“Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat!” Like many of you, I have already purchased my Halloween candy in order to ‘be prepared’ and promptly ate half of it! What is all that sugar doing to my body? Wreaking havoc on my heart, hips, and blood vessel that’s what!
When I eat sugar from yummy chocolate candy covered in caramel, peanut butter or coconut topping, my pancreas puts out insulin to help push that sugar into cells for energy. If it can’t be used, then it is stored as fat. The empty calories go straight to my belly and the saturated fat into my liver increasing my cholesterol.
Knowing this I still can not resist temptation.
The excess sugar can lead to pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, and/or diabetes. It creates many unwanted pounds around the mid-section, endocrine/hormone problems, skin changes, and numbness/tingling in your toes or fingers.
The additional fat and calories raises your blood pressure, your waist line (again), and your cholesterol. This then increases your heart disease and stroke risk and creates unnecessary inflammation in your body that can lead to joint pain, muscle pain, and headaches.
Able to resist yet?
Consider these facts, 1 in 3 Americans have insulin resistance. Most people who are pre-diabetic go on to become fully diabetic unless they lose weight. There are approximately 54 million people with pre-diabetes and 21 million with diabetes. About 31% of women over the age of 20 have high blood pressure or are on high blood pressure medications and 1 in 6 adults have high cholesterol. Having high cholesterol, blood pressure or blood sugar puts you at risk for heart disease which is the leading cause of death in the United States.
Please don’t be a statistic. Limit your candy and sweets intake, continue to exercise, and maintain a healthy height to weight ratio.
References:
www.cdc.gov
www.americanheart.org
www.diabetes.org