Living a Healthier Life

Ever had thews days where you feel sluggish? Tired all day, sore from just about any activity? Perhaps you run to your favorite caffeinated drink? How many cups of coffee or soda do you actually drink each day?

I know those days all too well. Been a long time soda drinker for most of my life. Until recently. This is what happened.

A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with Autoimmune Hepatitis. (Hepatitis meaning inflammation of the liver). The damage being done to my liver was incredibly advanced and I was to be placed on a regimen of Autoimmune suppressants and corticosteroids.

Falling just short of needing a liver transplant made me take a real deep and hard look at what I was eating that could affect my liver.

I was not an alcohol drinker so this was not a concern. After all we already know that that can easily kill a liver. But what about soda? Even though my doctor will tell me "there is no evidence to show soda as being detrimental", I took the approach of how can the body process that much crud over the years and not have some issue.

I began looking into the sheer amounts of sugar that are ingested on a daily basis with a single can of soda. To my sheer disgust to calculate out that I was consuming not just a little sugar, but pounds of it each and every day.

In a single can of Mountain Dew there is 46 grams of sugar according to their own website:
http://www.pepsicobeveragefacts.com/Home/product?formula=44316*01*01-07&form=RTD&size=12

That's roughly 1 and 1/2 ouces of sugar per can of soda. My problem was not that I was drinking a can or two a day but in fact was drinking anywhere upwards of 4-6 litters of soda per day. A 2 liter bottle of soda is roughly 68 ounces.

So quick math will show this to work out as 46 grams of sugar per serving times 6 servings per bottle:

46g x 6 = 276 grams

It takes 460 grams to get to a pound of sugar. Since I was easily going through 2 or more 2 litters per day This is easily upwards of 1 pound of sugar into my system daily.

As if the sugar alone were not bad enough imaging the amount of caffeine that comes along with the sugar. Well, we don't have to imagine as Pepsico lists it as 54mg (milligrams) per 12 oz serving. This means that per 2 liter bottle 324 mg of caffeine per day.

I thought very little of this issue over the last year until about 3 months ago. That is when I made the full time decision to stop drinking soda altogether.

That's right, I went cold turkey on all of my favorite drinks. No more soda at all because of both sugar and caffeine. No more coffee as I was adding more sugar to it to compensate for the lack of soda. No more teas as I would also add too much sugar into them and they just made me have to urinate more often.

So I opted for the one thing that I should have been drinking more of anyways. Water. Yep. good old fashioned water.

While I am sure there are those of you out there that suggest bottled water, but for me I just use standard tap water. This makes it easier for to to get and I don't have to spend any hard earned money on stuff I already get for free. Especially after seeing that many "bottled" waters are actually just bottled from municipal water supplies anyways, why spend more for them to do the work?

What happened when I stopped drinking all the caffeine and sugar?

On the first day absolutely nothing. Second day still nothing. But that third day the enormously painful headache of caffeine withdrawals kicked me right in the head.

I had not had such a painful headache ever. I must have taken a 1000mg of Ibuprofen before it would even come close to letting go of the tight grip of my brain. This type of headache continued nearly every day for at least a week. If you have ever experienced these headaches you know the excruciating pain just behind your eyeballs.

With the caffeine withdrawal symptoms winding down I began to focus more on what affect the sugar drop was having. The first tthing you might think would happen is to begin losing some weight. I may have lots a pound or two but nothing noteworthy.

I did begin sleeping better. In fact I was so tired by 9 pm that I could barely make it up the stairs before I passed out.

But what I did notice is that my blood glusoce levels,  (blood sugar), have now become dangerously low.  That's right. I took so much sugar out of my system that my liver is actually beginning to need it more.

A key takeaway from this article How Sugar is Metabolized, shown here:

Fructose

The only organ in your body which will deal with fructose is your liver. After eating sugar, approximately 20% of the glucose from the sugar is being processed by your liver, so it is already doing some work. Now it has to deal with 100% of the fructose. 

The first thought people want to jump to is are you Diabetic?

The answer to that is no. But it appears that I may now be "hypoglycemic".

https://www.healthline.com/health/hypoglycemia-without-diabetes

If you don’t have diabetes, hypoglycemia can happen if your body can’t stabilize your blood sugar levels. It can also happen after meals if your body produces too much insulin. Hypoglycemia in people who don’t have diabetes is less common than hypoglycemia that occurs in people who have diabetes or related conditions.

Despite years of massive amounts of sugar going into my system my body still manages to deal with it properly. However, the problem I encounter now is actually having trouble keeping my blood glucose levels at a reasonable level without the assistance of consumed sugary drinks.

A fasting glucose level of 70 is considered nominal in most cases. This morning I woke up to a "non-fasted" glucose level of 55.

If you have ever experienced low blood sugar levels you would know them. Below 100 I start to feel a little hungry or perhaps even a little weary. Then as my sugar levels go even lower I begin to get more anxious around the 75 range. If I drop below 70 I begin to feel quite shaky.

This morning at 55 I was unable to control my movements as I was becoming violently shaky. This causes a near panic condition to bring my sugar levels back up. This presents as difficult to say the least. Shaking hands tend to make it hard to grab some food. Ever tried making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when the knife is shaking out of your hands? It's not fun.

To combat my issues of recurring sugar drops I now find myself eating as many as 8 smaller meals per day. As part of each meal I must also include something that will help bring my sugar levels up to a reasonable level.

If I try eating a salad, which I love, then it must include some form of carbs to the tune of around 30 grams per meal. I have tried eating salads without those carbs and my sugars will plummet with an hour.

Same thing happens any time I forget to eat a carb. This means I now place carbs into my diet as a matter of life and death. These carbs can be breads, grains, or fruits mostly. But even this does not always guarantee a good result.

On a better note, I have been feeling better. I sleep considerably better then I have for so many years. Taking extra stimulants out of your diet like all that caffeine will definitely make you more tired. I have even tried to drink a single can of soda since. Each time I do I actually feel quite a bit worse the next few days. The headaches come back and I begin to feel sluggish and tired.

Please learn from my mistakes. Cut back on sugary sweets before you have had the chance to do major harm to your body.