Sugar: More Dangerous than You Think
10 Tips to Control Cravings

One of our biggest nutritional mistakes is reducing fats while increasing sugar.  In the past 30 years, fat intake in the U.S. has decreased roughly 25 percent, while sugar intake increased more than 30 percent.  During this time, obesity and diabetes rates have tripled.   Cancer, asthma and osteoporosis are also linked with this trend.  If you do nothing else than cut down on sugar, many of your health problems will go away.

The problem, of course, is often sugar cravings, particularly for women.  Sweets may feel like addiction.  A Princeton Study found rats overfed sugar suffered withdrawl when the sugar was taken away.  Similar brain chemistry is seen in the sugar-loving obese and cocaine addicts.  It takes more than willpower to break the sugar cycle.  Read below for tips to cut sugar cravings.

Ten Tips to Stop Sugar Cravings

1. Cut back on salads and fruits. A big garden salad, full of all those crispy raw carrots, beets, cucumbers, and lettuce is vitamin-rich, but it can rev up a big urge for sugar. Cooked vegetables don't have this effect. Cravings can also result from eating one too many apples

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Chinese medicine explains raw vegetables and fruits are damp and cooling (yin). (That's why they taste so good in summer.) Sugar is heating (yang). When you overdo the cooling nature of salad and fruit, your body craves the heating nature of sugar. In essence you are craving yin-yang balance.

My raw foodies and vegetarian clients routinely complain of sugar cravings. I had voracious cravings for cookies, chocolate and ice cream myself during my vegetarian days. A healthy balance between salads and meat/fish, with plenty of cooked leafy green vegetables, is a powerful tool in cutting sugar cravings.

2. Eat Fat. The right fats are not only important to health; they stabilize appetite and control cravings. Fats help slow the release of sugar from foods into blood, controlling blood sugar levels and insulin, thus preventing hunger and sugar cravings triggered by low blood sugar. Furthermore fats stimulate satiety hormones and neurochemicals in the brain and digestive tract. One such hormone, called cholecystokinin (CCK), triggers the release of bile and enzymes for digestion. It also suppresses hunger.

Healthy, craving-control fats include olive oil, butter, as well as, nuts, cheese, and avocado.

3. Have a savory breakfast. The taste of sweetness in the morning sets some people up for big cravings later on. Part of this has to do with the blood sugar plunge that follows a sugary food. The other part involves the appetite-stimulating effect of the sweet flavor when that's the first thing on your tongue in the morning. Even a piece of fruit can trigger the sugar itch. At breakfast, think savory.

4. Eat more yang protein. Vegetarians are more often plagued by sugar cravings than omnivores. Protein quells sugar cravings. Part of this has to do with protein foods and sugar both being acid-forming. The most effective choices to balance sugar cravings are seafood, beef, lamb or veal; wild game; free range poultry and eggs; and to a lesser degree nuts and seeds.

5. Eat Your Greens. As explained in last month's "Top Nutrition Tips" on energy, cooked leafy greens boost energy. This alone reduces an urge for sugar. Greens also provide minerals that help control blood sugar, which reduces sugar cravings from low blood glucose. Cooked greens are also a great source of magnesium, a mineral that helps control chocolate cravings. And finally, the pleasantly bitter flavor of many greens cuts into cravings for the taste of sugar.

6. Cut down on sugar. O.K., I realize that is the whole problem. But when you always give into the next dessert, it stimulates cravings for more sugar. The more sugar you eat, the more sugar you want.

7. Avoid artificial sweeteners. Studies show Aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal), Saccharin (Sweet'n Low) and Splenda stimulate appetite and sugar cravings, plus they contribute to weight gain! Isn't the whole idea of using these to lose weight? Try stevia, a naturally sweet carb-free herb that sweetens anything from lemonade to pudding and bakery products with no side effects or sugar cravings.

8. Get Sun. Sunlight protects against our most feared diseases, plus it boosts energy and mood. Sunlight promotes the synthesis of serotonin, the feel-good, satiety brain chemical that prevents depression and the associated urge for ice cream. Sunlight also reduces cortisol, the anxiety hormone that stimulates sugar and fat cravings as well as abdominal weight gain.

9. Supplement with the right minerals. Your passion for chocolate may not be a weakness on your part, but a magnesium deficiency. Sugar cravings due to dips in blood glucose are often corrected by supplements of magnesium and chromium, which help control blood sugar levels. Try magnesium citrate or gluconate (not oxalate), and chromium citrate or piccolinate.

10. Give and connect. Giving comes from the Chinese idea of a paramita, one of the six Buddhist practices that ferry us from suffering. Giving and connecting with others generates a feeling that strengthens spleen Qi, the Chinese medicine equivalent of digestion, assimilation and appetite. By giving your time, your money, companionship and empathy -- from your heart -- you strengthen the energy of your entire digestive system, including balancing under- or over-appetite and sugar cravings.

"For it is in giving that we receive."
St. Francis of Assisi

The Anti-Sugar Herb

Would you still eat the brownie if it weren't sweet? Gymnema sylvestre may help you with sugar cravings in two ways. This tropical leafy herb blocks you from tasting sweetness. Chew on a few dried leaves or sip on a cup of gymnema tea for the taste-blunting effect. When ingested, this herb also blocks intestinal absorption of sugar, preventing blood sugar from climbing after a sugar feed. In type 2 diabetics, it stimulates insulin release and is thus often used in herb formulas for this disease.

Click here to see my article on Yin and Yang Balance and Food Choice If you suffer low energy or a health problem, turn your life around with a personalized nutrition plan.

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