It's been said that anything which gives you a high can become addictive, so using that definition I'd say sugar could be addictive (certainly I seem to experience a kind of "sugar withdrawal" when I try to cut it out).
If it's really that addictive, people would crave sugar when they got out of bed. Instead, they go for coffee and cigarettes. That your body reacts to lowering sugar intake, might be something else.
From what I understand, a true addiction is defined by if it's pathological or not, and the thing is no one is out on the street prostituting themselves for coffee, cigarettes, or candy... but they are for crack, heroin, meth, etc.
If we'd make cigarettes illegal tomorrow, we might see some nicotine related prostitution. If we'd do the same for coffee or sugar, I'd doubt we'd see it.
Idk, I feel like caffeine is just as addictive as nicotine, and we allow kids to consume it. The health effects are different, certainly, but just try taking coffee away from a lifelong drinker.
Same argument could be made about social media. Just because you don't see folks prostituting themselves for a minute of fame doesn't mean... wait a minute ... never mind.
I know, I used to be a tobacco smoker and I want one just as bad after not having had a cig for over a decade... I'm sure it's a nuanced topic, but I'm just relaying what I understand from the clinical perspective. I don't have a horse in this race. I know all of these things are addictive, but the impact is the question.
Cigarettes are relatively cheap and accessible, if they weren't you'd 100% find people prostituting themselves for them, it's probably as addictive as heroin.
I wasn’t able to summarise such a nuanced thing into one paragraph. So here’s the full link. No one is selling their body for smartphones either but it’s now being increasingly accepted as an object of addiction. It’s more about what impact an object or activity has on your life than anything else. Although, Sugar probably isn’t addictive enough to be so automatic that you are chugging a scoop of table sugar pacing the kitchen.
Back before I basically gave it up, I did crave it when I got out of bed. I'd be straight downstairs and eating Cereal with high sugar levels, or toast with jam on it.
I can relate. For me it's not as frequent - but once in 2-3 months, I have an "attack" leading me to have 3-4 bars of chocolate, or 4-5 bags of chips or something similar with high sugar content. There is one more edible thing which helps during these kind of attacks, but I cannot publicly talk about it.
Ok, actually I had no idea about sugar in potato chips at all before today. I just assumed they do - as it satisfied the same craving as the chocolates.
Not for the first time, I have said to myself, no more buying candy from Costco. I just finished working my way through 1.5 Kg of chocolate from there and yes, I gained weight.
Sugar is addictive. Full stop.
@popotamonga: Don't eat 1 kg in one go though, that's really bad for your insulin swings in your blood. That 1 kg should last you at least ten days.
Tell me about it. My grandfather used to put 10 packets of sugar in his coffee. We used to joke with him "You gonna have some coffee with your sugar this morning?"
Many people add sugar to coffee. Or eat cereal for breakfast, or donuts and pastries. Jelly on your toast? There are plenty of people who get out of bed and go straight for sugar in various forms.
Sugar has brutal cravings but they disappear after a couple days. If you cut sugar for a week, the physical craving won't be a factor - they are much easier to surpass if you go in with that expectation.
Yes, that's what my experience was as well. First couple of days I had to drink sugarless coke and chew sugarless gum all day just to keep some mental clarity. But after several days cravings just stop.
This fact actually helped me reduce sugar intake through soda. I bought a SodaStream and cut all my soda with carbonated water. After enough time, the diluted soda tastes just as sweet as regular soda used to, and regular soda tastes way too sweet. Sure I'm still drinking it, but my intake is down 1/2 over a day. My other trick was to pick 1 day a week I don't drink or consume any sugar (cuts consumption by 1/7 over a week) and during the month of January I don't consume any either (cuts consumption by 1/12 over a year). I've found these short periods of sugar fasting much easier to get through than completely changing my eating preferences, as most people suggest.
Sometimes you get a weak moment that you didn't plan for. I think a lot of us are/will be experiencing this sort of thing post-pandemic; you quit x y or z in lockdown environment but can you keep it up once life gets more chaotic again?
