WHAT DOES A TYPICAL TYPE 1 SUGAR ADDICT LOOK LIKE?
If you’re a type 1 sugar addict, it’s likely you are a type A personality, which means you strive for perfection. Nothing less than the best you can do is acceptable. Whether you are a college student pulling all-nighters, a Young Turk climbing the corporate ladder, or a woman working on breaking the glass ceiling, your attention is focused with laser-like precision on success.
Chances are you work (or want to work) in a highly competitive field such as law, medicine, high finance, or high tech. But you can be a type 1 sugar addict regardless of your work situation (yes, stay-at-home moms count). The common denominator of all type 1 sugar addicts is that there never seems to be enough hours in the day to get everything done. Downtime is not on your to-do list, and fatigue is ever present.
If you try to exercise, you are plagued with aches and pains because your muscles just don’t have the energy they need to function properly. If you skip a workout, muscles tighten, causing pain, and when this becomes chronic, it is called fibromyalgia.
Low energy can also cause muscle tightness in the neck and shoulders, a factor in tension headaches and/or migraines. Caffeine withdrawal (even if it’s temporary) and even an allergy to sugar can also trigger migraines.
It’s not unusual for a type 1 sugar addict to have hypothyroidism. When your thyroid gland (located in your neck), the master of metabolism, isn’t working the way it should, fatigue results. This further perpetuates a dependence on energy drinks to boost energy artificially.
MORE HEALTH PROBLEMS COMMON TO TYPE 1 SUGAR ADDICTS
Often, the type 1 sugar addict has a weakened immune system. Repeatedly pumping sugar into your body with energy drinks puts you at a deficit for certain essential nutrients, such as zinc, which you need for proper immune function. When you don’t get the nutrients you need, your body’s defense system becomes impaired. In fact, the sugar in one can of soda can immediately decrease your immune function by one-third for three to four hours!
Do you seem to catch every illness that’s going around, and then it takes forever for the infection to go away? If so, your immune system may be sluggish. You may get viral infections, such as a cold or flu, or have chronic sore throats. In more severe cases, immune dysfunction can be associated with infections that should be short term but become chronic, such as Epstein-Barr syndrome.
Chronic use of energy drinks to boost energy artificially wreaks havoc on the body and can lead to all sorts of problems, including sugar addiction, fatigue, insulin resistance, weight gain, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), and fibromyalgia (FMS). Over the past ten years, research has shown that the incidence of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia has increased by 400 to 1,000 percent, with more than 12 million Americans (three-quarters of them female) being affected. More than 25 million Americans suffer from chronic disabling fatigue, and most people feel they simply don’t have enough energy.
THE TYPE 1 SUGAR ADDICT’S DIET
Type 1 sugar addicts often eat on the run, usually fast foods that contain sugar, fat, and salt, because you don’t have enough time to sit down for a real meal. Because of this, you lack vitamins and minerals that are essential for energy production, such as B vitamins (B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B12), magnesium, and zinc, which are critical to immune function––which is one reason why you get sick so often.
White flour and white rice (which have essentially been stripped of nutrients and are easily converted into sugar in the body) supply another major part of your diet. In fact, more than one-third of the calories in the average American’s diet come from sugar and white flour––a whopping 35 percent of what you eat provides essentially no vitamins or minerals. Eating these empty calories is like having a third of your paycheck bounce!
A nutrient-poor diet translates into an energy deficit. You won’t have the building blocks you need for vital bodily functions, including burning calories to generate energy, repairing tissue, making “happiness molecules” such as serotonin, and keeping your brain working optimally. The type 1 sugar addict’s lose-lose solution is to reach for a quick energy fix in the form of an energy drink packed with sugar and caffeine.
Eventually, eating the wrong foods and eating on the run causes acid reflux and indigestion, a common problem for type 1 sugar addicts. Indigestion can be aggravated by the overuse of antacids. Contrary to popular belief, the problem isn’t that you make too much stomach acid, but rather that you make too little.
Antacids just exacerbate this problem and can even be addictive. In addition to blocking the absorption of vitamin B12 and many other nutrients from your food, acid blocker medications can decrease absorption of thyroid hormone, which further fuels sugar cravings.
