http://www.endalldisease...sugar-ruins-your-health/

Stumbled upon this and seems a bit exaggerated but then again its also possible,anyone can shed some light on the matter would be great,further if it is indeed true i hope it could be of some help and would have to make some change inmy lifestyle since sugar is quite abundant inmy daily life(99% being through coffee which is unhealthy too but damn i love that stuff)

It's well known that sugar is poison. In fact, Terrence McKenna even mentions sugar as such in his book "Food of the Gods": addictive, terrible for health. He considers it most difficult to get free from it from many other addictive drugs.

Some RAW, local honey, fruits, and a bit of raw cane sugar in moderation, are not nearly as bad. But high fructose corn syrup, artificial sugars, too many starches (don't forget that starches are forms of sugar), and most other forms of sugars when consumed in large quantities (e.g. sodas, cakes, spoonfuls etc) are very detrimental.

I personally try to keep my daily carb allowance bellow 100 gr of net carbs ("net" means that you don't include the fiber in the calculation). If you're not trying to lose weight, up to 150 gr of net carbs daily is healthy-enough. I use cronometer.com to calculate my carbs (you must activate the "net carbs" option in its settings). Give it a go and see where you fit.

Excellent resource! thanks so much for sharing this.

I have tried to survive on low carb paleo before and felt like I was dying to be honest..so there is a balance. Saying sugar is a toxin sounds sort of weird to me. You need glucose to survive..it is only a toxin when you ingest too much of it..like with refined white sugars and flours..and too much bread or high fructose corn syrup etc..

I dont really eat grains..aside from a couple tablespoons of oatmeal at times and less often wild rice..but I go periods of time without either of those also..I dont eat wheat or breads. I try to eat sweet potatoes and yams as my main carb source, as then some fruits.

I try to model something more similar to a traditional pre SAD diet, or indigenous diet(but I dont like that word)..more healthy fats..more protein and then more stable carb sources like yams and sweet potatoes..I will have maybe a teaspoon of real maple syrup with yams sometimes..I dont really drink much juice at all unless its green juice. I just eat fruit.

I used to be really hypoglycemic and cutting out grains for the most part and refined sugars changed that for the better.

Paleo is not low carb, you can make it if you want to, but it doesn't have to be. Unfortunately, it's been marketed as a low carb weight loss diet, but in reality, it's nothing of the sort. It's just a health diet. Weight loss comes naturally from it, after the body starts healing and re-compositioning. A lot of people eat up to 150 gr of net carbs on Paleo, which is not ketogenic.

BTW, if your body didn't adjust to very low carb within 2-3 months, you might want to check out your Reverse T3 and Free T3 thyroid levels. Unfortunately, most doctors only check T4 and TSH, which is not enough testing done when you're specifically on a low carb diet. But to discover if that was the culprit, you'd have to go low-carb/keto again for a month, and then test.



Same here. I eat a lot of things that are not exactly Paleo some times, e.g. fermented dairy, rice occasionally (with sushi). But I wouldn't eat gluten no matter what. It's my only true no-no.

I consider gluten the No 1 bad thing for health (which works under the hood, compromising health slowly on a number of years), then vegetable seed oils (high inflammation), and only then excess sugar. The rest of the stuff that Paleo cuts down (e.g. legumes, white potatoes, quinoa, dairy etc) are highly dependent on the way they're prepared (e.g. fermentation, soaking), and the individual person's tolerance IMHO, so they're not always "universally bad".



Yes, but I also mentioned fruits and raw, local honey. These are ok, because monosacharides are easily absorbed by the body before they reach the small intestine (where the wrong gut flora has a party and feeds on it, overthrowing the good gut flora -- and then the health problems start). Safe starches (e.g. some starchy veggies/tubers/roots) are fine too. So when I said that sugar is a toxin, I meant actual refined white sugar, artificial sugar, corn syrup, glutenous starches, etc. Fructose is also pretty bad in a non-fruit situation (apparently our bodies react differently to fructose in fruits, and in candy). So there are a lot of "ifs" and "buts" in the whole story, but I guess, the simplest way to distinguish between good & bad sugars would be if it's "added" to the food (e.g. candy, processed foods, coffee), or if it occurs naturally (e.g. fruits, raw honey, potatoes, beets).