No, seriously, you imply that you drink soda at least daily and quite likely several times a day. Once you have quit drinking it, why would you take up such an unhealthy habit again? Sure, have a soda once in a while... but why resume the habitual consumption?
I consumed a LOT of sugar until very recently through soft drinks and sweets. Gave it up basically from one day to the other.
And somehow I don't really miss it, except for occasional "a <sweet thing> would be nice" which surprises me in the sense that I expected I'd be having cravings.
Just "quitting" liquid calories also made a huge difference for me in terms of caloric intake.
I still love sugary treats (and carby food like bread and pasta) but I eat less because when I consume a lot, I experience something almost like a hangover the next day. That started happening around age 40 (I'm 51 now). You might be younger than me, but I'm wondering if other people my age experience the same thing?
I hate all the talk around ultra-processed food. It’s never defined in a way that’s usable by the rest of us, and then they just assume that all ultra-processed food is the same.
Edit: that BBC page in turn links to this, which again looks helpful and reasonably credible from a cursory inspection but I don't endorse it in any further manner:
Wow. Evidently a loaf of bread becomes ultra processed if you add preservatives to it. Nothing about that definition suggests there was any kind of science involved in this. “Nutrition science” is just the worst.
> Table sugar – known as sucrose – is found in sugar cane, sugar beet and maple syrup while glucose and fructose are the main constituents of honey.
Technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, I suppose. But it does not give me a lot of confidence in any other claims they proceed to make.
He has said that in interviews, "there is longevity in my family" if I recall correctly. He won the genetic lottery and can get away with things the rest of us can't.
I've completely cut out sugar from my diet and one side effect has been, pretty much all anxiety has gone away. It's like a light switch was turned off.
Now, if I'm in a truly stressful situation, I still get anxiety, but I think it's _appropriate_ anxiety. Big difference.
I also focus a lot better and I'm more clear headed.
This is probably due in significant part to sucrose depleting magnesium, glucose metabolism in general uses more magnesium. Even if one doesn't quit sugar immediately, supplementing magnesium can be of great help.
I've started keto to lose that work for home bonus weight but so many thing changed for the better. I can go on seemlinly forever without a snack and my energy levels are very stable. I also improved my cooking skills because no restaurant or food delivery around me deliver appropriate food for the diet.
On the other hand I can't handle alcohol anymore. Drinking 1/3 of what I could handle makes me feel sick and hangovers are common. I might be wrong but I suppose the body uses lots of sugar to sintetize alcohol.
This has been my experience as well (and for depression as well as anxiety). They don’t go away completely, but the proverbial volume dial goes from 11 down to 3, and whatever remains becomes manageable.
I think it is not just about the reward for eating something sweet, but simply about blood sugar levels. I found in the last couple of years I needed to maintain a certain amount of sugar, especially during difficult mental work, otherwise I would get a headache or not have enough energy to work. I remember as a kid, it used to be the opposite. I was able to skip breakfast without problems, whereas others would easily get a headache in school.
I'm trying to cut back on sugar, as in my mid-thirties I'm starting to slightly get the feared dad-bod (extra viscerial fat which is very unhealty).
In the beginning it was rather difficult but after one or two weeks I found I can go longer without sweets. I guess eating slow-burning carbs and non-carb calories is an important factor.
Does anybody here know if it is true that the body adapts to how frequent sugar is available? I don't mean full blown keto, but just dropping the snacks and sugary drinks and having larger pauses between glukose spikes. I've read about it and it matches my experience but it's hard to tell how much is backed by science.
Yes, of course everyone will have visceral fat. Having more of it is associated with diabetes, heart disease, etc. People with lots of subcutaneous fat but relatively little visceral often have better health outcomes, even though they also can look pretty flabby.
As far as I understand it, the kind of (excessive) fat you put on in the gut region is more dangerous than the kind that is under your skin and distributed over your body, as it is linked to diabetes and other diseases.
