What Happens To Your Body When You Quit Sugar For 30 Days?

Hello, Health Champions. Today, we're going to talk  about what happens to your body if you stop sugar for 30 days. Now, everyone has been told that you  shouldn't eat sugar, and yet you probably do.

So, I believe the reason for that is that you don't  have a strong enough "why. " There's all these things we know we should and shouldn't do, but  we don't have a strong enough "why. " We don't have enough context of how important it is  and what impact it does.

We've also been told that you should exercise, then why don't you?  And my favorite is when you go to the doctor, and you get a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes  or insulin resistance or high blood pressure, and now they say you should lose weight. If you  just lose weight, that will go away, and then they give you insulin and medication that makes it  absolutely impossible for you to lose that weight.

So today, I'm going to give you a very,  very strong "why. " I'm going to give you lots and lots of reasons, but first, we have  to understand that it's not about the weight; it's about what you eat and what hormones  it triggers. And the worst thing that you can eat is sugar because sugar will trigger,  will lead to, will drive insulin resistance, and sugar will also drive cravings because  sugar is a drug.

It's not a food. It's not about filling you up or how many calories it has;  it's a drug. And then insulin resistance will also give you cravings because when you're insulin  resistant, you're in a state of fat storing.

Insulin turns off fat burning, so you can't  retrieve all that fat that you have stored, and if you can't retrieve it, your body is  looking for more food, and you get cravings. And if insulin is fat-storing and if it prevents  fat burning, then insulin resistance will also lead to obesity and overweight. And of course, if  you have cravings, if you eat when you shouldn't, if you eat the wrong things, now that will also  lead to obesity.

But that health problem you have, that diagnosis, that disease, it's not related  to obesity; it's related to insulin resistance, which causes inflammation. The  insulin resistance causes disease, the inflammation causes disease, and the  sugar causes disease. So if you look at this, you see that it's all about sugar.

Sugar  is in the middle. Insulin resistance is of critical importance because it drives  inflammation, disease, cravings, and obesity. And if you notice, there is nothing about calories  in this chart because that is not what it's about.

It's not the number of calories; it is the quality  of the calories that determine if you get insulin resistance and cravings and inflammation and so  forth. And the first thing that happens when you cut out sugar is you get healthier teeth. You  get fewer cavities, you get less gum disease, you get less plaque, which is that film that  grows on your teeth.

So there are two different things that feed the bacteria that cause the  diseases on your teeth and your gums. And one is if you eat starch, that's the flour and the  rice and so forth, that breaks down into glucose, and then in your mouth, you have something called  amylase, that's an enzyme that breaks down the starch into glucose starting in your mouth. So  that's how you provide glucose for these bacteria.

And then when you eat sugar, you make it even  worse because sugar is sucrose, which is 50% glucose and 50% fructose, and you don't produce  enzymes in your mouth to break that down, but the bacteria that live there have the enzymes to break  it down. And fructose is bad in one way because it's more acidic, and it's the acid when these  bacteria consume the fructose it produces acid that eats holes in your teeth. The other part  is the glucose, which isn't quite as bad in that sense, but the glucose is more sticky, so it  forms more plaque, and that allows the bacteria to stick to your teeth, to hang around.

So if  you're used to brushing your teeth two or three times a day to have them feeling clean, you'll be  amazed that if you cut out the sugar, and you cut out the processed starches, and you reduce carbs,  how clean your teeth will feel even if you don't brush them all the time. Now, it doesn't mean that  you should stop brushing your teeth, obviously, but it's great to have that fresh feeling  even if you don't brush them all the time. And if you eat something, you know what that  feeling is when your teeth get all sticky, and they have that nasty film on them, then  realize that meat and vegetables don't do that.

When you cut out the sugar, you have  less risk of gout because fructose, which is again 50% of sugar—of added sugar—is fructose,  and that increases the production of uric acid. But fructose is also the strongest component  of creating insulin resistance and fatty liver, which also increases the production of  uric acid. And then when you have too much, this uric acid forms crystals that can deposit  in joints, and they're like little pieces of glass that give you excruciating pain. 

And the most common place is to have it in the big joint of the big toe, but you  could have them in any joint in the body. When you cut out sugar, you tend to stabilize  your hormones overall, and the hormones we're talking about are cortisol and insulin. And what  happens when you stabilize those is that you tend to stabilize all the other hormones as well to  some degree.

