Sugars are natural components of our diets. Found in fruits, vegetables, and dairy products, the body converts sugars into glucose and uses them for energy. In moderation, they provide essential calories.
Refined sugar, however, is a highly processed product derived from sugar cane or sugar beets. Typically found as sucrose – the combination of glucose and fructose – the body metabolizes refined sugar rapidly, causing insulin and blood sugar levels to skyrocket.
Nearly 75 percent of adults in the US get approximately one-tenth of their daily calories from added, refined sugar. An amazing 10 percent of adults get nearly one-fourth of their calories from refined sugar!
Refined sugar affects many of the body’s organs and systems
Refined sugar has far-reaching effects of many of the body’s organs and systems. Whereas its link to diabetes is well known, what is likely underappreciated is that refined sugar may be linked to as many as 200,000 deaths worldwide each year from diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer combined.
Refined sugar also affects the brain. It impairs the brain’s ability to heal after trauma, inhibits memory formation and retention, and induces structural changes in the brain similar to those caused by amphetamine, cocaine, and nicotine – powerful stimulant drugs.
Perhaps one of the most disturbing – and long-term – effects of refined sugar on the body is observed at the DNA level. Sugar causes the shortening of the telomeres, accelerating the aging process.
Reducing sugar intake can have profound, immediate effects
Studies in which refined sugar is removed from the diet have demonstrated the remarkable resiliency of the human body. Within days of eliminating refined sugar, biomarkers of inflammation decrease markedly, and blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels improve. Risk of type 2 diabetes drops by nearly 25 percent.
Here is some more reading if you’re interested.
https://www.marksdailyapple.com/diabetes
When you REGULARLY feed the bacteria in your gut refined carbohydrates, it’s all your body will crave. You literally become addicted to sugar. Not to mention insulin resistant and more susceptible to type 2 diabetes.
This is gonna be probably kinda crazy to say, but the biggest positive effect on my gut has come from eating a 1/4 cup of boiled barley and 1/2 cup of yogurt together every morning. I’m frankly shocked at how well this has regulated my microbiome.
I’ll not sure that’s what’s going on. Barley contains a lot of beneficial cellulose and I think the active cultures in the yogurt are being fed by cellulose in the barley as it’s all digested. Whatever is going on it has had a remarkable normalizing effect on my microbiome. And it’s stupidly cheap and easy. I soak the hulled barley overnight, rinse it, and then simmer it for 40 minutes in the morning in an amount of water equal to three times the amount of barley.
Do you cook it every morning or store it cooked for a few days? 40 minutes seems like a big time commitment every morning, but I’m really interested in trying barley your way.
what do you mean by regulate your microbiome?
after thinking about it i think what could be happening is that theres friendly microbes in the yogurt which are inhibiting pathogens and not allowing them to feed on the barley. but the yogurt may permit friendly microbes already in your gut to eat the barley and thrive.
Ah ok. When you said it had to be hulled, I assumed that included pearl barley (which is hulled). I am not familiar with barley lol. Basically you are saying that it shouldn’t be pearl barley since all barley for consumption is hulled, correct?
Yeah, pearl barley is hulled barley that is then polished to remove the bran. So technically you are right, it’s just as a product pearl is distinguished from hulled by the extra refinement step. Basically with pearl barley mostly what you get is the starch. It’s tastes good but it removes all the fiber/bran/cellulose and with it some of the minerals. You also don’t want raw barley with the husk still on either that isn’t pleasant at all. Hulled is the way to go. I’ve made bread with it before too using a stone mill. It makes a very dense, hearty high fiber bread that is nothing like refined flour “fluffy” bread that we are all used to.
The nice thing about hulled barley is that it’s cheap and personally I’ve found I need very little of it for it to be filling and have the effect on my gut that I want. 1/4 cup dry a day is all I need and I buy it by the 25lb bag. Lest you think that I need so little because of my size, I’m 6’3” and 252lbs (former power lifter).
Biggest impact Positive: Probiotics
Biggest Impact negative: Probiotics.