Yeah, there are a lot of sources out there on this subject. It generally takes 10-14 days for your body to adjust to burning fat instead of storing excess sugar. People also tend to be hangry and have bad headaches during the transition. IF can be helpful to keep your body from returning to the sugar rollercoaster. The problem is our food supply is built on cheap sugar/corn. It takes focused and deliberate effort to change. Most people have too much stress in their lives already and this is just not sustainable for them.
The ten to fourteen days is debatable and depends on how fat adapted you are. People who frequently cycle keto/low carb/fasting become fat adapted faster than those using SAD.
That comports with my experience: for anyone who’s never been in ketosis, it’s maybe 10-20 days. But once one is acclimated, it’s both shorter and easier; it takes me about 3-4 days now.
When I start going back into a fast (usually when cycling fasts) I can get back into ketosis within a day according to the strips. It took years to get to this point though.
Yeah, getting a headache because one didn't eat that day isn't normal. It means you're addicted to cheap carbs. Our ancestors on the Serengeti didn't have this luxury of eating 3 times every day.
Wouldn't that mean that gp's body is only able to absorb energy from blood sugar floating around the body and has lost the ability to use other sources of energy in the body. Hence has physical addiction to contionous blood sugar supply.
or maybe there some other medical condition ( other than insulin resistance) that is causing this. Curious to know what that might be.
This is mostly hunch/n=1, but I think a significant factor is not just sugar, but the sugar/fiber ratio. This is one reason why whole fruits (and berries especially) are preferable to fruit juice: the fiber slows down the blood sugar spike (some of the energy is used up breaking apart the fibers for digestion).
I’ve started eating a pinch/handful of leafy greens twice a day, as a sort of medicine-for-the-gut; and while the effect is subtle, I’ve definitely noticed a stability boost to mood and energy, especially while I’m not in ketosis.
In my experience, headaches from cutting out carbs are almost always because your body is retaining less water and you're running low on water/electrolytes. Add some salt, zinc, magnesium and potassium to your diet.
When I do extended fasts (1-5 days), I'll literally grind up cal-mag-zinc pills, add salt, and dilute them in warm water and drink them. It tastes awful, and there's products out there that work better, but it feels great once your body absorbs it.
My rudimentary understanding is that the brain needs glucose to work properly. Especially for intellectual work.
Sugar is a shortcut to get glucose, however it burns fast so if you want to keep the same buzz you'll have to take more sugar. So a vicious cycle of ups and downs will arise.
On a good week I'll stick to low GI foods and take no chocolate / red bulls. Will feel productive, and notoriously energetic.
Still one can mix and match - sometimes out of a self-assessment will intentionally seek a short-term boost which (I hope) will not decline sharply because I also ate low-GI foods.
The brain can also use a different engery source: ketone bodies. They can be produced from fatty acids. The body starts doing this when glucose levels fall too low.
You can function just fine for prolonged periods of time without ingesting any glucose sources.
It does take the body a while to adjust and ramp up ketone production, which can lead to feeling drained/low energy and induces sugary-rich food cravings.
But that mostly subsides after a few days.
Nice side effect: it is quite common to get a certain sense of eurphoria and well-being after not getting sugar for a few days. The current hypothesis is that one of the ketone bodies (BHB) might have similar effects on the brain as GHB, which is a psychoactive drug. (they have a similar structure, namely they are isomers)
Personally, I feel much more energetic and healthy when skipping carbs and fruits entirely. Even mentally! At least after the initial adjustment. Sadly it's hard to fall back into eating sugar all the time.
Ketone bodies do just fine for the brain. I've been through a 10 day supervised water fast and worked all the time, no problems with the concentration or energy levels except for days 2 and 3. I've done plenty (hundreds) of 36hr fasts and if anything, my brain seems easier to focus on a specific task, or to work longer, while fasting.
Glucose is needed for some red blood cells though, and the body has ways of producing it in absence of food. Those are insignificant amounts.
