Sugar gives you energy! Sugar is good for you! Sugar will give you diabetes! Sugar will kill you!

Many years back, I regularly added four teaspoons of sugar to my cup of tea. Then I read a book called “Sugar Blues”. I went cold turkey, from four to none in one hit. Thank goodness I did.

Do you know what sugar does? When it hits your bloodstream (and it gets there fast), your blood sugar skyrockets. Your pancreas gland then shoots out insulin to normalise the blood sugar level. Trouble is it kind of panics and sends too much insulin, so your blood sugar drops through the floor. That’s when you get the familiar “sugar shakes” caused by low blood sugar levels. The quick way to stop the sugar shakes is to take on sugar, so then you drink a Coke or some other high sugar drink and the whole cycle repeats. How do you think your poor old pancreas feels about this?

Eventually it gets so overworked that it can’t keep up any more. Now you are a diabetic having to take insulin pills, and later, having to inject the stuff in your thigh. Then first your toes will die because of bad circulation, they’ll be amputated, then your feet, then your lower legs, then your upper legs and then you.

Don’t go there.