by Joan Kent | Nov 10, 2014 | Health and Wellness, Master Instructor Blog
Recently, someone with a self-proclaimed Sweet Tooth asked me the difference between that and sugar addiction. The question brought out the geek in me, so I decided to share the information with you.
Why We Like Sweet
We’re hardwired to like sweet. In fact, a fetus will increase its swallowing of amniotic fluid if the fluid is artificially sweetened.
One author attributed our liking for sweet tastes to evolution. Many plants that seem edible contain substances that can poison and even kill us quickly. Because that didn’t happen with sweet foods, they became “safe.”
Brain chemicals have a lot to do with liking sweet. Endorphins (beta-endorphin), dopamine and serotonin are natural feel-goods that make us enjoy and want the sugary foods that trigger them.
So we like sweet stuff. But some people — and I’ve shared before that I was definitely one of them — go beyond liking sweet foods into a compulsion to eat them.
Sugar Addiction Defined
Addiction criteria apply very well to sugar addiction. Let’s look at the section on Substance Abuse Disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5).
DSM-5 criteria for addiction are clustered in 4 groups, but are essentially the same as DSM-IV criteria. I’ve simply listed the criteria below. The examples given are just a few of many.
Some criteria may seem to apply only to illegal drugs, such as spending a great deal of time obtaining them. Sugar is available virtually everywhere, in unlimited quantities, and inexpensively, but stay with me on this.
Criteria for Substance Abuse Disorder
1. Taking more of the substance or for longer than intended
Lack of control over what or how much one is eating characterizes binge-eating disorder. Chocoholics describe an inability to resist, moderate, or stop eating chocolate. Clients keep eating cake, one slice after another, despite planning to stop after one piece.
2. Unsuccessful efforts to stop or limit use
Dieting and weight cycling are found in binge eating and other eating disorders. Secret-eater chocoholics try unsuccessfully to reduce intake of chocolate, then relapse and overeat it.
3. A great deal of time spent obtaining, using, or recovering from use
80% of chocoholics state that chocolate interferes with their lives in some way. Purging behaviors might take increasing time. Excessive exercise, one example, could interfere with important activities or occur despite injury.
4. Craving the substance
Craving, an intense desire for a substance, is a common response to withdrawal or abstinence. Cravings are stronger after high levels of intake but can occur in other conditions. Cravings identify the substance that will relieve them — what you crave will take away the craving. (That’s a poor way to deal with cravings, and I’ve covered the topic in previous posts.)
5. Failure to fulfill major obligations due to use
6. Continued used despite social problems caused or exacerbated by use
7. Giving up or reducing important activities because of substance use
These issues could show up as self-isolation; eating alone due to embarrassment over the eating; refusing to wear bright colors, form-fitting outfits or swimsuits; refusing to attend social events, eat in public, be nude in front of others, make love with lights on, look in the mirror, go to a gym with mirrors, or even go to a gym.
8. Recurrent use in hazardous situations
A client almost had a car accident because she ran into a store to buy candy and “couldn’t get the chocolate into (her) mouth fast enough.” Hypoglycemia can cause hazards.
9. Continued use despite physical or psychological problems that are caused or exacerbated by substance use
Problems may include obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and other illnesses. Chocoholics eat chocolate despite migraines or feeling sick.
10. Tolerance to effects of the substance (needing more to get the same effect)
11. Withdrawal symptoms when not using or when using less
These last two criteria are quite complex and merit their own article. The DSM-IV and other research say both may be linked with addiction, but addiction can occur without them. So let’s leave it here for now.
To that guy who loves to tell me that drug info doesn’t apply to food: Sugar isn’t food; it’s a drug.
Several journal articles, often by the same small group of researchers, “prove” sugar does nothing bad. In most cases, the sugar industry paid for the research. Don’t get me started.
by Joan Kent | May 5, 2014 | Health and Wellness
By Joan Kent
[This is from the intro to my new book Sugar Addiction Is Real, and So Are Sugar Cravings: What Causes Cravings (It’s Not What You Think!) and How To Stop Them.]
The short story is I’m a sugar addict. I discovered that a long time ago, decades before anyone knew about sugar’s addictive effects. In fact, mentioning it to anyone was sure to result in a smirk and a visual body scan, known these days as the “up-and-down.” I got tired of the smirks and the up-and-downs.