- stores glucose as glycogen (fast-release energy mostly in the liver and muscles) or storage fat (slow-release energy mostly in dedicated tissue)
- converts glycogen[0] back to glucose when you need energy to burn
You don't need dietary carbohydrates very frequently. Your body will be fine converting glycogen[0] to glucose at an appropriate rate, and you store about a day of glycogen. The problem with dietary carbohydrates is that they always start as glucose and then get stored. If you dump a bunch of simple sugars into your stomach, they all end up in your bloodstream at once (hyperglycemia), your body releases a lot of insulin to cope with the surplus, and then there's a dip (hypoglycemia) afterwards. Once you're through the dip, though, everything should go back to normal.
I think this is the same as what you're saying, just with more detail on why it works that way.
[0] or other things, like fat and protein, in a pinch
Yes. The over-simplification of dopamine as some sort of pleasure chemical is frustratingly common.
Everyone seems to want to be able to explain every emotion and behavior as the byproduct of a neurotransmitter, e.g. "I'm addicted to the dopamine hits from my phone", "I'm sad because my serotonin is low", "I'm on an endorphin high from that workout", etc. etc.
Besides many of these examples being flat-out wrong, emotions in general are immensely more complex than the simple release of a single chemical in the brain. The belief that everything bad in the brain is just a "chemical imbalance" is a really harmful one IMO, as it turns people away from truly understanding their problems, and replaces any sort of deeper understanding with a desire to simplify everything down to pseudo-scientific brain chemistry quick fixes.
You are also incorrect. It's both. For instance upon experiencing a novel, pleasurable experience, one you didn't know to anticipate, dopamine levels will increase above baseline. It will then drop below tonic levels before returning to the baseline, creating mild, even unnoticeable discomfort, driving longer term desire / motion to find / anticipation for more of the thing in the future.
That’s not wrong, but it ignores the effects of catecholamine metabolism and the co-storage of dopamine and noradrenaline in the same vesicles. Noradrenaline release necessarily causes dopamine release, but also an increase in the activity of dopamine beta-hydroxylase, which starts converting more dopamine into noradrenaline — hence the drop below baseline, discomfort and drive.
I quit gradually, by making each step so small (e.g. no sodas in the evenings, switching to chocolate with less sugar content) that it never felt like I was making a major change. Anecdotally, it’s been the better part of a decade since I quit refined sugar completely (along with some other significant dietary and exercise regimen changes), and my health has improved tremendously. Haven’t noticed any major changes in energy levels, though.
But having a cold Sprite after 6 months of zero sugar is amazing, it's like fireworks on your tongue! You can't have that kind of experience if you have soda or sugar everyday.
>But people sometimes report experiencing negative side effects when they try to eat less sugar. Headaches, fatigue or mood changes, which are usually temporary, are among the symptoms.
I did keto for a few months a few years ago, and I did experience this. They call it the "keto flu" because it apparently happens to most people when they first start the diet. It was unpleasant, but it didn't last long, and I felt _incredible_ for the rest of my time on the diet. I lost weight, had a six pack, and had more energy than ever. It's definitely hard (nothing replaces the texture of real bread), but I do wish more people would try it, just to see if it has the same benefits for them that I experienced.
It’s terrifying that at intense amount it surpasses cocaine.
I still remember after I cut sugar, I can see significant weight loss and it improve my health ever since. Although it’s not easy, but it’s worth it
I think sugar demonization is gonna be yet another fail by nutritionists. In 10 years time they will say, oh actually it turns out that sugar in moderation stimulates the brain directly and increases focus. Its especially useful to animals that rely on cognitive function, like humans.
It will be one of those facts we will all immediately recognise as obvious in hindsight and wonder why we went along with the fad of cutting out sugar, which had a detrimental effect on our ability to think.
Meanwhile, nutritionists will have moved on to saying calcium isotopes are shortening our lifespan.
Doesn't look like to be true in my experience. On occasion, I do indulge in very sugary food, but most of the sugar I get these days come from fruit, which is packaged with fibers and other nutritious stuff.
