If you have diabetes or know someone with diabetes, understand this. Unless the diabetic has a non-functional pancreas, diabetes is reversible. Yes curable. It's only a disease if you break it down into dis-ease, meaning the body is not as ease. Rather it's overwhelmed. Poor food choices causing the body's hormone system to spin out of control; and this doesn't happen overnight, the culmination of eating habits and lack of knowledge of what is being sold as foods, over time, lead up to this condition.
Your suffering is big business. If diabetes was limited through society's active role in taking care of itself, this business niche would dwindle. The Diabetic Association would be smaller, insulin drug manufacturers, suppliers and "dealers" would lose profits. Magic drug weight loss scams would disappear, diet books and centers would not be so abundant. And the food manufacturers who "feed" us the ingredients (which are generally cheaper in cost to manufacture) would have to re-structure. This is a profitable consumables cycle and we are caught in the middle with no benefit. Maybe KNOWING the difference isn't enough, it might come down to tasting the difference.
The Route to Obesity Passes Through Your Tongue
According to Neuroscientists, obesity gradually numbs the taste sensation of rats to sweet foods, and drives them to consume larger and sweeter meals. This is apparently a critical link between taste and body weight.
Previous studies have suggested that obese persons are less sensitive to sweet taste. In summary of all these studies, chronic overeating is due to a missing satiety signal resulting in obesity and developing diabetes with an increased preference for sweet foods. The mechanism is that about 50% fewer neurons are firing when the tongues of the obese are exposed to sucrose – less sensitive to the taste of sugar.
Conversely, Super tasters who are sensitive to the bitter compounds found in broccoli and other foods were found to be about 20% thinner than non-tasters. Super tasters also tend to have more papillae, the tiny bumps on your tongue that hold taste buds. While non-tasters tend to like much sweeter, hotter and more bitter foods – they simply can't taste the food as well.
Influence of Hormones on Your Sweet Tooth
Leptin – a hormone produced by your fat cells – is believed to be a sweet-sensing hormone. With that, it is likely that either a lack of leptin or your body's failure to respond to the hormone contributes to having that sweet tooth. It's already been discovered that animals and humans with low leptin levels, or with defective leptin receptors (leptin resistance), tend to become obese. This hormone signals your brain when your fat cells are full; instructing your body to reduce hunger, increase fat burning and reduce fat storage. So in addition to increasing cravings for sweets, low leptin levels also diminish your feelings of satiety – leading to CONTINUED intake of sweets.
The issue is leptin resistance (similar to insulin resistance). If you eat a diet high in sugar and grains, blood sugar levels rise, insulin kicks in to deliver it to the liver and muscles, once those stores are topped off the excess sugar is metabolized to fat (picture a potbelly). The fat cells become full and trigger a leptin release to tell you to quit feeding your face. But overtime with excess food consumption both insulin and leptin become ignored by the body. These two hormones are around so much that the body doesn't "listen" to them.
Enter insulin resistance and leptin resistance. Insulin resistance develops diabetes, and leptin resistance develops obesity. Not just muffin tops and saddle bags but also that pregnant man look – you know that solid looking potbelly. That's visceral fat, fat surrounding the organs of the abdomen. Yuck!
And to tie everything together, the excess sugar travelling around in your blood stream from the inability of insulin to deliver causes heart disease in that sugar acts as rust on our blood vessels. Elevated blood sugar levels for long periods of time corrode the arteries; cholesterol (which is actually a friend to the body) comes in and patches up the "rust spots" in the blood vessels. And you can only do so many patch jobs.
The Addiction
Making matters worse, refined sugar has been found to be far more addictive than cocaine – one of the most addictive substances currently known! So if you think quitting tobacco is tough, giving up sugar can be even harder.
The Fix
Well from everything I just said taste of foods is not going to be the best indicator for what's good for your body.
Modify your diet by bringing in good fats about a third of your diet worth. No, fat does not beget fat – that's an '80's marketing concept by food manufactures to sell cheap unhealthy fat free foods.
Avoid insulin spikes. Never ever ever drink a soda by itself or just have toast, or just have pasta. The general rule is 4 carbs to 1 protein for insulin to do its work properly. Meaning you need to have some source of protein with every meal or snack.
Re-sensitize your taste buds. Eliminate just one of the food nemeses from your diet for 21 days at least. Then go back and just have a taste. Odds are, it won't taste nearly as good as you remembered it being; and may even be disgusting. Another feedback from my clients who cut out pasta for long period of time is that they notice a bloated gut feeling whenever they eat it again. Good sign to stay off the pasta.
Exercise. Physically demanding activities drain the glycogen (sugar) stores in the muscles. Now the muscles will listen to insulin because it has what the muscles need – more sugar as fuel. The fat cells shrink because insulin isn't visiting them as often with goodies. But another hormone comes along to visit the fat cells mobilizing them to "shape up" and lean out (I will save that for another story) and now, like a well run and efficient business everybody is getting along and doing their jobs right all because you decided to eat right and exercise smart.