Constipation can also be an issue. When you don’t eat foods with fiber and load up on sugar instead, the “transit time” that food is in your digestive system increases; food tends to putrefy in the digestive tract, releasing toxins. You get brain fog and feel sluggish and achy. In the extreme, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia may develop.
SLEEP DEPRIVATION IN TYPE 1 SUGAR ADDICTS
Insomnia is a common problem for type 1 sugar addicts. Obviously, if you don’t get enough sleep, you won’t have much energy––and you’ll be more likely to reach for energy drinks to fuel your sugar addiction during the day. Your punishing schedule leaves you little time for sleep and makes it hard for you to fall asleep. Many of you average only six hours of sleep a night.
Sleep is critical for many functions. It recharges your batteries, helps tissues repair, and enables you to produce growth hormone. Without enough growth hormone, you will age more rapidly and may develop chronic achiness and pain.
Sleep also regulates the production of ghrelin and leptin––the appetite-controlling hormones––so you are more likely to reach for that sugary drink. In fact, a six-year-long study of 276 adults conducted by researchers at Laval University in Quebec City, Quebec, found that sleeping fewer than seven hours a night increases your risk of obesity by 30 percent and causes an average weight gain of 5 pounds (23 kg).
Fortunately, natural remedies can help most people with insomnia. In part II, you will learn about the best natural and prescription therapies so you can get eight hours of solid sleep a night.
WHAT DOES A TYPICAL TYPE 2 SUGAR ADDICT LOOK LIKE?
If you are a type 2 sugar addict, you feel like you are always in crisis. You don’t act, you react, which sets off a chain of events guaranteed to leave you stressed out. You are a master at making mountains out of molehills because your distorted thinking and behavior change a small event into a big problem. When you feel burned out by stress, you reach for sugar.
You are also often the “go-to” person when problems arise. It’s admirable to help others, but type 2 sugar addicts are often people pleasers who routinely put others’ needs before their own. Other people’s approval is necessary so you can feel good about yourself, and you won’t rest until their problems are solved. But instead of taking a break when you feel fatigued, you snack on sugar.
Type 2 sugar addicts are often stressed out women, juggling their roles as wives and mothers with demanding jobs outside their homes. You are always on the run: to soccer practice, to ballet class, to work, and home again. You are exhausted, but you can’t seem to stop. When you crash, you reach for a sugar fix to artificially pump up your tired adrenal glands, which fuels your sugar addiction.
Initially, though, this approach seems to work, and even though your adrenals are taxed by stress, you may still feel pretty good. That’s because you’ve become an adrenaline junkie and the rush keeps you on an “energy high.”
Eventually, this backfires. As you repeatedly “use” sugar to get an energy boost, your blood sugar dips even lower, and that drives the adrenals to work even harder. Over time, the adrenal glands may become bigger, just as muscles do when you work out. Ultimately, however, your adrenals become exhausted.
You may find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. You might suffer from chronic sore throats and recurrent swollen glands in your neck. You get sick more often and have difficulty recovering. You may have low blood pressure and feel dizzy upon standing. You might even develop chronic fatigue syndrome.
If you are a type 2 sugar addict, you may find that you can no longer fit into your skinny jeans. That’s because every time the adrenals kick in, insulin is released, telling the body to store more fat. In two of our studies at the Annapolis Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia Research Center, people with chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia, with associated adrenal fatigue, had an average weight gain of 32.5 pounds (15 kg).
The key sign of adrenal fatigue, however, is hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar. This condition can make you irritable when you’re hungry. You feel like you need something to eat right now! Usually that something is sugar.
THE ROLLER COASTER RIDE OF HYPOGLYCEMIA
When you eat sugar, your blood glucose rises sharply. Your body then releases high amounts of insulin, causing your sugar to plummet quickly. Low blood sugar creates a sugar craving and puts you on an emotional (and blood sugar) roller coaster.