The demonization of fats was because companies were pushing fructose/vegetable oils into everything. There was a massive profit motive. What is the profit motive to reducing sugar intake? What is taking its place, aside from encouraging people to cook their own meals?
because it's a brain booster. Too much boosting leads to problems. I really expect there to be a line underneath which sugar consumption is net positive
>>In 10 years time they will say, oh actually it turns out that sugar in moderation stimulates the brain directly and increases focus.
The modern day food scene is such, you will end up eating sugar no matter much how you avoid eating it. So this is one thing we don't have to worry about.
Most people are eating way more than they should. Even cutting as high as >50% of sugar will still land them in a safe territory.
I just want to make a statement (which I'm willing to discuss): sugar is a recreational drug, not a food. We should be having it rarely, and always with be mindful that it's taxing our bodies, hence the need for breaks. Chronic usage is, in my understanding, highly associated with almost all chronic disease.
There's evidence to suggest that sugar is not a unique risk factor and it's problematic to focus on sugar as such. The main threat is simply overconsumption, which sugar can help but is not a major factor. From the conclusions of a meta-analysis [1]:
> For now, we would agree with the assertion in the Dietary Guidelines for American (2010) that overconsumption of calories represents the single greatest health threat to individuals in the United States and elsewhere. This may, in part, be linked to the overall consumption patterns in what has been called the “Western” diet. Certainly, added sugars may be considered as components of this overall diet and, therefore, targets for reduction as are other energy dense components of this nutrition pattern. Singling out added sugars as major or unique culprits for metabolically based diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease appears inconsistent with modern high quality evidence and is very unlikely to yield health benefits. The reduction of these components of the diet without other reductions seems very unlikely to achieve any meaningful results.
> a reasonable recommended upper limit of sugar may reside at consuming no more than 20% of calories from added sugars and then only in a hypercaloric situation.
An upper limit of 20% isn't high but it's not something I'd characterize as "rare" either.
I admit that I didn't read the whole paper nor do I have a strong scientific background to judge it, but I've seen this kind of finding before and it makes sense to me: sugar is not uniquely terrible but rather a cultural staple of obesity which is the real threat. Sugar as a major bogeyman is an appealing narrative concrete enough to address (eg. with a sugar tax) but is probably not the magic bullet we want it to be.
It used to be fats, now it's sugars. They can both contribute significantly to obesity which is a complex factor that has consistently been found to be bad.
It's more than that; sugar spiking your insulin regularly in an unnatural way (things way more sweet than our DNA is "trained" on, effects on gut microbiome, association with ultra-processed foods devoid of fiber, healthy fats and quality protein, effects on appetite, neurological / addictive effects. And so on. All intrinsic negatives of sugar in the diet, it's not about the calories as this excerpt seems to imply.
Well, I already had low sugar intake and fairly healthy nutrition (almost no processed food) but still had to lose weight. So I tried intermittent fasting because it got so much hype. All I can say is that it didn't work for me at all, it was essentially impossible to work or concentrate on anything, and I even gained weight! Lack of sugar has the most severe impact on me, it really makes me dumb.
I now do some "moderate" calorie counting, rough estimates over the day, conscious decisions what I eat and occasional exceptions allowed. So far it looks promising. But I sometimes absolutely need sugar in order to be able focus on work, and if its just in the form of some grapes or a banana. As long as I have to use my brain, I don't think a no sugar diet could work for me. (Even worse are artificial sweeteners, but I suppose their negative impact on the brain is not very controversial anyway.)
This is only anecdotal evidence, of course. From what I've learned from the net on diets is (i) what works for someone may not work for someone else, and (ii) information on the net about dieting ranges from unreliable to contradictory.
What really opened me up to all of the complex biochem when processing different foods was the “what I’ve learned” youtube channel [1]. What you describe was actually tested by the US government with the starvation experiment around ww2 and is consistent with your symptoms.
Apparently when people are kept on a carb diet, but not given enough carbs, their live would suck quite a bit, they would loose muscle (but gain fat), not be able to think straight, etc. Its all fascinating stuff.