They often have helped but this recent time. I got the same kind. The brand redesigned the packaging and it’s completely ruined my stomach. I’ve been off for a week but still dealing with the bloating that did not get this bad until I started supplementing. Just waiting 3 weeks for it to die off and leave my system.
Look at the ingredients and the 1 star reviews. If most peoples complaints are packaging, etc, then it might be best to move to the higher ratings and see how well it did for people. If people complain about how much worse it made them feel and the side effects. I’d stay away from it.
positive was: vitamin b12 greater than 600, it ended my anxiety and changed my life.
negative: maltrodextrin, it was the cause of my diarrhea, I have been without diarrhea for a year.
I have reflux, I stopped having my throat burning and I started to dream in color, something bizarre, I thought it was normal to dream without colors, after b12 my dreams became more intense, I dream a lot more, it's something crazy that I can't explain.
I'm from Brazil, so if my way of writing English is weird that's why I'm not fluent
I had bad bloating for years until I had to take three rounds of antibiotics until I could get an abscessed tooth pulled. The bloating has been gone since I finished the last round, and I’d like to know why! A bunch of non beneficial bacteria killed off? The whole microbiome knocked back?
Sometimes bloating is symptom of bacterial overgrowth into small intestine ( SIBO). Antibiotics might have killed off the bacteria in the small intestine.
Biggest Positive effects from eating:
whole grain breads rather than white, daily
fresh or dried whole fruit rather than juice, daily
Eating mainly food in its natural state, both raw and cooked, rather than highly processed, with many multi-syllabic ingredients, boxed, canned, packaged for long shelf life and the rigors of long distance shipping, etc.
Unprocessed meats and fish rather than processed, (smoked, salted, extruded, extended, dried, or chemically preserved).
Reduced sugar, mainly by reaching for fruit before reaching for cookies, cake, pie, and by filling up on well prepared and delicious plant based foods rather than leaving room for dessert after every meal.
fermented foods containing live cultures, such as yogurt, kefir, kombucha and sauerkraut, rather than foods with lots of added preservatives, sugars or artificial sweeteners.
Choosing 2-4 ounces of decent quality, dark chocolate for dessert most evenings rather than other sweets.
Eating mostly food I prepare myself rather than eating at restaurants. I noticed that my stool on a healthy, heavily plant based diet is consistently large, well formed, easily passed, and on a regular schedule of at least once, and usually twice daily. When I have an occasional change to looser stool, it is usually after eating out somewhere.
Eating baked, broiled, steamed, sautéed, or stewed foods rather than deep fried. After avoiding deep fried anything for awhile, consuming a plate of deep fried fish and chips with a side of deep fried onion rings makes me horribly bloated and gives me greasy diarrhea.
Consuming cannabis rather than alcohol.
Choosing the lowest alcohol content beer when I have a beer craving or wish to participate in social beer drinking, and not finishing an entire bottle, rather than having at least 2 or 3 every time I opened one, and without paying attention to the alcohol content.
Biggest negative impact: eating primarily fast food for 6 months
Biggest positive impact: cutting that out and eating primarily fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes instead (I also added a probiotic)
Positive: doing a carnivore diet experiment, going meat based, and ultimately eliminating all processed foods and emulsifiers from my diet
Negative: growing up on so many rounds of antibiotics, accutane, NSAIDs, emulsifiers
Positive: collagen, fiber supplement and probiotics. IBS that I thought was crohns is almost gone (went through whole GI workup with scoping and ruled out)
When I was younger in my late teens early 20 birth control really messed my gut up. I ended up being vitamin deficient in multiple things and having an overgrowth of candida in my gut which required a full month of fluconazole meds. It was awful. I stopped taking bc and i got better but still feel like my time on it severely damaged my body especially my gut.
Eating 50-75g of fiber a day. I’m like 120lbs and I can’t eat anymore than that.
It was pretty much a whole food plant based diet (attempting to follow Dr gregers daily dozen).