Having large amounts of sugar and white flour in the diet is a fairly new phenomenon in human history. In the past, we ate whole and unprocessed foods that took a few hours to slowly digest, releasing a steady stream of sugar into your blood during that time.
The Adrenal Glands and Blood Sugar
The adrenal glands, controlled by the pituitary, are located on either side of your kidneys and maintain stable blood sugar levels by producing cortisol, which triggers the manufacture of insulin. But when you are under stress (in a fight or flight situation), the glands produce adrenaline or epinephrine, which increases your blood sugar, heart rate, and pulse to prepare you for action. Without enough cortisol and in turn, insulin, to handle the spike, your blood sugar rapidly drops during stress and your brain feels like you’re drowning.
You do need a normal amount of adrenaline on a day-to-day basis. The adrenal glands help maintain normal energy levels for balancing the immune system, maintaining healthy blood pressure, and producing other hormones, including dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA, the “fountain of youth hormone”), aldosterone (which maintains proper salt and water levels in the body), and even some of your testosterone.
For example, when you eat a turkey and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread (something with a low glycemic index), it takes a few hours for your body to digest it, and your blood sugar rises slowly. (We’ll talk more about the glycemic index later.) Insulin is steadily released to help unlock the door to the cells, allowing sugar or glucose to leave your bloodstream and enter the cells to be burned as fuel. Blood sugar and insulin levels both go down gradually after a few hours, and you have a healthy pattern of blood sugar rise and fall.
But when your adrenal glands are exhausted, you are more likely to consume sugar in large quantities in an attempt to get the energy you need. Maybe you drink a 12-ounce (355 ml) can of soda that contains 10 teaspoons (40 g) of sugar. When the sugar hits your system, your blood sugar skyrockets and your body dramatically increases insulin production to process the sugar out of the bloodstream into the cells. This causes a steep dip in blood sugar levels, which results in hypoglycemia.
Hypoglycemia stimulates a craving for sugar, along with anxiety and irritability. But every time you eat that candy bar or gulp that soda, you put your body under more stress and exacerbate your sugar addiction.
THE PRICE TYPE 2 SUGAR ADDICTS PAY OVER TIME
Overproduction of cortisol, which happens when you are excessively stressed out, suppresses immune function. But when the adrenals are finally exhausted, too little cortisol causes immune dysfunction as well and can increase sugar cravings. The long-term consequences can be severe:
▪ Chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia are characterized by insomnia despite exhaustion because your adrenal glands lose their ability for self-regulation. Cortisol levels are low during the day, causing fatigue and irritability. At night, as cortisol levels rise too high, insomnia occurs. Low blood sugar can also throw your muscles into spasm, causing chronic pain.
▪ Immune function also suffers when cortisol levels drop. The result is an increase in autoimmune diseases (e.g., lupus). This also makes you more prone to catching colds and flu.
▪ Excess cortisol can cause elevated blood sugar and diabetes. It directly increases blood pressure (hypertension), can lead to loss of bone strength (osteoporosis), and produces weight gain (sometimes massive) from the elevated insulin levels.
Many people who have low adrenal problems also have low thyroid function. Because blood tests are not reliable, your doctor will need to diagnose you according to your symptoms, which include fatigue, aches and pains, weight gain, and cold intolerance. It’s important to treat both of these conditions at once. If you treat a low thyroid without treating the adrenals, you actually stress the adrenals and can make your symptoms worse.
The Adrenal Glands and Blood Sugar
▪ When your adrenals become overtaxed by stress, you reach for sugar to “pump them up.” This can lead to sugar addiction.
▪ Type 2 sugar addicts suffer from adrenal exhaustion, a common condition that affects millions of Americans, especially women.
▪ Type 2 sugar addicts have low blood sugar or hypoglycemia.
▪ If untreated and severe, the long-term consequences of adrenal fatigue can result in chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, immune dysfunction, diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, and obesity.
▪ Type 2 sugar addicts may also have hypothyroidism.
▪ You can break your sugar addiction by changing your diet and treating adrenal fatigue with bio-identical cortisol taken in tiny (physiological) amounts. You will also need to take vitamin C, high dose pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), licorice, and chromium. You’ll need to learn how to handle stress better, too.