A good, recent article about sugar: http://www.guardian.co.u...-deadly-obesity-epidemic

well...there is no such thing as a "paleo diet" in the west anyway..noone eats a paleo diet. The "paleo diet" is a fad lable. Paleo man never had cows, or chicken eggs or most of the things people who claim to eat paleo go to the store or farm to get. Paleo people were hunters and gatherers and likely practices some horticulture but not agriculture.

I also think a lot of the restrictions on the paleo diet are bullshit. I dont believe that paleo people would not(and did not) consume any dairy if and when available, or that they necessarily avoided all nightshades like potatoes. We dont know exactly everything they would have included or excluded but if it was available calories usually it is consumed in indigenous cultures today. Native americans for instance have always eaten wild rice, and nightshades..and other indigenous peoples have been adding raw cultured dairy to their diet for a long long time and thrive on it. This is why I feel like it makes more sense to model something closer to an indigenous diet than going around saying I am paleo becasue we cant observe paleo people..but we have ample evidence of what the truely feral indigenous peoples of this world are eating still today.

I eat dairy, but only raw cultured dairy from pastured animals. I was completely off diary(and vegan) for a long time due to being lactose intolerant..I can eat really aged raw cheese becasue the lactose is broken down but I still cant tolerate the milk from the same cows..and I cant get raw goat diary here.

I domnt even know if I believe gluten is all that horrible..I think mostly its the newer hybdrized wheat that has a specific type of gluten present that is what cuases much of these gluten problems. I just avoid any gluten becasue if I have wheat my back hurts and joints swell.

Weston Price observed the indigenous peoples way up in the swiss(I think) mountains, living in a village with no access roads, only trails in and out that were still living the way they always had. The trail was not even wide enough for a wagon..there was no food being shipped in or out..these people ate the traditional diets they had been eating for a long long time. They ate a lot of raw dairy, meat, wild plants and herbs..food they grew..drank clean water and they also ate lots of fermented sourdoe bread, from an older heirloom strain of wheat unlike todays wheat. They did not seem to have any problems with it.

I never claimed that. I dislike it when people call the Paleo diet a Paleolithic diet. It's not. We're not eating snakes, or insects. What I always mean when I talk about Paleo, is this: a modern diet, based on brand new research, having its blueprints on evolutionary traits. It's nothing more than that, really. I mean, we eat broccoli, not because the Paleolithic people ate it (it didn't exist at the time), but because it's pretty healthy -- according to research so far.



Problems from wheat go back in ancient times. The older strains were better, and they were fermented, but they were not healthy either. Celiac disease was very prevalent in ancient Greece for example. In fact, there was a recent article about how we grew shorter, and with horrible teeth after the introduction to grains that started 10,000 years ago. We haven't fully evolved in digesting it properly still, only birds have.

Modern wheat is way worse, of course. That 1950s strain gave its inventor the Nobel Prize. I'm serious, the guy got the Nobel Prize for it! It should have earn him the guillotine, because it has made billions sick (not just millions). The funny part is that all these people don't know that it's the slow-acting gluten to (primarily) blame for their various auto-immune problems. Only people going on low-carb diets just to lose a few extra pounds realize that when they re-introduce gluten, all their health problems come back. Have a read on Paleohacks and the various subreddits on keto and paleo, they're full of such reports!

One of the diets that was making people very long-lived, was the old Cretan diet. At some point, it was suggested that it was the healthiest diet on Earth, because most Cretans would push 95+ years old. I wrote here why: http://eugenia.queru.com...retan-diet-was-the-best/

I had updated my previous post while you were writing your reply btw, so you might have not seen the new link and the added clarification.

I been eating [mostly, (love quinoa)] raw vegan for the past few months trying to heal some bodily damage from Ketamine addiction. Seems to be working. When I heal I will likely move to a less strict diet.