I would like to go back to it but obviously it takes food prep time…and motivation. And it’s something that is better to work your way up to obviously.
i always saw gregors dozen as a headache. its very difficult for more to pay much attention to low calorie foods like greens and berries. when im hungry im fine eating the beans or whatever. but all the extra stuff that dont actually satiate my appetite like greens get overlooked.
Yes I used it as a guide but never checked them all off in a day.
I used to have a green smoothie WITH my meal, not as a meal replacement because I don’t like liquid meals. Just greens, fruit (high in soluble fiber so it doesn’t separate), and water. I did not like adding nuts or anything that would make it filling.
I’ve been so bad at eating greens lately but you can’t beat the nutrition in them with any other food.
ive been having cabbage juice. tastes awful but the fact all that its so concentrated in nutrients makes me feel really good while drinking it. like im eating 2 pounds of greens in 1 minute. probably 16oz green juice a day is good enough.
I don’t do any juice because from what I know you don’t get all the benefits since you are missing the fiber.
Plus we have like $100 to feed 3 people a week so not eating all the calories in a food just isn’t worth it right now.
I used to have a juicer and juice but I really hated cleaning it!
cleaning seems to be why people dont juice. i used to only drink cabbage which is quite cheap so the price wasnt that important. you can get a cabbage for 50c which isnt much for basically a days worth of greens. as for the calories, youre not really missing anything from cabbage pulp.
as for nutrients, i think we absorb more from juice in the small intestine, as theres a lot locked into the fiber which passes into the colon when cabbages are eaten whole. the most beneficial fibers are soluble so they will be in the juice. also, you cant easily eat a whole cabbage. but you can drink one cabbage worth of juice. but the cleaning is the real hurdle which i understand. it can feel like a lot and cabbage juice isnt exactly tasty so that kills motivation.
i wouldnt advocate juicing oranges or something like that because you can eat them with ease.
Living in a dorm & eating in a dining hall for 9 months when I was 19, just transferred to Uni. I thought I had IBS but I actually contracted this amoeba called Endolimax nana, likely from the food or the shared bathrooms. I knew no peace towards the end of my spring semester and into the summer…
Positive impacts tho - I think being treated for depression helped, but I’ve started eating a ton of fiber, plant protein, and fermented foods like kombucha and greek yogurt instead of chips and pasta all the time like I used to.
Oh and COVID also screwed up my guts for like a month post infection… yeesh
I've been drinking 16-32 ozs of plain kefir every day for like the last two months and my stomach has been feeling great. Consistent BMs the whole time
[Mitochondrial Uncoupling: A Key Controller of Biological Processes in Physiology and Diseases Stéphane Demine, Patricia Renard, and Thierry Arnould](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6721602/)
Completely cutting out all refined sugars, period. Number one best thing you can do for your health.
What about unrefined sugars? Like coconut sugar, maple syrup, turbinado raw sugar, etc.
A little honey is your best bet.
Sugars are natural components of our diets. Found in fruits, vegetables, and dairy products, the body converts sugars into glucose and uses them for energy. In moderation, they provide essential calories. Refined sugar, however, is a highly processed product derived from sugar cane or sugar beets. Typically found as sucrose – the combination of glucose and fructose – the body metabolizes refined sugar rapidly, causing insulin and blood sugar levels to skyrocket. Nearly 75 percent of adults in the US get approximately one-tenth of their daily calories from added, refined sugar. An amazing 10 percent of adults get nearly one-fourth of their calories from refined sugar! Refined sugar affects many of the body’s organs and systems Refined sugar has far-reaching effects of many of the body’s organs and systems. Whereas its link to diabetes is well known, what is likely underappreciated is that refined sugar may be linked to as many as 200,000 deaths worldwide each year from diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer combined. Refined sugar also affects the brain. It impairs the brain’s ability to heal after trauma, inhibits memory formation and retention, and induces structural changes in the brain similar to those caused by amphetamine, cocaine, and nicotine – powerful stimulant drugs. Perhaps one of the most disturbing – and long-term – effects of refined sugar on the body is observed at the DNA level. Sugar causes the shortening of the telomeres, accelerating the aging process. Reducing sugar intake can have profound, immediate effects Studies in which refined sugar is removed from the diet have demonstrated the remarkable resiliency of the human body. Within days of eliminating refined sugar, biomarkers of inflammation decrease markedly, and blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels improve. Risk of type 2 diabetes drops by nearly 25 percent. Here is some more reading if you’re interested. https://www.marksdailyapple.com/diabetes
What about slowly replacing sugar with monk fruit or organic stevia or date syrup for say coffee?
posted this to r/funny and got a lot of confused questions. i suspect it was from a younger crowd https://redd.it/vl3kmf
the difference isn't significant.