WHAT DOES A TYPE 3 SUGAR ADDICT LOOK LIKE?
Your life revolves around sugar. Someone mentions sweets and your eyes light up. You eat sugar all day long, starting with a breakfast of coffee and a sweet Danish or yummy donut. This sugar-laden feast just gears you up to want more. By mid-morning you reach for a candy bar from the vending machine. Lunch is a sandwich on white bread (which quickly converts to glucose: sugar) washed down with a large soft drink. By mid-afternoon, you need a snack and reach for cookies, Twinkies, or a Ho-Ho, and don’t forget a bedtime snack! You constantly crave sugar and make sure you always have cookies, cake, and other sweets in your kitchen, office, purse, and car. It’s not unusual to see you at the local convenience store in the middle of the night getting your fix.
But the price of overindulging in sweets is high. A type 3 sugar addict often feels tired; you may even have chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. It doesn’t stop there. Yeast overgrowth fueled by sugar can cause numerous other health problems, like sinusitis or postnasal drip. When this happens, you’ll see the doctor for antibiotics to treat what you think is a sinus infection. You may also have problems with your digestion, such as gas, bloating, diarrhea and/or constipation, and irritable bowel syndrome. Poor eating habits and eating sugar-laden foods can also mean that you are overweight or obese. You may even be allergic to these foods, although you don’t realize it. More about this later.
THE ROLE OF YEAST IN SUGAR ADDICTION
Why does sugar cause so many problems? Sugar and yeast have a symbiotic relationship. In fact, yeast grow from the fermenting sugars in your body. Yeast can also make you feel like you have no will power, triggering your sugar cravings by releasing a certain chemical, so you’ll feed them their favorite food. Smart, huh? So whenever you eat sweets, you’re feeding the yeast as well. Although science has not yet tracked down the chemical that triggers the sugar cravings, experience with many thousands of patients shows that their sugar cravings decrease dramatically after the yeast have been killed off.
Here’s how this vicious cycle works. The yeast in your gut cause sugar cravings, driving you to eat more sugar, which makes your yeast grow and multiply, which in turn makes you crave more sugar. The result? A yeast overgrowth––billions of baby yeast, fungi, or candida. If you are a type 3 sugar addict trapped in this cycle, you know how awful it can be.
To compound the problem, yeast are really big. If, for example, a virus is the size of a ballpoint pen tip and bacteria are the size of a sofa, yeast can be the size of your whole living room. Because of their sheer size, yeast overgrowth causes a huge challenge for your immune system. When yeast turns into long threads called mycelia that grow through the abdominal wall, it makes the problem of sugar craving even worse.
The abdominal wall is the main barrier, along with your skin, that determines what stays outside of your body. To act as a good gatekeeper, the lining of your intestines needs to be intact and whole. But when mycelia permeate the abdominal wall, you end up with “leaky gut syndrome.” This means instead of absorbing digested food, you absorb partially digested chunks of protein before they’ve been reduced to individual amino acids that the body can utilize. Unfortunately, these chunks of protein can then trigger many kinds of allergic and other problematic reactions.
For example, partially digested protein puts your immune system on high alert because the body treats it as an outside invader. The question the immune system asks as it defends the body is “Are you self or other?” If it recognizes the undigested protein as being part of you, it lets it pass. But if it thinks that undigested protein is “other,” it goes into action, finishing off the job of digesting your food, and stressing it even further by pushing it into overdrive. It can also trigger allergies to certain foods which we discuss below. The result? You feel tired––and reach for more sugar to artificially boost your energy.
How Antibiotic Abuse Contributes to the Yeast-Sugar Cycle
Yeast overgrowth can also be exacerbated by the overuse of antibiotics to treat the chronic sinus, bladder, prostate, and respiratory infections––infections that the yeast actually triggered. Antibiotics kill harmful bacteria that cause infections, but also wipe out the “good” bacteria—allowing the yeast to flourish.