And the reason is these two hormones are emergency hormones. Cortisol is  released in response to fight-flight stress, that's an emergency. Also, very high blood sugar  is an emergency because high levels of glucose can damage the brain; you can go into a coma with  very high or very low blood sugar.

So that's kind of an emergency, and that's why these two hormones  always take precedence. They take the front seat, and all other hormones become secondary. And when you balance your hormones, you will tend  to also get better quality sleep, and one reason is that you stabilize your blood sugar.

Then your  insulin gets better, but you also stabilize your cortisol when you stabilize your blood sugar.  Because if you have huge swings in blood sugar, anytime your blood sugar is low, that tends to  increase your cortisol. So when you stabilize your blood sugar, you'll stabilize both cortisol and  insulin, and cortisol is a hormone that shuts off your sleep hormone called melatonin.

So stabilize  those two, and you will also stabilize sleep. Another reason you sleep better is that you  probably will reduce the number of times you go to the bathroom during the night. In extreme cases,  like type 2 diabetes, then the kidneys will act as clearing glucose; it will start filtering  out glucose when we exceed a certain threshold, and that glucose will take water with it, and  we tend to go to the bathroom a lot.

That's what diabetes means—that things just flow  through you. And one thing you have to keep in mind though is that if you cut out the sugar  and you go relatively low carb, now you're going to start burning through your glycogen, and  that glycogen holds on to water. So when you burn through the glycogen, now you release all  that water, which means the first night or in the very beginning of cutting out the sugar, chances  are that you're going to go to the bathroom a lot more.

But it's very, very temporary;  it's probably just for that first night. When you cut out the sugar, you will also improve  your brain function, and the reason is that sugar drives insulin resistance, meaning that the  glucose can't get into the cells properly, and that includes the brain. So the brain doesn't  get the proper fuel.

Furthermore, when you have insulin resistance, and you eat a bunch of sugar  and processed foods, now you'll also tend to get a lot of blood sugar swings, a blood sugar roller  coaster, which means you don't get a stable energy supply to the brain, so that makes it even worse.  So when you cut out the sugar, now you will also get improved and stable energy, and what that  leads to, in turn, is that you get improved and stable mood. You will have much less of these  roller coaster swings that affect your blood sugar and your energy and your mood, and that even  includes things like anxiety and depression.

When you stop the sugar, you will also get  improved eye health because high blood glucose levels is the number one cause of retinopathy,  meaning damage to the light-sensitive membrane at the back of your eye because that area has a  lot of microvessels, has tiny, tiny blood vessels, and high blood glucose causes something  called microvessel disease. And there's a number of different mechanisms for this, and  you don't have to memorize all the details, but I really want you to know how well documented  it is—the link between blood sugar and this kind of damage. So sugar causes advanced glycation end  products that cause damage and inflammation.

You have sugar causing oxidative stress, and sugar and  insulin resistance causing chronic inflammation. All of these can do damage in themselves to all  the cells and all the structures of the body. But then high blood glucose, that sugar,  also ends up not just in the blood, but in the tissue surrounding.

So that sugar is going  to pull fluid with it, so now we get an osmotic swelling of that basement membrane that lines  the blood vessel. And then you also have this: sugar does damage to the pericytes, meaning  the supporting cells around the blood vessel. So with all these three factors, now we get a  thickening, and we get leakage of that basement membrane.

So that is the very health of that blood  vessel, and now it's thick, and it's leaking, and it's not doing what it's supposed to anymore. And  when it starts bleeding and leaking, now is where we have this microvessel disease, and we have  that retinopathy, which is the number one cause of blindness. So by cutting out the sugar, it  will dramatically reduce your risk of blindness.

You will also reduce your risk for kidney failure  because the functional unit of the kidney, the small microscopic functional unit, is  called the glomerulus that filters things out, and that is full of microvessels. So everything  we talked about with the eye also applies to the kidney, and that mechanism also applies  to nerves. So you will have less neuropathy, less damage to the fine nerves, especially  in your hands and your feet.

And the reason is that the blood vessels that supply  those nerves are also microvessels, so the same damage now that happens to  those blood vessels means that we're not supplying the nerves with the proper oxygen  and nutrients. And when you cut out the sugar, you'll also see a much lower risk of amputations,  especially in toes and feet. And then there's something called Charcot's joints, which is  when a joint gets damaged to the point where you need a replacement or an amputation. 

