, your brain, your heart, even your skin.
If you have any joint pain, brain fog, mood changes, high blood pressure, and pretty much any medical problem or symptom that you are on medication for.
Then you have inflammation. Inflammation is like a fire just burning inside your body, damaging all of these tissues and organs. Today I am going to reveal the number one food that causes inflammation.
[00:01:00] And you may have guessed it, that's sugar.
Sugar can be hidden in many foods, especially if you eat any processed foods.
I'm talking about added sugars, so not natural sugars that are in fruits, vegetables, or milk. I'm talking about if you look on the label of something, you can look at sugar and it'll say added sugar. You know, one gram, two gram a hundred grams, you know,
but this added sugar is processed, when you eat it, it spikes your blood sugar. So your body has to make insulin to control your blood sugars, when your body has to make more and more insulin to control your blood sugars, it literally is stressing your body out,
leading to even more inflammation.
And you may be thinking, well, I just eat a little bit. But if you're eating little bits, several times a day, several times a week, it all adds up and fuels this chronic inflammation. And your inflamed body does never gets the chance to cool down because sugar is constantly feeding the fire.
The minute you stop [00:02:00] feeding that fire, your inflammation will start to calm down. Your body will start to calm down and you'll start to feel better, and usually in just a short amount of time. I know for myself when I am on my sugar kicks
because, yes, I do love gummy bears and jelly beans, unfortunately. I realize I start to hurt more and I'm more foggy, and then I say, okay, I gotta just cut this out. Usually by three days I don't crave it anymore and my body and mind feel better. You know, I have. Patients many times where they just don't feel good and we can't find a reason.
And I ask them about their diet and they say, oh no, I'm not eating any sugars. But then I find out that they are actually drinking several large styrofoam cup sodas, which the styrofoam itself is another issue, but that'll be another daily tip.
But those could be like 32 to 48 ounces. If you drink one 12 ounce can of soda, that's about on average, about 44 grams of sugar. If [00:03:00] you're drinking four times that much from the gas station, that's like 264 grams of sugar that you're having a day.
And if you're a man. The most amount of sugar that's recommended in a day is 36 grams. So if you drink a can of soda, you've definitely met that quota. But 36 grams of sugar also equivalents to about nine teaspoons a day. And for women, you're supposed to only have up to 26 grams of sugar or six teaspoons a day.
So imagine when you are drinking way more than what's recommended, how much that's fueling your inflammation and causing you to feel bad. So here's your daily habit challenge for today. Find one source of added sugar in a food that you are eating. Or drinking and swap it out with something more healthy.
Now, you might be saying, well, I don't eat any sweets, but sugar, as I mentioned, can be hidden. And there are a lot of foods, including breakfast cereals, for example, that [00:04:00] have added sugars. Try switching it out for gluten-free steel cut oats with some blueberries.
And if you really need to add something sweeter, you can add allulose . You can also put a little bit of collagen protein in there to, get a little protein boost, and then in the afternoon instead of having your regular candy bar, swap it out for dark chocolate that has at least 70% cacao because dark chocolate has wonderful antioxidants and health benefits for you.
The key is to make it feel like it's an upgrade and not a punishment. So you wanna pick something that you truly will enjoy eating instead of the sugar-free food. That's gonna help you feel better, help reduce your pain, help your brain think better.
I mean, who doesn't want that?
If you like this daily tip and habit challenge, please subscribe or follow. You can watch the video version on my YouTube channel, functional Medicine with Dr. Var, or if you wanna explore other videos on functional medicine [00:05:00] topics that aren't on this podcast, there is a library of videos for you to watch there.
So stay tuned tomorrow for another daily tip and habit challenge thanks for watching or listening, and have a fantastic day.