Good bacteria or flora are essential for your health. They help digest your food, play a role in nutrition, and prevent the overgrowth of “bad” bacteria or infections in your body. In fact, there are normally more healthy bacteria in your colon (about 10 trillion) than there are cells in your body. One of their critical jobs is preventing yeast from overgrowing and causing problems.
When you take antibiotics, which kill off the bacteria but not the yeast, the yeast have no competition. Now they can grow unchecked. This makes sugar cravings much worse.
Other Factors That Exacerbate the Yeast-Sugar Problem
Frequently popping antacids can also cause yeast overgrowth and worsen sugar cravings. Antacids turn off the stomach acid that usually kills the yeast in the food we eat. Using steroids like Prednisone (for asthma or other inflammation) suppresses your immune system, too, and allows yeast to grow.
If you don’t get enough sleep, you may fuel yeast overgrowth and sugar cravings as well. Sleep is absolutely essential for a healthy immune system. If your immune system doesn’t work properly, you can’t get rid of infections.
Feeling stressed? Stress can also play a role in yeast overgrowth. That’s because when you are stressed, your body secretes cortisol. Chronic high levels of cortisol suppress your immune system and allow the yeast to run wild, making sugar cravings constant.
The Link between Yeast Overgrowth and Food Allergies
A yeast overgrowth can also cause food allergies. The most common food allergies are to wheat, milk, chocolate, citrus, and eggs. Often, what we are allergic to we crave the most. The more you eat of something, the more allergic you become, because your immune system sees more of the proteins in those foods. If you are allergic to chocolate, for example, you want to eat it all the more. More sugar, more yeast. More yeast, more allergies. That’s why it’s sometimes necessary to treat food allergies in conjunction with yeast overgrowth.
Different foods contain different proteins. When some food proteins are only partially broken down during digestion, they can mimic various hormones and neurotransmitters in the body. Wheat, for example, contains gluten, which has protein chunks that mimic endorphin. Although we think of endorphin as the “happy hormone” that causes the “runner’s high,” when it gets into the bloodstream and into the brain where it doesn’t belong, it can lead to inflammation. Schizophrenia, for instance, has been associated with wheat and milk allergies, and patients improve much more quickly when they avoid wheat and milk.
Allergies can also cause emotional problems, such as mood shifts, anxiety, and depression. When you feel anxious, depressed, or emotionally upset, you’re more likely to reach for something sweet to eat––comfort foods like cookies and ice cream are favorites. And the cycle continues.
THE PRICE TYPE 3 SUGAR ADDICTS PAY OVER TIME
In addition to causing allergies, yeast overgrowth can lead to chronic conditions for type 3 sugar addicts, such as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia, and immune dysfunction. Our research at the Annapolis Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia Research Center shows that if you have CFS, you improve when you eliminate the yeast. Research by Birgitta Evengård, MD, PhD, a specialist in infectious diseases and clinical immunology at Huddinge University Hospital and an associate professor and lecturer at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, has even found higher bowel candida levels to be present during CFS flare-ups.
Although there is no test to distinguish fungal overgrowth from normal fungal levels, you can diagnose overgrowth by symptoms, such as the allergies we just discussed, nasal congestion or sinusitis, spastic colon, unusual rashes, and food allergies. Holistic doctors often target yeast in people who have these symptoms and achieve very positive results. In part III, you’ll find out more about treatments for several common conditions, including sinusitis and spastic colon.
WHAT DOES A TYPE 4 SUGAR ADDICT LOOK LIKE?
Thanks to hormonal fluctuations, women can have more difficulty controlling their emotions at certain times during their menstrual cycle. You may feel tired, irritable, and cranky—and you crave sugar. If you are in perimenopause or menopause, you have hot flashes, fatigue, mood swings, headaches, and intense sugar cravings when estrogen, progesterone, and even testosterone levels plummet during the four to seven days around your period. If you are a man older than forty-five, you may experience a hormonal imbalance called andropause, when testosterone levels decline, causing you to crave sugar. Sound like you? Then, you’re probably a type 4 sugar addict.