I gota echo jamie and handel on wheat and any gluten. It definitely downs me out physically and my muscles and joints tighten up.

I eat ALOT of fruit and once every week or two I will have honey. BUT I gota say cutting out any sugar [even RAW Cane sugar] has made me feel REALLY GOOD. Stevia is a no-calorie sweetener that is really just a chopped up leaf, and its really sweet; great for smoothies.

Sugar is extremely addicting, there are poverty stricken starving families in third-world countries that will forego any food staples with their small income in order to buy a kilo or so of sugar to share for the week. Sugar causes people to binge badly [whole quart of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Anyone? Whole box of Oreos?] Sound alot like heroin to me.

Sugar offers a 20 minute rush that must be re-fulfilled after it has worn off or the whole day the body and mind seems to lag. If I accidentally don't read ingredients of something and eat some sugar [even something that says "contains a trace of sugar"] I immediately feel it, probably from a growing sensitivity due to abstinence from it.

Definitely something to try to cut out....will guarantee you will feel healthier.

I count honey and 100% maple syrup etc in with the sugar category, in that I restrict them to some degree. I think they are healthy to consume but only in moderation. I dont know how I feel about the whole raw honey thing anymore..for the years I was a strict raw vegan I only consumed raw unpasturized stuff after realizing how much of the raw food thing was just not what it is claimed to be for me personally I am skeptical about honey etc having to be raw..I just get whatever I can find that is organic at the farmers market. I am still convinced that raw diary is always best though.

Im definatly not big on agave due to it being similar to corn syrup in it's fructose levels.

There is some data out there claiming stevia is mutagenic..but I dont know how much of that I believe. I would have to see some stuides showing that in humans before I believe it acta that way in humans. I am sort of weary at the same time about eating tons of this one plant extract all the time to replace sugar though..

I try to forgo even too much sweet fruits these days much of the time. I have stopped having smoothies in the morning and instead eat eggs and sweet potatoes most days etc..and then maybe some blueberries. I will eat some fruit every day but even fruit sugars for me from all these hybrid fruits can be a lot..some are pretty high fructose themselves as well. If you take a look at the 811 fruitarian movement there is all the signs of high sugar diets described by many people as well..many of them have their teeth rot out of their heads and claim to be pre diabetic etc..and thats just eating fruit..usually high sugar supermarket hybrid fruits, selectivly bread to be that way. I have stopped eating white potatoes on a regular basis as well..I only eat them on occasion but I dont really miss them. Sweet potatoes with some salt and grass fed butter and a bit of cinnamon really make my blood sugar feel more stable and I pretty much at these every day after I stopped being raw vegan to help build my adrenals back up properly along with a lot of pastured meat and wild fish.

If people really have blood sugar out of whack there are common wild herbs that you can drink every day to help..like dnadelion. Wild foods and herbs are one of the best things people can get into..and wild water if you have access to a spring.

Stevia is being consumed in Japan over white beetroot sugar for over 100 years now. Their studies may hint on mutagenic claims if any.

Gluten has been linked with a lot of allergic responses, but other than that nothing has properly linked it to disease. Are there any studies that show this, or is it only newspaper articles?

Regarding commercial white sugar, as with everything, the poison is in the dosage.

Gluten is broken down in the body to fairly short-chain polypeptides including gliadin; gliadin in some individuals can lead to the production of antibodies to tissue transglutaminase (TTG) which are found in coeliac disease but are not restricted to this condition.Anti-TTG antibody detection is used commonly as a marker for coeliac disease in those with suggestive symptoms, and a biopsy of the second part of the duodenum can confirm the diagnosis by demonstrating a fairly classic appearance.Omitting gluten from the diet can improve symptoms and the histology of the duodenums' appearance giving pretty good evidence of a causal link.

More recently its been recognised that some people can have a variety of symptoms which improve on withdrawing gluten from the diet without detectable immunological evidence of 'gluten senitivity'; this is a change in the long-held view that without the various antibodies being found one could not attribute the symptoms to gluten directly.

