7 SURPRISING Ways Sugar Can Harm Your Health

AHA Publisher — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 07:00:00 +0000

Stephanie Woods via NaturalHealth365 – Let’s face it, sugar is extremely prevalent in today’s society. Many of the prepared and processed foods in grocery stores contain an alarming amount of sugar. This is why it’s well worth taking the extra minute or so to read the nutrition label before buying any packaged food item. We already know the typical dangers of sugar consumption such as obesity, tooth decay, and low energy, but there are many other conditions out there that you may not be aware of. Excessive Sugar Intake Damages Your Health in MULTIPLE Ways, Studies Show Here are seven surprising ways that sugar harms your health. Studies link high intake of sugar to a depressive mood. Sugar intake has been shown to increase depressive mood. It causes certain chemical processes in the brain that cause depression. If you experience depression, cutting back on sugar may help boost your outlook on life. Immune function reduced by eating too much sugar. Sugar consumption, especially fructose and high fructose corn syrup, lowers your immune system’s ability to function. What’s more, yeast and bacteria feed on sugar so consuming excessive amounts of sugar can cause infections as these organisms build up in the body. Instead of all the sugar-laden foods, eat ones that are rich in probiotics. Sugary foods can make your anxiety worse. When sugar is a standard part of your diet, you could be inviting in anxiety. High amounts of sugar in the diet have been shown to induce mood disorders in both women and men, namely anxiety. Eating too much sugar can sabotage your weight loss goals, but it can do even more harm. Regular sugar consumption can cause weight gain and obesity. When you couple this with the depression and anxiety that is common with such a diet, body dissatisfaction becomes more prevalent. Even someone who is not overweight may start to feel self-loathing and dissatisfaction with themselves. Sugar-laden diet may cause you to lose self-control. All too often, a person will indulge in sugar even though they know exactly what it does to their bodies. Even if a person is diabetic or pre-diabetic, he or she will often still consume sugar just because they want it or feel compelled to have it. Sugar takes a toll on your skin, destroys collagen production. High sugar diets damage the collagen and elastin molecules in the skin. This results in sagging and wrinkles. This can make you look older than you actually are. It can also cause your skin to appear dull, giving you a haggard appearance. Too much sugar cheats you out of nutrients. When you eat a lot of sugar you might be cheating your body out of important nutrients like vitamins A, C, B-12, and the mineral calcium. This can lead to nutrition deficiencies, which is a foundation of obesity. What’s the bottom line? Although low sugar diets are very popular, do not fall into the trap. Not all sugar is created equal, and you should not avoid sugars from whole foods such as organic fruits. Whole fruits offer many benefits to your health, including dietary fiber, disease-fighting antioxidants – and no added sugar. Many processed and prepared foods contain a lot of sugar, even those foods that you would never expect. The best thing you can do is always read the label. One of the best ways to reduce sugar in your diet is by eliminating sugar cravings. While this may seem like a daunting task, it is well worth the effort as over time, you will feel different mentally and physically in a good way. You will feel better, healthier, and you will have more energy. This is the only body you are going to get in life. Take care of it so that it will work for you in years to come. Sources for this article include: UTHM.edu DSpace.Library.uu.nl SCIRP.org NIH.gov TandFOnline.com NIH.gov To read the original article click here.

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How to Become a Responder Not a Reactor + How Arguments Affect Your DNA

AHA Publisher — Tue, 04 May 2021 07:00:36 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – Think of the last time you had an argument and how it made you feel, both physically and mentally. Pretty bad, right? Well, it is not all just in your head! Unresolved arguments can be harmful to your health, and can potentially decrease your longevity! In this podcast (episode #274), I talk about the importance of resolving arguments, and the incredibly beneficial impact this can have on your wellbeing and quality of life. A recent study from Oregon State University found that when people have resolved an argument, “the emotional response associated with the disagreement is significantly reduced”, while, “in some situations, it can be entirely erased”. Why is this important? Essentially, when you work to resolve an argument, you not only improve your relationships, but also your emotional health, which, in turn, can improve your overall wellbeing. There is much research, including mine (for more on this see my latest book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess), showing how unmanaged minds can result in toxic stress levels that affect our mental and physical health. This makes sense with major stressors like poverty or violence, but research has shown that daily chronic stressors like minor inconveniences and unresolved arguments can also have a lasting impact on our health and mortality. When it comes to arguments, avoidance and lack of closure can increase anxiety levels, which can impact our overall health (due to the mind-body-brain connection I discuss in detail in Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess). The Oregon studymentioned above notes that this includes “avoiding an argument to ‘keep the peace’” and/or “having an argument but not resolving it”. In this study, this avoidance resulted in increased reactivity, which lead to an increase in the subjects’ negative emotions, as well as an amplified emotional “residue”, that is a prolonged negative emotional toll the day after the negative experience occurred, all of which impacted the subjects’ health and mental wellbeing. However, in that same study, if an argument was resolved, “people reported half the reactivity on the day and no residue the day after”, which resulted in better health outcomes. What does all this mean? While people cannot always control what stressors come into their lives, and while the lack of control is itself a stressor in many cases, they can work on their own emotional response to those stressors. As I always say, we cannot always control our circumstances, but we can control our reactions to our circumstances. This is mind-management in action, and leads to a host of positive health outcomes, including better ageing and better stress resilience. In fact, through mind management and self-regulation, you can learn to manage your stressors in a way that they do not have a gnawing impact on you over the course of the day, which will help minimize the potential long-term impact of negative emotions on your health. I recommend doing a Neurocycle, which is a way to harness your thinking power through mind-management that I have developed and researched over the past three decades (I discuss this in detail in my book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess), to identify where you are at in your relationships and help resolve an argument. This process has 5 steps: First, take a break, go into another room or space and calm the brain down by breathing deeply. I recommend breathing in for 5 counts and out for 11 counts, and repeating this technique 3 times (for around 45 seconds). Next, GATHER awareness of your emotional and physical warning signals, such as tension in your shoulders, indigestion or feelings of anxiety. How has this argument made you feel emotionally and physically? Then, REFLECT on why you are having these feelings. Ask, answer and discuss with yourself what was said or done that resulted in the argument, and how it has made you feel. What do you think these feelings are telling you about the argument and about your response to the argument? What happened? What was said? Why? What assumptions may you be making? Why do you think the other person reacted the way they did? After this step, WRITE down what you reflected on. This will help you organize your thinking. Then, RECHECK. Look for triggers, thought patterns and “antidotes” (that is how you would like to respond in the future and how you would like the situation to end). Lastly, practice your ACTIVE REACH. Practice using the “antidote” you came up with in the recheck step to deal with your trigger. For example, this could be as simple as practicing not raising your voice or being more aware of your body language. To read the original article click here. For more articles from Dr. Leaf click here.

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7 SURPRISING Ways Sugar Can Harm Your Health

How to Become a Responder Not a Reactor + How Arguments Affect Your DNA