THE ROLE OF INSULIN IN SUGAR REGULATION
Insulin is the hormone that regulates blood sugar. Just as your car burns gasoline, your body burns sugar for fuel––and the sugar must be made available to cells in just the right amounts. Too much sugar and you flood the system, stressing your body and causing it to make excess insulin. This drives down your blood sugar, leaving you irritable and anxious, and then exhausted and craving sugar.
Insulin acts like the key that opens the door to your cellular furnaces, so that sugar can get into your cells from your bloodstream to be burned as fuel. When the system is working properly, your body actually makes the sugar needed for fuel (usually from protein and complex carbohydrates), burning calories and regulating hunger. You feel energetic, and you burn calories while staying slim and trim.
When you have insulin resistance, however, the key that opens the “furnace doors” to your cells doesn’t work. Instead, sugar builds up in your blood. Meanwhile, your cells are starved for sugar to make energy and cry out for more sugar. Because the sugar can’t get into your cells to be burned for fuel, you may feel tired and depressed––and find yourself craving sugar. The sugar you eat does not help––it just triggers your body to make more insulin––and you feel exhausted and moody. At the same time, blood sugar, cholesterol, and triglyceride (blood fat) levels climb higher and higher. When severe, it is the most common cause of adult diabetes.
You may also gain weight. The sugar can’t be burned for fuel, so it has to go somewhere. Usually it gets turned into fat. In women, excess insulin levels pack fat onto your hips, thighs, and butt. In men, the fat gets stashed around your waist, creating that “spare tire” look.
In men, low testosterone (even if your blood levels are technically “normal”) is a major cause of insulin resistance. The testosterone deficiency can then cause high cholesterol, high blood pressure, depression, osteoporosis, and obesity in addition to diabetes and heart disease.
Paradoxically, in women, an elevated testosterone level, as can be seen in polycystic ovarian syndrome, can also cause insulin resistance. Low estrogen and menopause have also been associated with insulin resistance (although it’s less common than andropause-related insulin resistance in men). Using synthetic progesterone (i.e., Provera) to treat menopause can also worsen insulin resistance. A healthier approach? Natural alternatives, such as edamame (soybean pods), black cohosh (Remifemin), or bio-identical hormones.
SUGAR CRAVINGS LINKED WITH PMS
PMS is a mix of symptoms, including irritability and sugar cravings, that worsen around a woman’s menstrual cycle. The cause of PMS is controversial, but holistic doctors have found that PMS is usually associated with inadequate progesterone and prostaglandin levels––two hormones that are critical to how you feel.
Normally, your estrogen and progesterone levels fluctuate throughout the month to enable pregnancy to occur. These two hormones rise in the first two weeks of the cycle (the follicular phase) and dip during ovulation. Because of this ovulatory dip, it’s common for women to experience estrogen-related migraines, heart palpitations, and anxiety attacks during ovulation at the midpoint of the menstrual cycle.
After ovulation, estrogen and progesterone levels rise again and these symptoms are ameliorated. During your period, estrogen and progesterone levels drop to their lowest levels (similar to what happens in menopause), resulting in the symptoms of estrogen and progesterone deficiency––and sugar cravings.
PMS is predominately a progesterone deficiency. Progesterone stimulates production of the brain chemical called GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), which acts as your body’s “natural Valium” to calm you and help you sleep. When progesterone is too low, you feel anxious and irritable and may experience insomnia. When progesterone is too high, you may feel depressed. Progesterone deficiency often triggers sugar cravings and causes you to reach for sugar to ease the symptoms. It works, initially. Unfortunately, after the “sugar high” wears off, your blood sugar plummets, leaving you feeling even more anxious and hyper.
Do You Have PMS?
To determine whether you have PMS, it can be helpful to keep a mood diary for several months. Compare the intensity of your emotional symptoms and sugar cravings on days five through ten of your cycle (day one is the first day of your period) to the six-day interval before the onset of menses. To qualify as PMS, the intensity of your symptoms will usually increase by at least 30 percent in the six days before menstruation. This pattern must be documented for at least two consecutive cycles.
Once you realize that your moods are associated with changes in your hormones around your period, you and the people close to you can better understand and cope with the symptoms. In addition, the treatments we recommend in chapter 9 can help stabilize your emotions and sugar cravings.