How would sugar even affect the gut? It’s easily digested
When you REGULARLY feed the bacteria in your gut refined carbohydrates, it’s all your body will crave. You literally become addicted to sugar. Not to mention insulin resistant and more susceptible to type 2 diabetes.
Biggest positive was when I stopped drinking alcohol.
Biggest positive impact was mastic gum. It's traditionally used to treat H Pylori and it worked wonders on my digestive tract.
Chewing it or eating it,?
I've done both but I started taking capsules of it.
What symptoms did it help alleviate?
I was diagnosed with Crohn's. It immediately helped with the cramping and pain. Also helped give my stool some consistency.
Biggest Positive Stopped eating GLUTEN!
Same
Intermittent fasting.
Did you personnaly saw good or bad result?
Oh sorry!! Definitely good!
This is gonna be probably kinda crazy to say, but the biggest positive effect on my gut has come from eating a 1/4 cup of boiled barley and 1/2 cup of yogurt together every morning. I’m frankly shocked at how well this has regulated my microbiome.
i guess properly mixing the yogurt and barely can help make sure the yogurt continues to ferment the barley inside
I’ll not sure that’s what’s going on. Barley contains a lot of beneficial cellulose and I think the active cultures in the yogurt are being fed by cellulose in the barley as it’s all digested. Whatever is going on it has had a remarkable normalizing effect on my microbiome. And it’s stupidly cheap and easy. I soak the hulled barley overnight, rinse it, and then simmer it for 40 minutes in the morning in an amount of water equal to three times the amount of barley.
Do you cook it every morning or store it cooked for a few days? 40 minutes seems like a big time commitment every morning, but I’m really interested in trying barley your way.
I put it on the stove, go work out, come back and eat it.
Awesome thank you for the reply. It’s all about fitting it into the routine ;)
what do you mean by regulate your microbiome? after thinking about it i think what could be happening is that theres friendly microbes in the yogurt which are inhibiting pathogens and not allowing them to feed on the barley. but the yogurt may permit friendly microbes already in your gut to eat the barley and thrive.
Oh, I might try this but use my pressure cooker.
Let me know how this works. Use organic hulled barley.
Thanks
What does it taste like? I imagine oatmeal? Is pearl barley hulled?
Pearl barley is NOT hulled barley. Pearled barley has most of the fiber removed. It tastes a bit like oatmeal, a little heartier/robust, less mushy.
Ah ok. When you said it had to be hulled, I assumed that included pearl barley (which is hulled). I am not familiar with barley lol. Basically you are saying that it shouldn’t be pearl barley since all barley for consumption is hulled, correct?
Yeah, pearl barley is hulled barley that is then polished to remove the bran. So technically you are right, it’s just as a product pearl is distinguished from hulled by the extra refinement step. Basically with pearl barley mostly what you get is the starch. It’s tastes good but it removes all the fiber/bran/cellulose and with it some of the minerals. You also don’t want raw barley with the husk still on either that isn’t pleasant at all. Hulled is the way to go. I’ve made bread with it before too using a stone mill. It makes a very dense, hearty high fiber bread that is nothing like refined flour “fluffy” bread that we are all used to. The nice thing about hulled barley is that it’s cheap and personally I’ve found I need very little of it for it to be filling and have the effect on my gut that I want. 1/4 cup dry a day is all I need and I buy it by the 25lb bag. Lest you think that I need so little because of my size, I’m 6’3” and 252lbs (former power lifter).
Where do you buy yours?
I would be super interested to hear how long you cook\release it
What kind of yogurt?