I would suggest trying a full water fast for at least 2 days to see how it goes. For me its much less stressful, and after I get rid of all the carbs (24-48 hours, depending on what I was eating before) I would blissfully operate without any problems, including heavy fitness and programming tasks.
And when I get to a point of too little glucose in my brain, because I had to fix a tricky bug, instead of searching for that chocolate treat, I’ll just sit for a but for 5-10 minutes, and let my body break down some of my fat to make more brain juice to operate normally.
You are right though that people are different and this is a fricking complex stuff, and might not work for you, just wanted to mention that there might be more you can try.
I'm surprised this article made it this high up on hacker news - it seems really superficial and behind on latest research, I'm always skeptical when everything is blamed on dopamine withdrawal - isn't gut bacteria meant to play a big part in causing cravings? And ketones perhaps? I'm no expert in this stuff though, so maybe it is all just about dopamine withdrawal?
The common theme I've seen in reading through the comments so far is the striking difference between those that are very well versed in the low carb/no sugar lifestyle and those are relying on understanding of "traditional" nutrition understanding.
Please keep in mind that many, many of the traditional thoughts in nutrition are currently being upset. Nutrition and athletic performance have been largely ignored in scientific circles, often relying on single variate, unrepeatable, p-hacked studies that were taken at face value and never questioned. That's not to say that this post is either gospel or trash - it's probably somewhere in between. This domain is currently changing a lot so stay tuned.
Does anyone have any knowledge or experiences with sugar alcohols (particularly erythritol, marketed as “monkfruit sweetener”)? So far, I haven’t felt any negative effects from it while in ketosis, and a minuscule amount of research suggests 95% is passed through undigested. Curious if anyone here is more knowledgeable, and if there are any reasons I should be avoiding it (beyond a general bias/heuristic for whole foods).
It's probable that the sweet taste is enough to cause some (modest, I'd guess), insulin secretion, but other than that there are not excess calories, so won't interfere with the normal functioning of the liver.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadhttps://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-addiction-201706...
Sugar is addictive. Full stop.
@popotamonga: Don't eat 1 kg in one go though, that's really bad for your insulin swings in your blood. That 1 kg should last you at least ten days.
A grande Frappuccino at Starbucks has 64g of sugar, double the daily recommended intake.
They do, it's called "breakfast".
I believe, hundreds of millions people start their day with sugary cereal or some similar "healthy" sugar dessert.
Also, from my experience of losing weight on low carb diets, dropping sugar "cold turkey" leads to absolutely brutal sugar cravings.
And somehow I don't really miss it, except for occasional "a <sweet thing> would be nice" which surprises me in the sense that I expected I'd be having cravings.
Just "quitting" liquid calories also made a huge difference for me in terms of caloric intake.
"What happened when I ate ultra-processed food for a month" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/van_tulleken
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/what_is_ultra-processed_...
Edit: that BBC page in turn links to this, which again looks helpful and reasonably credible from a cursory inspection but I don't endorse it in any further manner:
https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova
Technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, I suppose. But it does not give me a lot of confidence in any other claims they proceed to make.
> Table sugar, or sucrose, is a disaccharide made up of a molecule of glucose and a molecule of fructose joined together
Now, if I'm in a truly stressful situation, I still get anxiety, but I think it's _appropriate_ anxiety. Big difference.
I also focus a lot better and I'm more clear headed.
On the other hand I can't handle alcohol anymore. Drinking 1/3 of what I could handle makes me feel sick and hangovers are common. I might be wrong but I suppose the body uses lots of sugar to sintetize alcohol.
I'm trying to cut back on sugar, as in my mid-thirties I'm starting to slightly get the feared dad-bod (extra viscerial fat which is very unhealty).
In the beginning it was rather difficult but after one or two weeks I found I can go longer without sweets. I guess eating slow-burning carbs and non-carb calories is an important factor.
Does anybody here know if it is true that the body adapts to how frequent sugar is available? I don't mean full blown keto, but just dropping the snacks and sugary drinks and having larger pauses between glukose spikes. I've read about it and it matches my experience but it's hard to tell how much is backed by science.