SUGAR CRAVINGS LINKED WITH PERIMENOPAUSE AND MENOPAUSE
During menopause, the production of estrogen and progesterone decline as the ovaries wear out. This decline impacts the body profoundly. This is not a sudden event, but rather occurs gradually over a period of five to twelve years, known as perimenopause. Menopause and perimenopause can trigger symptoms of fatigue and depression, which many women try to treat by eating sugar. Low estrogen in menopause also causes brain fog, fatigue, achiness, headache/migraine, lower libido, insomnia, and hot flashes. This can be especially prominent in people who have chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. The low progesterone levels also cause insomnia and anxiety. Menopause symptoms include the following:
▪ Menstrual cycles become irregular (becoming either heavier or lighter)
▪ Weight gain may occur
▪ Fatigue
▪ Low libido
▪ Worsening headaches
▪ Brain fog
▪ Mood swings, irritability, or feelings of depression
Although testosterone deficiency is a larger problem in men, it also is a significant issue for women. Even though a woman’s testosterone levels do not drop as quickly as her estrogen and progesterone levels do during menopause (because the adrenal glands make half of a woman’s testosterone), most menopausal women are testosterone deficient––despite the testosterone being too high relative to the low estrogen. This low testosterone can also contribute to loss of libido as well as muscle wasting, depression, and fatigue, which can lead to sugar cravings. Once the estrogen and progesterone deficiencies have been corrected, then a very low dose of natural bio-identical testosterone can also be safely added to help restore libido and energy.
Many conventional doctors do not diagnose menopause until there is total failure of your ovaries and total cessation of your periods. This means that you must be estrogen deficient for five to twelve years before a doctor will diagnose menopause and consider support with estrogen.
Using Sugar to Raise Serotonin and Feel Better
Low estrogen levels in PMS, perimenopause, and menopause affect the production of the “happiness molecule” serotonin as well as other brain chemicals (neurotransmitters) that, when deficient, can trigger depression and sugar cravings. Serotonin also is critical for sleep and curbing appetite (it gives a sense of fullness).
Serotonin is produced from the amino acid (protein) called tryptophan, which requires vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) and magnesium to be converted into serotonin. Other B vitamins are also essential for emotional health. For example, if there is a deficiency of vitamin B3 (niacin), the body will use dietary tryptophan to synthesize niacin.
In the short term, eating sugar raises serotonin levels and makes you feel happier. This occurs because as the sugar raises insulin, the insulin drives many amino acids (proteins) into your muscles, but not tryptophan, leaving more tryptophan free to go into your brain to make serotonin.
Unfortunately, as insulin resistance occurs, this antidepressant and the feel-good benefits of sugar decrease. In fact, the insulin resistance can then cause a drop in serotonin levels in the brain, so once again eating sugar becomes counterproductive. So although eating something sweet may initially make you feel better, it leads to even worse blood sugar fluctuations, exacerbation of your symptoms, and ultimately sugar addiction.
SUGAR CRAVINGS LINKED WITH ANDROPAUSE
In men, testosterone deficiency associated with andropause, or male menopause, can also cause sugar cravings along with insulin resistance and fatigue. Other problems caused by testosterone deficiency in men include depression, decreased libido, decreased erectile function, loss of drive and stamina, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, weight gain, diabetes, and high cholesterol. Supplementation with bio-identical natural testosterone can decrease and sometimes eliminate metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol), even in men with borderline low but technically “normal” levels of testosterone.
Perhaps you’ve heard that testosterone may increase the risk of prostate cancer and other problems. Numerous studies have shown that this is not the case. (See chapter 8.) The controversy surrounding the use of dangerous synthetic hormones in both women and bodybuilders has resulted in the elimination of much of the National Institutes of Health funding for testosterone use in males. On the positive side, now that new expensive prescription testosterone creams are available for men, drug companies are pouring money into this research.
Written by Jacob Teitekbaum an Chrystle Fiedler in "The Complete Guide to Beating Sugar AddiPction", Fair Winds Press, USA, 2015. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.