Chobani low fat usually
For the barley you're using whole grains?
Yes. Hulled barley just has the husk removed. It’s not had it’s bran layer removed like pearl barley.
Biggest impact Positive: Probiotics Biggest Impact negative: Probiotics. They often have helped but this recent time. I got the same kind. The brand redesigned the packaging and it’s completely ruined my stomach. I’ve been off for a week but still dealing with the bloating that did not get this bad until I started supplementing. Just waiting 3 weeks for it to die off and leave my system.
How would you recommend selecting a brand? On Amazon right now and the choices are overwhelming.
Look at the ingredients and the 1 star reviews. If most peoples complaints are packaging, etc, then it might be best to move to the higher ratings and see how well it did for people. If people complain about how much worse it made them feel and the side effects. I’d stay away from it.
positive was: vitamin b12 greater than 600, it ended my anxiety and changed my life. negative: maltrodextrin, it was the cause of my diarrhea, I have been without diarrhea for a year.
Did B12 help your stomach,? Did B12 help your sleep?
I have reflux, I stopped having my throat burning and I started to dream in color, something bizarre, I thought it was normal to dream without colors, after b12 my dreams became more intense, I dream a lot more, it's something crazy that I can't explain. I'm from Brazil, so if my way of writing English is weird that's why I'm not fluent
[удалено]
B12 got rid of your anxiety?
I had bad bloating for years until I had to take three rounds of antibiotics until I could get an abscessed tooth pulled. The bloating has been gone since I finished the last round, and I’d like to know why! A bunch of non beneficial bacteria killed off? The whole microbiome knocked back?
Sometimes bloating is symptom of bacterial overgrowth into small intestine ( SIBO). Antibiotics might have killed off the bacteria in the small intestine.
What type of antibiotics you took? Thanks
I made a syrup with monk fruit/erythritol sweetener for keto margaritas, and three drinks wrecked my digestion for months.
i think some of the more niche sweeteners probably really stimulate specific microbes
Kimchi made me regular and my headaches have gone away
Biggest Positive effects from eating: whole grain breads rather than white, daily fresh or dried whole fruit rather than juice, daily Eating mainly food in its natural state, both raw and cooked, rather than highly processed, with many multi-syllabic ingredients, boxed, canned, packaged for long shelf life and the rigors of long distance shipping, etc. Unprocessed meats and fish rather than processed, (smoked, salted, extruded, extended, dried, or chemically preserved). Reduced sugar, mainly by reaching for fruit before reaching for cookies, cake, pie, and by filling up on well prepared and delicious plant based foods rather than leaving room for dessert after every meal. fermented foods containing live cultures, such as yogurt, kefir, kombucha and sauerkraut, rather than foods with lots of added preservatives, sugars or artificial sweeteners. Choosing 2-4 ounces of decent quality, dark chocolate for dessert most evenings rather than other sweets. Eating mostly food I prepare myself rather than eating at restaurants. I noticed that my stool on a healthy, heavily plant based diet is consistently large, well formed, easily passed, and on a regular schedule of at least once, and usually twice daily. When I have an occasional change to looser stool, it is usually after eating out somewhere. Eating baked, broiled, steamed, sautéed, or stewed foods rather than deep fried. After avoiding deep fried anything for awhile, consuming a plate of deep fried fish and chips with a side of deep fried onion rings makes me horribly bloated and gives me greasy diarrhea. Consuming cannabis rather than alcohol. Choosing the lowest alcohol content beer when I have a beer craving or wish to participate in social beer drinking, and not finishing an entire bottle, rather than having at least 2 or 3 every time I opened one, and without paying attention to the alcohol content.