Interestingly, some of the peptides derived from metabolism/breakdown of gluten are active at the endogenous opioid receptors, but firm conclusions regarding the implications of this are lacking.

Re commercial white sugar ie sucrose, if one can use dextrose/glucose instead, it would be a more suitable option physiologically speaking.

Sugars are a relatively cheap high energy food source that have been a great benefit in our survival and advancement as a species, as well as other species on this planet. Calling it poison is a bit alarmist.

But to much of anything isn't good for you and it's pretty easy to get to much due to the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diet. As a dad that tries to watch his children's sugar consumption it's kinda scary how common it is, everything from bread to pasta sauce to soda. The recent ban on soda being sold in packages larger than 16 oz in NYC is an effort to curb our over consumption of sugars, an effort I support and get behind in my own community.

Anyway, I suggest that anyone that wants less processed sugar in their diet drink more water. If you go out to eat, order water. The amount of sugar in soda is really ridiculous and unless you have the time and energy to make everything from scratch, you're probably going to get some processed sugar in your diet one way or the other. Yes it's good to be mindful of it but cutting it out completely just isn't realistic for most people.

Like most things, listen to your body. When your blood sugar is high you should be able to feel it.

Corpus, you got any personal knowledge or evidence on autoimmune conditions and gluten consumption? Dearly interested in it.

This is only just one of the articles that describe the problem: http://www.sott.net/arti...oimmune-disease-spectrum
While some scientists/doctors had suspicions about it for over 15 years, it's only in the last 2-3 years that "non-celiac gluten sensitivity" was accepted in the medical circles (and in fact, some older doctors are still transfixed into the "whole grains" thing). Do a google search about all this, there are a gazillion articles that have sprouted about gluten on autoimmune, inflammation and even mental conditions recently! Even NYTimes had two articles about it this year alone! Another good one: http://www.huffingtonpos...tolerance_b_2964812.html

However, a word of caution: for many AI conditions that are heavy (e.g. multiple sclerosis), going plainly gluten free won't help as much as actually changing a few more things too. I mean, it will still help lots, but you won't be maximizing your chances of healing. For example, if you cut down glutenous bread, pasta and pizza, and then you simply start buying their equivalent gluten-free ones, you won't see nearly as much healing. These are "empty calorie" foods, they're also processed, and in some cases, they're as bad as glutenous food. This is one of the most telling TED videos about all this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc

So based on my readings, and my own personal experience battling an AI condition, this is what *I* had to do:

1. No gluten, ever (wheat, barley, rye). No oats either, they're usually contaminated. I always read labels!
2. No vegetable seed oils, which promote inflammation and whack the O3-to-O6 ratio (I use olive oil, coconut oil, grass-fed butter).
3. Limit my added sugar intake. Daily fruits, some raw, local honey, tubers, are all ok.
4. No processed food, and that includes gluten-free cereals/bread/pasta/pizza/sweets.
5. Limit rice and corn to once a month or so (they have similar proteins to gluten, and some immune systems confuse them for real gluten). For corn, it has to be organic, not GMO. White rice is healthier than brown rice, because all the anti-nutrients are found on the shell. Same goes for the other grains btw, it's really the opposite of what we've been taught!
6. No unfermented legumes, they're full of lectins (just soak them for 24 hours, change the water 2-3 times). No soy, except in the form of organic (non-GMO) tamari, gluten free soy sauce (just to use with my sushi, once or twice a month).
7. Dairy must be fermented in order to reduce lactose content (e.g. yogurt, kefir, cheese), and preferably from casein A2 animals (goats/sheep/buffalo). Home-made goat kefir, fermented for 24 hours, proved very helpful to my condition. Some people can't do dairy at all though.
8. I eat up to about 330 gr of meat/fish daily (and 1 egg for breakfast). Everything else is veggies (raw or not). I always serve wild fish AND (usually pastured) meat/offal with lunch/dinner, but in small quantities: most of the plate constitutes from many different veggies (up to 12-15 different species).
9. I supplement with D3, CoQ10 Ubiquinol (not Ubiquinone), Magnesium (most people are deficient on it in the West). I eat *wild* fish daily, so I don't need to take fish oil.
10. Nuts/seeds are ok, in some loose moderation (unless soaked, in which case, have them freely). The only nut not allowed is peanuts, because they're not nuts, they're legumes.

