The other day I had a weird experience — a bizarre reaction to ordinary table sugar. You know, in these ramblings I’ve often taken up the “sugar is toxic” hue and cry, but in a half-humorous way. Of course, I don’t believe sugar is poisonous. Or…didn’t, anyway. But now I wonder.
One of the choir members is THE most awesome cook, and best of all, she likes to cook. She brings in the most splendid, delicious baked goods you can imagine. Last Sunday we sang at an early service and so showed up for rehearsal at what feels, to some of us, like the crack of dawn. She kindly brought in a whole breakfast with a gorgeous egg dish and two beautiful baked sweets.
Well, I can’t eat unadulterated eggs, unfortunately. But there was simply noooooooo way to resist tasting the other goodies. So I had one-half of a small square of this astonishing coffeecake she’d brought.
Delicious beyond description.
And very, very, very, very sweet. As I was noshing on it, a thought crossed my feeble mind: This is more sugar than i’ve eaten ALL SUMMER.
Hm. Add another pound to tomorrow’s weigh-in…
About 15 minutes later, up in the choir loft, I started to get a bellyache. Didn’t think much of it, except to be mildly annoyed because the gut issues have completely gone away since the aftermath of the Prednisone episode finally died down.
Then a few minutes later, when we had to jump up to sing an anthem, WHACK! The minute I stood up I got a dizzy spell that was so bad I damn near fell over. Literally: the only reason I didn’t hit the floor was that I was jammed between two people on either side of me and a row of chair backs in front.
And, just to gild that lily, flicking heart palpitations.
Think of that. I haven’t had those since I started the diet.
Which is to say, since I quit eating refined sugar.
Before I determined to lose 25 pounds, I thought nothing of eating whatever sugary thing I pleased. And you can be sure I always enjoyed my co-religionist’s baking, with gusto! And ice cream. And cookies. And chocolate. And strawberries smothered in crunchy demerara sugar and heavy cream…
Then while we were standing there singing, a headache came on. It passed by the time the service ended. But the stomach continued upset, and I felt awful when I got home.
Decided that a dose of something with a lot of protein in it might help, and so whipped up a tasty xergis soup, which is mostly yogurt. Tellingly, that actually did help. After lunch, things healthish had gone back to normal.
Cardiodoc said that daily exercise would take care of the heart palps. And so it seemed. I haven’t had a spell of those in months…coincidentally, not in the three months since I started the weight-loss project.
But what if the explanation were not so much instituting the daily stroll but simply that I stopped eating refined sugar? Those two things happened at the same time.
The two food categories I quit eating were a) anything containing refined sugar, high-fructose corn sugar, or anything else whose name ends in -ose; and b) breads, potatoes, rice, and other high-starch items. It did occur to me that the coffeecake contained plenty of wheat flour, too — possibly I’ve developed the wildly stylish gluten sensitivity? But then realized not: the other day I had several slices from a baguette I served to La Maya — white bread. No ill effect.
No. I think the ill effect here came from eating enough sugar to choke an elephant, crammed into one little black hole of bakery. And doing so after having spent a quarter of a year abstaining from the stuff.
On this diet, I have indeed been eating a lot of sugar, in the form of fructose, because I eat two or three varieties of fruit every day. But none of it has been refined sugar. That was the first time in three months I’d consumed the kind of sugar that comes in a package — which is to say, chances are my body was no longer accustomed to coping with it.
If Sunday morning’s episode indeed was caused by scarfing down a megadose of sugar, it’s highly suggestive.
Can we say something that brings on a dizzy spell, heart palpitations, a headache, and stomach upset is toxic? In a world where you can be sued for libeling a food, probably not.
But we certainly can have our private suspicions, can’t we?
Image: Raw sugar. Editor at Large. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.
One of my friends can’t eat sugar anymore because it causes her extreme intestinal distress. She used to be able to eat it, but she stopped because she noticed that it irritated her IBS. Once she stopped it completely, she found that even trying to have a small portion of something with processed sugar in it caused a severe reaction. So she just doesn’t eat it anymore.
If you’ve removed a food from your diet completely and then gorged on it (even if the small piece didn’t seem like a gorging, it may have been in relative terms) then it can cause an adverse reaction.
I’m recovering from some problems with my own gut. Something I ate at the end of last week caused me a lot of pain and lost sleep due to the pain. The diverticulitis raised it’s ugly head and I was on a food “lock down” of banana smoothies (made with unsweetened almond milk, not cow milk) and bland food. I had a baked potato and some ground turkey last night that seems to have allowed me to continue functioning with no pain, but I passed on the muffins offered at my morning meeting.
I’m sticking to somewhat bland stuff nonetheless now. Today’s breakfast was another banana smoothie with some cashew butter and lunch is white rice with dashi broth, some fresh spinach (getting wild here!), and a hard cooked egg.
Oh, ouch!!! My doc told me, when he suspected I had diverticulitis, to avoid consuming small seedy things, such as strawberries. He also asked me to stay away from things like sunflower seeds and even popcorn.
It wasn’t diverticulitis, so none of those asceticisms made any difference. 🙄
Actually I think I’ve experienced something like that before. Admittedly I haven’t otherwise cut out much in the way of refined sugar, but I generally avoid sodas. But about twice a year I end up at day long events/parties where the only thing to drink is soda (though I’ve been better about bringing some water with me now). Afterwards I usually do find myself with a slight headache, from what I’ve come to assume was excess sugary soda drinking.
I don’t think sugar is inherently toxic (refined or not), but I wonder if the effects are more from shocking your body with a large does of something you usually only eat sparingly if at all. I’ve heard that vegetarians have ill effects after eating a large quantity of meat all of a sudden. So I assume that it’s that kind of shocking your system with large amounts of something throws it out of balance.
Hmm… It may be some sort of blood sugar or insulin reaction. Those both came up when I did a little googling on the subject.
But also, you may have something there. My morning-walk friend Harriett said that yesterday she splurged on some deep-fried chicken sticks and suspiciously greasy French fries, and the next thing she knew she was sick. She tends to avoid exactly those foods…she thought the upset was brought on by eating greasy foods after having gotten into the habit of not eating them.
Although I am a sugar aficionado, if I eat too much, I too sometimes get a headache.
I do like sugar – who doesn’t? But yuck, that’s no fun. It’s very possible that it was sugar that made you react that way. Many people react like this to things like gluten, especially now (it’s a bit trendy, too, but some people have sincere gluten sensitivities).