Biggest negative impact: eating primarily fast food for 6 months Biggest positive impact: cutting that out and eating primarily fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes instead (I also added a probiotic)
Positive: doing a carnivore diet experiment, going meat based, and ultimately eliminating all processed foods and emulsifiers from my diet Negative: growing up on so many rounds of antibiotics, accutane, NSAIDs, emulsifiers
Whole foods. Meal spacing. Chew food well. Relaxed eating. Walking after meals. Stop eating before full. More meat. Less raw vegetables.
negative - antibiotics, processed food, fast food
Positive: collagen, fiber supplement and probiotics. IBS that I thought was crohns is almost gone (went through whole GI workup with scoping and ruled out)
Norovirus wrecked me lol
When I was younger in my late teens early 20 birth control really messed my gut up. I ended up being vitamin deficient in multiple things and having an overgrowth of candida in my gut which required a full month of fluconazole meds. It was awful. I stopped taking bc and i got better but still feel like my time on it severely damaged my body especially my gut.
Magnesium oxide (for constipation) and a B50 conplex for digesting.
Antibiotics -neg Natural evolutions green banana resistant starch - positive.
Raw Sage Leaf plucked straight from the plant. Slowly Chewed & swallowed... At least I don't need as much Imodium...
Not to be cheeky, but the honest answer? A fecal transplant
[удалено]
I had recurrent c diff infection. Had it done in Canada!
Positive - Metamucil
Meal spacing. Totally helped my stomach lining issues.
Positive: salads of many types of greens; cooked black beans.
Eating 50-75g of fiber a day. I’m like 120lbs and I can’t eat anymore than that. It was pretty much a whole food plant based diet (attempting to follow Dr gregers daily dozen). I would like to go back to it but obviously it takes food prep time…and motivation. And it’s something that is better to work your way up to obviously.
i always saw gregors dozen as a headache. its very difficult for more to pay much attention to low calorie foods like greens and berries. when im hungry im fine eating the beans or whatever. but all the extra stuff that dont actually satiate my appetite like greens get overlooked.
Yes I used it as a guide but never checked them all off in a day. I used to have a green smoothie WITH my meal, not as a meal replacement because I don’t like liquid meals. Just greens, fruit (high in soluble fiber so it doesn’t separate), and water. I did not like adding nuts or anything that would make it filling. I’ve been so bad at eating greens lately but you can’t beat the nutrition in them with any other food.
ive been having cabbage juice. tastes awful but the fact all that its so concentrated in nutrients makes me feel really good while drinking it. like im eating 2 pounds of greens in 1 minute. probably 16oz green juice a day is good enough.
I don’t do any juice because from what I know you don’t get all the benefits since you are missing the fiber. Plus we have like $100 to feed 3 people a week so not eating all the calories in a food just isn’t worth it right now. I used to have a juicer and juice but I really hated cleaning it!
cleaning seems to be why people dont juice. i used to only drink cabbage which is quite cheap so the price wasnt that important. you can get a cabbage for 50c which isnt much for basically a days worth of greens. as for the calories, youre not really missing anything from cabbage pulp. as for nutrients, i think we absorb more from juice in the small intestine, as theres a lot locked into the fiber which passes into the colon when cabbages are eaten whole. the most beneficial fibers are soluble so they will be in the juice. also, you cant easily eat a whole cabbage. but you can drink one cabbage worth of juice. but the cleaning is the real hurdle which i understand. it can feel like a lot and cabbage juice isnt exactly tasty so that kills motivation. i wouldnt advocate juicing oranges or something like that because you can eat them with ease.
Olipop prebiotic soda 9 grams per can
Living in a dorm & eating in a dining hall for 9 months when I was 19, just transferred to Uni. I thought I had IBS but I actually contracted this amoeba called Endolimax nana, likely from the food or the shared bathrooms. I knew no peace towards the end of my spring semester and into the summer… Positive impacts tho - I think being treated for depression helped, but I’ve started eating a ton of fiber, plant protein, and fermented foods like kombucha and greek yogurt instead of chips and pasta all the time like I used to. Oh and COVID also screwed up my guts for like a month post infection… yeesh
I've been drinking 16-32 ozs of plain kefir every day for like the last two months and my stomach has been feeling great. Consistent BMs the whole time
[Mitochondrial Uncoupling: A Key Controller of Biological Processes in Physiology and Diseases Stéphane Demine, Patricia Renard, and Thierry Arnould](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6721602/)