Glucose, Weight, and Insulin Control

Glucose, Weight, and Insulin Control  for breast cancer survivors

Sugar is the most hazardous foodstuff in the American diet.
—Linus Pauling, Nobel laureate

How do you just say no to sugar? With its jolt of sweetness and energy, sugar can be
an addictive substance for many of us. What’s more, it shows up in different forms
in nearly all processed foods, disguised under a variety of names, such as
maltodextrin, corn syrup, rice syrup, and dehydrated cane juice, among others.

Though these names may not include the word “sugar,” make no mistake: they are
all forms of sugar. The key is finding strategies to manage your sweet tooth,
because sugar has potential effects that just aren’t that sweet, as we’ll explore in this
chapter.

When it comes to cancer, sugar is like gasoline to your car: it’s fuel. The notion
that sugar “feeds” cancer has been around for almost a century, since Dr. Otto
Warburg first determined in 1924 that cancer cells have a way of metabolizing
energy that is essentially different from that of noncancerous cells. More-current
research has shown that cancer cells are completely reliant on simple sugar to
sustain themselves, consuming sugar at a rate “ten to fifty times higher than normal
tissues” (Block 2009). What does this mean to you? Feeding your body simple
sugars and refined carbohydrates leads to an elevation in blood sugar, also known
as “blood glucose,” which, effectively, feeds tumors exactly what they need to grow.

But it’s not just sugar itself that can harm your body’s ecosystem. Ingestion of
sugars and simple carbohydrates activates the release of the hormone insulin and its
close relative, insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), both of which are potent cellulargrowth
promoters in their own right. High levels of blood sugar and insulin have
long been known to set the stage for obesity, insulin resistance (prediabetes), and
diabetes. It’s now becoming crystal clear that they may be doing the same for breast
cancer and other cancers as well.