How do you know this?
or maybe there some other medical condition ( other than insulin resistance) that is causing this. Curious to know what that might be.
I’ve started eating a pinch/handful of leafy greens twice a day, as a sort of medicine-for-the-gut; and while the effect is subtle, I’ve definitely noticed a stability boost to mood and energy, especially while I’m not in ketosis.
In my experience, headaches from cutting out carbs are almost always because your body is retaining less water and you're running low on water/electrolytes. Add some salt, zinc, magnesium and potassium to your diet.
When I do extended fasts (1-5 days), I'll literally grind up cal-mag-zinc pills, add salt, and dilute them in warm water and drink them. It tastes awful, and there's products out there that work better, but it feels great once your body absorbs it.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7836627/
Sugar is a shortcut to get glucose, however it burns fast so if you want to keep the same buzz you'll have to take more sugar. So a vicious cycle of ups and downs will arise.
In contrast, one can take slower-burning glucose sources. The good news is that this stuff is objectively measured by the Glycemic Index; here's a table for a good variety of foods. https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...
On a good week I'll stick to low GI foods and take no chocolate / red bulls. Will feel productive, and notoriously energetic.
Still one can mix and match - sometimes out of a self-assessment will intentionally seek a short-term boost which (I hope) will not decline sharply because I also ate low-GI foods.
You can function just fine for prolonged periods of time without ingesting any glucose sources.
It does take the body a while to adjust and ramp up ketone production, which can lead to feeling drained/low energy and induces sugary-rich food cravings.
But that mostly subsides after a few days.
Nice side effect: it is quite common to get a certain sense of eurphoria and well-being after not getting sugar for a few days. The current hypothesis is that one of the ketone bodies (BHB) might have similar effects on the brain as GHB, which is a psychoactive drug. (they have a similar structure, namely they are isomers)
Personally, I feel much more energetic and healthy when skipping carbs and fruits entirely. Even mentally! At least after the initial adjustment. Sadly it's hard to fall back into eating sugar all the time.
Glucose is needed for some red blood cells though, and the body has ways of producing it in absence of food. Those are insignificant amounts.
No.
In deep ketosis there's gluconeogenisis where the small amount you need will be made for you.
In fact, people on keto or fasting actually report vastly better mental clarity.
- converts carbohydrates to glucose on the way in
- stores glucose as glycogen (fast-release energy mostly in the liver and muscles) or storage fat (slow-release energy mostly in dedicated tissue)
- converts glycogen[0] back to glucose when you need energy to burn
You don't need dietary carbohydrates very frequently. Your body will be fine converting glycogen[0] to glucose at an appropriate rate, and you store about a day of glycogen. The problem with dietary carbohydrates is that they always start as glucose and then get stored. If you dump a bunch of simple sugars into your stomach, they all end up in your bloodstream at once (hyperglycemia), your body releases a lot of insulin to cope with the surplus, and then there's a dip (hypoglycemia) afterwards. Once you're through the dip, though, everything should go back to normal.
I think this is the same as what you're saying, just with more detail on why it works that way.
[0] or other things, like fat and protein, in a pinch
This is incorrect. Dopamine is not released as a response to a positive stimulus, it is released in anticipation of a positive stimulus.
Everyone seems to want to be able to explain every emotion and behavior as the byproduct of a neurotransmitter, e.g. "I'm addicted to the dopamine hits from my phone", "I'm sad because my serotonin is low", "I'm on an endorphin high from that workout", etc. etc.
Besides many of these examples being flat-out wrong, emotions in general are immensely more complex than the simple release of a single chemical in the brain. The belief that everything bad in the brain is just a "chemical imbalance" is a really harmful one IMO, as it turns people away from truly understanding their problems, and replaces any sort of deeper understanding with a desire to simplify everything down to pseudo-scientific brain chemistry quick fixes.