Because no one knew about sugar addiction or believed it was true, I had to fend for myself. I eventually learned a lot — and recovered.
Sugar addiction is based on brain chemistry, and often genetic. I had no way of checking that out in my own family because I’d been adopted as an infant. I never met my birth parents (NY had closed adoption laws), and no one in my adoptive family had the same reaction to sugar that I did.
I felt weird and ashamed. I tried to keep my addiction a secret, but my family couldn’t help but notice my preferences in food. Because they weren’t a subtle bunch, they often had unkind comments about the foods I liked.
Things got worse in college when I was eating on my own for the first time, and kept getting worse when I was an adult. I’ll skip the details (lots of binges, frequent colds, odd symptoms), but I wanted sugar from the moment I woke up till I went to sleep at night. Sure, I ate other things, but only because I knew I was supposed to. All I ever really wanted was sugar. I don’t think anyone ever wanted it more than I did.
My low point came when I left work one day at about 5:00 pm. It was summer; the sun was still shining. I had eaten some sugar a couple of hours earlier. As I drove on the freeway, I felt tired and fell asleep behind the wheel. I woke up suddenly and had to brake hard to keep from hitting other cars. The car skidded, turned 90 degrees, and slammed into the left guardrail. It was totaled. I was shaken, but relatively unhurt — although my neck was never quite the same after that.
Fortunately and miraculously, no other cars were involved. The police officer who arrived on the scene asked if I’d been drinking. I answered truthfully that I don’t drink. That didn’t stop him from shining a flashlight in my eyes and asking me to get out of the car to stand on one leg.
Well, I passed the drunk driving test, but we never discussed the subject of food. No one made those connections back then. Maybe that was fortunate for me in its own way, but the whole thing was a frightening experience and an expensive lesson.
Not long afterward, I met a woman who ran a treatment program for addicts. Her unique system kept the addicts in recovery far more successfully than usual treatment programs.
Until she met me, she didn’t know that someone who was not an alcoholic or drug addict could be addicted to sugar.
I started going to all of her lectures and reading everything I could find on the subject of sugar addiction. That was difficult. At that time (24 years ago) there was hardly any material to read! I pieced together whatever I could find on hypoglycemia, psychiatry, the neurochemistry of drug addiction and alcoholism, food cravings in addicts, and more.
After I’d spent years educating myself, this woman finally said, “Joan, this is all you think about, all you read about, all you talk about. Why don’t you go back to school and do it for real?”
Until that moment, I had never thought about getting a Ph.D., but it made sense. The subject fascinated me — and still does.
I got a doctorate in Psychoactive Nutrition, how foods affect neurochemistry. Me, the woman who found classes in nutrition more boring than reading the phone book! (Okay, I still find most nutrition classes boring, but my program was about how foods affect behavior, eating behaviors, moods, cravings, food preferences, hormones. Great stuff, and far more interesting than the Food Guide Pyramid or the USDA Plate….)
My dissertation involved using my research to treat women with binge-eating disorder. To shorten a four-year story, sugar was a major trigger for binge eating and cravings. The low-sugar group got better results than either the low-fat or the control group over the eight-week pilot study.
I was, to my knowledge, the first person to outline the neurochemical pathway of addiction to sugar (and even to saturated fat or white flour). That was in 1999. Now the nutrition field is moving in this neurochemical direction. People acknowledge sugar as an addictive food, even a drug. Much information is available on quitting sugar and ending cravings.
Lately, I’ve been subjected to self-titled nutrition experts trying to discredit me. That’s okay. Some of the information I use is based on what I studied at the time — often on drug addiction. The important thing is IT WORKS on sugar addiction and cravings. It’s highly effective in getting people off sugar, improving their health, and helping them lose weight, feel better AND feel great about themselves.
It’s over 15 years later. I no longer have the time or energy it took to get my degree. I simply won’t study at that level of intensity again. I always read and keep up with interesting updates, but mainly I listen to the wise voice of my late (and great) mentor and coach. The voice reminds me that I do what I do to help people. It reminds me that I have helped many people. And it tells me to ignore my “detractors” and KEEP helping people.
So that’s why I’m here. I recovered, and so can you! I hope the information in this book helps you.