This regiment has saved my life, literally. I was sick for 10 years, and in Sept 2011, I was reborn. I have the Internet to thank for all this, because my doctors didn't help me at all. I was prescribed a variety of drugs, including many very strong antibiotics, that did nothing to help me. I became a prisoner to my own home. No more.

Handel, thanks for the detailed response.

I am weary of such demanding diets, for a couple of reasons. There is little to no evidence that back them up. I do agree that it is extremely difficult to conduct research that will yield accurate results, since a diet is a highly variable approach, with countless of factors to consider. Which means that I am not claiming that they do not work, just that it is difficult for their efficacy to be demonstrated. Before I could dive into one, I would like to be almost sure that it is going to work.

Now, I do believe that you got much better, but so would everyone who skipped a few of what you describe. That does not mean though, that the symptoms of an autoimmune disease are alleviated, maybe the afflicted individual feels more alive during the diet. Also, I cannot discount other personal factors that come up when someone starts a diet : motivation, mood, determination, lifestyle changes etc. There was a study once that claimed that vegans live longer than meat eaters, but this inference was criticised that it could not be drawn by such a comparison, because it turned out that most of the vegans performed yoga, exercises, did not smoke or drink etc.

My general point is, that this diet as you are describing it seems very restricting, and it would really reassure me if there was at least some type of evidence for it (besides articles online - I even read an article once screaming that whey protein and barley extract are extremely carcinogenic, with absolute lack of cited studies). Hope I am getting my point across and that you won't perceive this as opinionated opposition.

that TED talk is great and echos a lot of what Weston Price said and people like Sally Fallon who have continued his cause have been saying.

Research is ongoing, but it's impossible to test ALL AI conditions at once. There's at least one research paper about Paleo and diabetes already published: http://link.springer.com...1007%2Fs00125-007-0716-y
Another one for multiple sclerosis will come out later this year (by the same doctor who did the TED talk I linked earlier). There are myriads of reports online about Paleo and AI conditions getting much better too. Another good article btw: http://www.huffingtonpos...-dont-know_b_379089.html

Also, no one is claiming that their AI condition "went away completely" on Paleo. This is impossible for AI diseases (although it's doable for inflammation). The few times an AI condition truly goes away, is usually for kids younger than 12 years old, which are able to heal/reprogram their bodies much better than adults can. What Paleo does is unmasking the problem, and making the condition asymptomatic by not triggering it. If a person starts eating gluten again, the symptoms will come back -- guaranteed. So it's a diet that must be followed for life, no question about it.

When I first started the diet, I was reading a book about the SCD diet (a diet similar to Paleo, but much older). The book said that after 2 years, you could start eating everything again. Soon I realized that this was not true. It had to be for life. I didn't really care much about it after this realization. I was happy enough to feel so healthy again. I was motivated.

Plus, it didn't really matter, because Paleo is a much healthier diet than the Standard American Diet, so it was fine for me to follow it, regardless. Sure, it's restricting to think that you can't have bread/pasta/pizza/cereal/cakes again, but after about 2-3 weeks, you get over it. It really only takes that little time. You can still bake some almond-based/honey-based cookies every once a while to manage your cravings! Here's a recipe: http://queenehealth.word...ng-paleo-almond-cookies/
Also, you can do some crackers to use with cheese, this is my recipe: http://eugenia.queru.com...2/04/18/cheese-crackers/
Just don't make these things part of your daily routine, because almonds themselves are really high in omega-6 and anti-nutrients. Almond flour is just here to help us with cravings occasionally.

It took my husband a year to come into terms with my new diet, but after he took the plunge and he saw the changes in his own health, he never looked back. My husband had a very minor case of IBS-D, which went away by simply cutting down gluten and vegetable oils (he eats everything else without major restrictions). What really was a surprised for both of us though, was that he started getting new hair back, on his thinning top-front of his head.