I did keto for a few months a few years ago, and I did experience this. They call it the "keto flu" because it apparently happens to most people when they first start the diet. It was unpleasant, but it didn't last long, and I felt _incredible_ for the rest of my time on the diet. I lost weight, had a six pack, and had more energy than ever. It's definitely hard (nothing replaces the texture of real bread), but I do wish more people would try it, just to see if it has the same benefits for them that I experienced.
Unstoppable midday naps
Vastly improved focus
But I had totally cut out processed sugar from my diet and I have always had a sweet tooth.
Might do it again sometime.
It will be one of those facts we will all immediately recognise as obvious in hindsight and wonder why we went along with the fad of cutting out sugar, which had a detrimental effect on our ability to think.
Meanwhile, nutritionists will have moved on to saying calcium isotopes are shortening our lifespan.
The modern day food scene is such, you will end up eating sugar no matter much how you avoid eating it. So this is one thing we don't have to worry about.
Most people are eating way more than they should. Even cutting as high as >50% of sugar will still land them in a safe territory.
> For now, we would agree with the assertion in the Dietary Guidelines for American (2010) that overconsumption of calories represents the single greatest health threat to individuals in the United States and elsewhere. This may, in part, be linked to the overall consumption patterns in what has been called the “Western” diet. Certainly, added sugars may be considered as components of this overall diet and, therefore, targets for reduction as are other energy dense components of this nutrition pattern. Singling out added sugars as major or unique culprits for metabolically based diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease appears inconsistent with modern high quality evidence and is very unlikely to yield health benefits. The reduction of these components of the diet without other reductions seems very unlikely to achieve any meaningful results.
> a reasonable recommended upper limit of sugar may reside at consuming no more than 20% of calories from added sugars and then only in a hypercaloric situation.
An upper limit of 20% isn't high but it's not something I'd characterize as "rare" either.
I admit that I didn't read the whole paper nor do I have a strong scientific background to judge it, but I've seen this kind of finding before and it makes sense to me: sugar is not uniquely terrible but rather a cultural staple of obesity which is the real threat. Sugar as a major bogeyman is an appealing narrative concrete enough to address (eg. with a sugar tax) but is probably not the magic bullet we want it to be.
It used to be fats, now it's sugars. They can both contribute significantly to obesity which is a complex factor that has consistently been found to be bad.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5133084/
I now do some "moderate" calorie counting, rough estimates over the day, conscious decisions what I eat and occasional exceptions allowed. So far it looks promising. But I sometimes absolutely need sugar in order to be able focus on work, and if its just in the form of some grapes or a banana. As long as I have to use my brain, I don't think a no sugar diet could work for me. (Even worse are artificial sweeteners, but I suppose their negative impact on the brain is not very controversial anyway.)
This is only anecdotal evidence, of course. From what I've learned from the net on diets is (i) what works for someone may not work for someone else, and (ii) information on the net about dieting ranges from unreliable to contradictory.
Its not 'no sugar' diet. More of what you seem to be doing.
Apparently when people are kept on a carb diet, but not given enough carbs, their live would suck quite a bit, they would loose muscle (but gain fat), not be able to think straight, etc. Its all fascinating stuff.
I would suggest trying a full water fast for at least 2 days to see how it goes. For me its much less stressful, and after I get rid of all the carbs (24-48 hours, depending on what I was eating before) I would blissfully operate without any problems, including heavy fitness and programming tasks.
And when I get to a point of too little glucose in my brain, because I had to fix a tricky bug, instead of searching for that chocolate treat, I’ll just sit for a but for 5-10 minutes, and let my body break down some of my fat to make more brain juice to operate normally.
You are right though that people are different and this is a fricking complex stuff, and might not work for you, just wanted to mention that there might be more you can try.
[1] https://youtu.be/APZCfmgzoS0
Please keep in mind that many, many of the traditional thoughts in nutrition are currently being upset. Nutrition and athletic performance have been largely ignored in scientific circles, often relying on single variate, unrepeatable, p-hacked studies that were taken at face value and never questioned. That's not to say that this post is either gospel or trash - it's probably somewhere in between. This domain is currently changing a lot so stay tuned.