The evils of sugar & diabetes

Our people are sick and tired of being sick and tired all the time. Metabolic diseases in our time are claiming more lives than ever before. The question is: Why is this so? You will expect that with our improved health facilities and latest technology in bio-chemistry and other related fields our health should be improving. Looking at the latest statistics, especially relating to type 2 sugar diabetes, more and more people are dying of this illness. I was fortunate to hear one of the world-renowned nutritionists and health practitioner, Dr Llaila Afrika, talk about diabetes and how best it can be reversed. What is diabetes? There are at least two types of diabetes ravaging our society today, but the most common and associated with our lifestyle is type 2 sugar diabetes mellitus. Diabetes mellitus is scientifically known as a pancreatic disease and is one of the many diseases that is associated with the pancreas alongside high blood pressure, glaucoma, cataracts, arthritis, infertility, dementia, Parkinsons, and Alzheimers. Dr Afrika said diabetes mellitus is commonly associated with synthetic carbohydrates such as white sugar, white flour, potatoes and similar highly processed foods. Why is it that our history books rarely or never mention this disease? A simple answer to this is that our ancestors were not eating refined carbohydrates such as sugar, white rice, white flour and other things like we do now. These are foods that were introduced to us by Western settlers and were really never part of our everyday diet until recently with the commercialisation of highly processed foods that are now found on every Mosotho’s table. The pancreas breaks down this carbohydrate and makes sugar out of it and so we associate that with insulin which is a hormone made by the pancreas and glucagon which is another hormone. Insulin brings the sugar rate down and glucagon brings the sugar rate up, with the two balancing each other out. Our high consumption of processed carbohydrates, constantly cause our pancreases to work over-time trying to bring down the high sugar content in our blood and therefore constantly causing the pancreas to be stressed. Eventually, the pancreas loses the ability to produce more of this insulin or lose the ability recognise sugar when it is in the blood. When the pancreas is unable to deal with concentrated sweeteners it collapses and you have diabetes mellitus. Okay, you may be asking yourself: what is really so wrong with the added sugar? Why is it so bad? To that, Dr Afrika says sugar starves the body. Sugar is a dehydrating food, and starvation food. During the processing of sugar, fibre, minerals, vitamins and water are taken out of sugar cane or sugar beets and when you eat the white sugar the body says “I’m going to put back the water, the minerals and the vitamins that were with the sugar cane before it was processed”, so it strips the body of its moisture and causes the moisture to come out of the nerves leaving the nerves brittle, they begin to fall apart and get damaged. Hence nerve related diseases such as dementia, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and lupus, all those are caused by the sugar pulling moisture out of the nerves. So it also pulls moisture out of the joints and muscle and you end up with rheumatism and arthritis; Sugar pulls the moisture out of the eyes, dries the eyes and the nerves, eventually the eyes fall apart and you end up being blind. Diabetes is currently the leading cause of blindness in black communities. It also taxes the kidneys because all the sugar goes through the kidneys and a high intake of concentrated sugar over-works the kidneys to dilute it to an extent that it eventually loses its ability to dilute it and you end up on dialysis. As we have shown earlier, sugar pulls moisture out of the nerves and it becomes frail and falls apart. A decreased circulation of blood through the nerve system of your feet and legs will eventually lead to amputation when your vascular system loses moisture. Dr Afrika says we can, to some extent, avoid this calamity with a little change in our diet. By changing your diet away from added sugar, which can be maple syrup, honey, malt sugar, brown sugar, all concentrated sweeteners, candy bars, fizzy drinks can greatly help reduce the risk of diabetes. Sad and infuriating as it may sound, diabetes is a big business both for pharmaceutical companies and the food industry. Insulin makes billions and billions of Maloti each year for the big pharma, while sugar is a money spinner for the food industry. White sugar is used to hide off-flavours and the chemicals in food when farmers spray crops with the herbicides and pesticides. The best way to hide these off-flavours is with sugar. To have your product and have people constantly buying it is to put sugar in it to make people addicted to that product. That is why they put sugar on potato chips, even on tobacco, in medicine, in mayonnaise, tomato sauce, they put sugar in all products that cause it to be addictive so people keep on buying the product and constantly make money for these food companies. You have been taking insulin for years now, I guess. Why haven’t you stopped? I think if your doctor has been doing his job, you would not be on insulin for so many years, in fact you should have been finished with him at least a couple of years. Whichever the case Insulin and sugar are money makers; you cannot take them out of the market for the very same reason why drugs are still in the market. My last word of caution! Stay away from processed carbohydrates, quit added sugar, and eat the food your great grandmother will still recognise as food. If it has a label, it is not real food. l Tšepang Ledia is a Public Relations Officer at Lesotho Electricity Company. He writes in his own capacity. For feedback, send to: mrledia@gmail.com Tšepang Ledia