How to Stay Healthy During Sugar Season

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. We start off with Halloween, where we all buy loads of candy to hand out to children and our kids come home with pounds of sugar they’ve already started downing. The next day we’re in November, planning our Thanksgiving feasts complete with pies, brown sugar hams, candied yams, and more. After that it’s Christmas where we fill stockings with chocolate and bring our neighbors plates of cookies and cinnamon bears and chocolate covered fruit. 

Even if you don’t celebrate these particular holidays specifically, the sugary messaging is in every aisle of every store, and neighbors and friends are sure to be sharing their sweets with you regardless. 

With all that sugar plus the cold weather settling in, is it any wonder we’re all coming down with colds and flus at this time, too? What can be done?

What sugar does to the body

First, let’s get clear on what exactly all this sugar is doing. 

Long-term excessive sugar intake is associated with obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and a host of other noncommunicable diseases. 

But what does it do immediately? First, in your mouth, it causes an imbalance in bacteria, making you more susceptible to gum disease, thrush, and other oral issues. It also begins the tooth decay process by causing your enamel to lose minerals.

On to the skin. Did you know consuming sugar causes wrinkles? Sugar intake triggers inflammation, which inhibits collagen production and breaks down existing collagen. But sugar also specifically binds collagen, making it incapable of repair. 

Within minutes of consuming sugar, it is processed into glucose, causing insulin to be released. While this is a normal, healthy response, repeatedly spiking blood sugar and the corresponding insulin spike lead to insulin resistance and eventually diabetes. 

Sugar consumption is also tough on the kidneys as they are responsible for filtering out excess glucose that the body does not need. 

There also may be evidence suggesting that sugar intake suppresses your immune system, making it harder to fight off viruses and other pathogens.

However you look at it, sugar is certainly not doing any favors to your health.

Yet, we are all presented with many opportunities to partake of it during the last few months of the year. 

What is to be done? Here are 5 ideas for staying well during sugar season.

Drink water

One of the most well-known and underrated contributors to our health is water! It’s so important for literally everything our body is trying to do to keep us up and running.

Every cell and organ system in your body needs water to do its job and you’d literally die without it.  Don’t skip it!

You’d be surprised what random symptoms might simply disappear just by adding some good old H2O to your day. Sometimes headaches, fatigue, joint pain, etc. are actually dehydration rearing its little head. 

Have you ever thought you were hungry, only to find that drinking a glass of water did the trick? Oftentimes we confuse thirst signals for any number of other things including hunger and even sugar cravings. 

Set a timer in your phone to go off every hour and DRINK THAT WATER.

Take a whole food multivitamin and mineral

Your enamel is not the only thing being leeched of minerals when you eat sugar. Your entire body has to use up these precious nutrients to process, utilize, and get rid of excess sugar intake. You’re basically requiring your vitamins and minerals to stop their real job and clean up a mess over and over again. The real jobs never get done!

Find a good, whole food multivitamin and mineral to give your body an extra boost. Trust me, the treats are depleting it and it could use a little support.

You know we love AzureWell around here. They have a really great one called Whole Food Multi-Vitamin (pretty straight forward…). As with the rest of their supplements, this one has no fillers, dyes, chemicals, etc. Just straight whole foods! I love that the dose is 4 capsules so you can cater to your needs if you want less. This also allows you to take it one or two at a time to spread it out throughout the day.

Choose “healthier” desserts

I cut out refined sugars a couple years ago, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get a sweet treat every now and then. I like to use honey, pure maple syrup, or dates to sweeten things without all the processing. While you certainly wouldn’t want to overdo it on these sugars either, I am of the opinion that they are a better option. They are straight from nature, including all their vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other nutrients that naturally occur alongside the sugar. 

With the internet and all the information about every diet known to man, there is no limit to the resources you have available to you! I like to search “WFPB ______” and fill in the blank with the treat I want to make. WFPB stands for Whole Food Plant Based, which is a diet that does not include animal products (so it’s technically vegan), but also doesn’t include refined sugar, oil, or excess salt. You can always add these ingredients to your own if you want, but it’s nice to see how people are making these recipes without those ingredients – and in our case here, without sugar, specifically.

The other day I made these oatmeal raisin cookies to bring to a family dinner and everyone loved them! They didn’t even miss the cup of white sugar and butter and white flour they might have eaten in a more conventional recipe. 

I like to blend up frozen fruit or eat a piece of dark chocolate when I’m having a sugar craving, and it really does the trick.

There are many ways to get some sweets in while not compromising on nutrition and leaving your immune system to fend for itself. Be a little creative and open-minded and see what you come up with!

Don’t slack on your wellness routine

While you may be tempted to save a few bucks for gift giving this year, it’s important to keep up the habits and routines that keep you healthy and functioning year round.  Exercise is still important, even during this busy season, so don’t be letting that gym membership lapse.

Regular chiropractic adjustments are wonderful to make sure your nervous system is functioning optimally.

You can take advantage of a local yoga class, or try out a sauna to boost your immune system.

Of course, around here we like to keep up on our regular visits to our QEST4 practitioner. Bioenergetic testing is a great way to address imbalances at the root cause before they escalate. 

In short, don’t let the limited winter daylight hours and fun holiday get-togethers tempt you into carving out the time for your health routines and practices.

Be the neighbor that doesn’t bring treats

I love to be this neighbor and I see many advantages to it. 

First of all, if I start making sweet baked goods for all my neighbors, I inevitably eat some of them myself. Secondly, I’m contributing to the mass spread of sugar everywhere! Every home is going to be filled with it, so do I really need to contribute to that?

Aside from the sugar overload, many people have allergies or food intolerances I may not be aware of and my treat won’t be loved like it should.

I like to think of non-food items to bring and I have seen many neighbors do something similar. Things like spatulas, wooden spoons, dish towels, Christmas books, toilet paper rolls, tissue boxes, blankets, etc. are all wonderful.  I’m sure you could google it and get a million ideas.

While this isn’t sugar related, I would also like to point out that I avoid giving soaps and things like that that have fragrances and chemicals. These come with their own host of toxins that can cause allergies, health problems, etc. And who doesn’t love a good roll of toilet paper, anyway?

I wish you all the best of luck at staying well this sugar season! Let me know if you have any other tips or tricks you’ve discovered over the years.

 

Resources:

The Immediate, Short and Long-Term Effects Of Sugar – The Healthy Employee

Does high sugar intake really alter the oral microbiota?: A systematic review – PMC

High-Sugar Diets Can Break Down Collagen, According To Research | mindbodygreen

Doctors warn that sugar can temporarily weaken your immune system