I "fixed" a huge number of issues myself, from my main problem that was killing me, to things like sleep apnea, transparent teeth, alopecia, fibromyalgia-like pains etc etc.

So if you have an AI case, you might want to try this diet for 30 days. See how you do. If you find it waaay too restrictive, you can still just do the "no gluten, no vegetable seed oils, less sugar" thing, and be free to eat everything else (including gluten-free breads). But unfortunately, gluten has go 100% (not even small amounts), or this won't work at all. It's really the main trigger in all this, followed by vegetable seed oils and excess sugar.

Handel, thanks for responding with so much information!

Well, starting today, will contact you in 30 days time. Experimenting safely never hurt anyone.

Abundance of info greatly appreciated

As far as i know most of the baddies being mentioned is at their worst when lying dormant in the body using them can be quite beneficial such as pasta for endurance purposes hence cyclist almost all of those who isnt doping prefer a bowl of such before a race,the whole sugar consumed over moderation was being made aware of but never imagined birth defects and such,but i can agree to most said here and it is infact addictive or im just addicted to the caffeine since eating too much sugar makes me severely lethargic so i avoid it in high amount,at work i noticed for instance the amount of sugar going in cupcakes for example and it was alarming to say the least,as it is quite frequent at children parties etc etc and thats excluding the icing sugar that is basicly just butter and sugar ugh,further down the pastry line its an sugar mount everest.

ive been informed about the fructose culprit shedding light on fruit juices not being the healtier choice since most juices are squeezed with the skin being discarded which is straight up fructose being a diabeties risk(keep the skin and home blend it seems safer)aswell as some juices nt even being juices just flavoured fruit drinks added with artificial sweeteners or pasteurized with enzymes being killed in process

ive considered a vegan diet at a stage but i like to be filled and hate being hungry still so i maintained and just counter with increased fibre intake and my red meat consumption has gone down since its quite expensive anyway.

gluten i like seeing being brought up my knowledge of it is only that of it not being very slender body friendly but health risks i know little of and is interesting to see since a future career with bread is coming up soon

http://thespartandiet.bl...grains-were-part-of.html

There is an interesting article in support of the use of grains as a food even through the paleolithic era.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKW6F7u5XuA

^and there is people today harvesting rice the same way the traditional indigenous peoples of America did it.

For me personally, I went years without any grains at all..not even once did I cheat and eat them. I have been on the "paleo diet"(which is a mislable IMO) and raw vegan diets, simply whole food diets, primal diets..and to be honest I feel better when I just eat some oats or wild rice when I feel like eating them..and I have the genetic marker for spondylitus, my mother has spondylitis and I have had many of the symptoms..I was diagnosed with infammatory bowel disease and leaky gut.. I had to drop out of college and stop working for a time when I was 24 because of it.

I dont feel like eating a few spoonfulls of oats with my eggs even every day causes any extra inflammation or anything..although gluten does right away. Infact I am better now than I was when I had not had any grains at all for years, though I was raw vegan back then. Not all oats are contaminated with gluten and not all grains are the same. I dont go near any kind of wheat and the grains I do eat when I am eating them are minimal. I think even paleo people ate some grains and I think it helped them thrive more. The thing is you will never find a hunter gatherer culture who is eating a grain based or glutarian diet like so many people on the SAD do. The omega imbalace alone is going to get you when you try to base your diet on grains.

The bulk of my diet is grass fed meats and butter, some raw cheese, loads of vegetables, lots of berries and fruits, sweet potatoes/yams, some white potatoes usually when I harvest my own..tons of wild herbs and greens and berries when in season and wild water..and yes some grains like oats. I never felt as good on any diet even what people call "paleo" as I do when I eat this way. Bone broth is also a big part of my diet..I use it for the base for all my vegetable soups.

As soon as I get my bow and learn to hunt I will be eating wild bird meats as well. I cant wait for that.