That happens mostly with knees and ankles. And here's how these amputations come about: when  you have neuropathy, meaning the nerves don't signal properly, then you have less sensation.  You can't feel your toes and your feet properly, and that means that you're much more likely  to injure them.

You stub your toe, you hit it, you break a bone, you break the skin, and you just  don't feel what happened very well. And not only are you more likely to injure it in the first  place, but you're much more likely to reinjure it because you don't feel it, and you have poor  control over those areas. And then in the case of Charcot's joints, that's not about sensation,  that's not information that you're aware of.

It's something called proprioception, which means your  brain's ability to tell where a joint is located in space. So it's kind of like a sensation, but  you're not aware of it. And when you don't know where the joints are, you're much more likely to  put pressure and weight and stress those joints in the wrong positions, so you damage the joints. 

And the same scenario here: you injure them, but you're also very likely to reinjure them  because you can't tell where everything is. And now, because you have less circulation as well,  then you have less healing. There's less oxygen, fewer nutrients being brought to those areas, and  then very often, you can even get infections that further reduce the healing.

And in the end, this  can lead to amputations and joint replacements. So know for sure that sugar is the primary cause  of blindness, kidney failure, and amputations. And when you cut out the sugar, you'll also get a  stronger immune system, and there's many ways this happens.

One is that sugar reduces the function of  your white blood cells. There's something called phagocytosis; it's where your white blood  cells envelop invaders, virus, bacteria, toxins, and foreign substances—it kind of wraps  itself around it. That's called phagocytosis, and that's interfered with by sugar.

Now,  this especially happens to a white blood cell called the neutrophil, which accounts  for 60% of all the white blood cells that you have. And then sugar also increases ROS,  or reactive oxygen species, oxidative stress, which of course damages all cells, including  white blood cells. Sugar contributes to chronic inflammation, and with chronic inflammation, we  have a tendency to exhaust our immune system; it has to work a little harder all the time. 

And one more way that sugar does damage is that it competes with nutrient carriers. So when we  transport things around the body, like vitamin C and amino acids and electrolytes, they don't go  randomly by themselves; they use carriers—there's molecules that grab on and transport them across  membranes. So both to get nutrients from your digestive tract into your bloodstream, and from  your bloodstream into your cells where they're going to do their work, they need carriers. 

And the more sugar we have, the more that sugar competes and displaces the important nutrients,  vitamins, and minerals that we need—not just to build tissue, but also for your immune system.  And if you start paying attention, I bet you can tell almost every time that you get a cold  or flu, that it follows after a sugar binge. Cutting out sugar can also give you better  skin.

There's a strong correlation between sugar and acne, so stop the sugar, reduce  the acne, and also other forms of dermatitis and inflammatory processes in the skin.  Now, here's what's important to realize: that even though sugar is a big part of this,  it's not the only one. And especially today, there are so many people that have other  sources of inflammation, such as allergies, autoimmune diseases, and gut health—they  have dysbiosis.

And sugar can, of course, also make all of these things worse.  But even cutting out the sugar, a lot of people have long-standing problems with  these three that can contribute to inflammation, including skin inflammation. So just because  you have something doesn't mean that sugar is the only cause, but cutting out the sugar is  probably a great step in the right direction.

When you stop sugar, you will become more insulin  sensitive. Another way of saying that is you become less insulin resistant. And why is that  important?

Because insulin resistance is the same thing as type 2 diabetes; it's just a progressed  form of insulin resistance. So you reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes. You reduce your risk of  non-alcoholic fatty liver disease because it's two things that cause a fatty liver: it is high  levels of insulin, and it is an overload of fructose on the liver, because only the liver  can process that fructose.

And then when we drive up the blood sugar, we produce insulin  that makes it worse. So cutting out the sugar, you dramatically reduce your risk of a fatty  liver that isn't terribly dangerous in itself, but it's a sign of insulin resistance, and it  can progress into other forms of liver disease. When you cut out the sugar, you see a  reduction in a lot of different inflammation, including arterial inflammation, so you're going  to reduce your risk of coronary artery disease and heart attacks, and you will also see an  improvement in your cholesterol numbers.

And when we say an improvement in cholesterol, that  does not necessarily mean that your total number goes down because that's different for different  people. Those different levels are very much genetically determined, and there's a huge  variation. But what you will see is you will see a reduction in advanced glycation end  products.

Those are very harmful substances that are caused when sugar swims around in the  bloodstream together with protein. The more blood sugar we have, the more we get complexes, these  sticky factors called AGEs that stick to other things and cause damage. And you'll also see  less oxidative stress, and you will see fewer of the small LDL particles.

And these are the true  risk factors of heart disease—it's inflammation, AGEs, oxidative stress that cause damage to the  LDL particles and make them shrink. So the more of these damaging factors we have, the more  of the small LDL we're going to have. So by cutting out the sugar, you may not see a lower  total number, but you'll see lower amounts of these damaging factors, which you can measure if  you do a detailed cholesterol blood test called an NMR.

You can measure the number of small LDL  particles, and you can measure their average size. Cutting out sugar can also lead to less joint  inflammation, and with that, of course, you will see less pain and stiffness. And some of you may  be interested in this, that you'll probably see some real lasting weight loss.

And when I say  real and lasting, that means as opposed to the yo-yo dieting that if you start truly affecting  the underlying balance and metabolic health, that's how you make lasting changes. When you  yo-yo diet, the first three pounds you lose is water. And most people, when they do a diet, they  think they're going to do it for a limited period of time, they can suffer for a bit, they lose  five pounds, and then most of that was water, and they stop the diet because they are  suffering, and then they gain it all back.

So by cutting out sugar and starting to eat  real food, now you can make lasting changes. So I hope I've gotten your attention in this  video, and I'm going to give you a couple more reasons still. But I would suggest that you  do a 30-day challenge, and in this challenge, you stop all added sugar, and then you stop all  white flour—the white trash sugar and flour.

And then I would suggest you stop or reduce starch,  and again, that means bread, rice, oats, and corn. And why would I say stop or reduce?  Because it's going to depend on the person.

It's not absolutely necessary  for everyone to cut all of that out, even though I think it's a good idea to try  it for 30 days. But the way that you can tell if it's absolutely necessary is if you have a  little bit of bread or a little bit of rice, and you're okay, then you can probably tolerate  it. But if you have a little bit of that, and it gives you unbearable cravings for processed foods  and for sugar, then no amount of that is okay for you.

So you've got to start to know yourself and  just pay attention to what's going on when you eat those things. Can I have a little bit of that and  still not get cravings? Then you're probably fine.

So if you take on this challenge, I want you to  put a comment down below, and then when you've finished your 30 days—because now the pressure  is on that you've made that comment—now you report back, and you tell us how did it  feel, what happened, and specifically how many of the things that we talked about  got better. And you want to do it for you, but you also want to do it for other people.  A lot of these videos get millions of views, so you can affect millions of lives with  your story.

You can help others believe and strengthen them by telling them what  happened, what your success story was. And I want to mention a couple more things  that some people may not think are a big deal, but they're really some of the biggest things that  will happen in terms of quality of life because you will get new taste buds. You will start  noticing flavors to a degree you never have before.

Your taste perception will go through  the roof. You'll appreciate flavors in food like never before because sugar is not only a  drug; it's a very powerful flavor. And when we refine it, when we take it out of its natural  context and refine it and add it to food, now it overpowers everything else, and it  covers up the natural beauty, the subtleties of all the different flavors in food.

So it's  almost like if you imagine the most beautiful sunset or beautiful natural scenery, but then  with sugar, it's like all you can see is gray, gray, gray, right? There's nothing there to  appreciate. But once you cut out the sugar, you get your taste buds back, now  flavors will come to life again, and these are some of the truly big  things in terms of quality of life.

And when you cut out the sugar, you will  probably not have any cravings between meals, and this is one of the biggest secrets to  getting lasting change. Because why do you do things and then fall back? Why do you  try things and then slip off that narrow path?

It's because you get cravings, and if you  can't get rid of those cravings, then they will lead to failure at some point. You can suffer  a little bit, but if you have the cravings, then at some point, you will succumb, and  you'll go back to eating that sugar and to those bad habits that caused all the problems in  the first place. And when you cut out the sugar, you notice that instead of cravings and  unhealthy desire, you will replace that with real hunger for real food.

And when you  eat it, you will feel very, very satisfied; you'll have no problem until the next meal.  And what you'll probably find is that you end up eating fewer meals; you'll not be in the mood  for snacks, and most people are probably going to end up eating twice a day. And when you do,  you will have a desire, a hunger for real food.

If you enjoyed this video, you're going to  love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really  works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all the notifications so  you never miss a life-saving video.