With chronic Lyme disease, you are often counseled to cut out sugar and cut down sweet. What does this mean? Eliminate sugar, corn syrup, fructose, as ingredients. Only eat no fruit or low glycemic index fruits like berries and lemons. Many of us have sweet as a cornerstone flavor, so cutting it all out can be really tough. No candy, ice cream, watermelon…. You get the idea.
Why kick sweets to the curb?
Well there are consequences to a high sugar diet. Giving in to cravings and eating a lot of sweet impacts on your health in general. There are direct impacts to your body’s ability to fight to chronic Lyme disease as well. Here are a few I know.
- Sugar suppresses the immune response.
- Sweet foods drive blood sugar swings. This can increase inflammation and symptoms in Lyme disease. (Click this link for more information)
- Sweet fuels appetite. Unhealthy weight gain is no good for chronic Lyme.
- Sugar is the preferred fuel for Lyme and Candida! Both love to eat sugar. You feed it and it grows and reproduces. Lyme also eats your collagen and loves that too.
Sweet is one of the 6 tastes of Ayurveda. The elements that make it up are water and earth. This flavor is cooling and building. You taste it first on the tip of your tongue. Sweetness is used to balance specific conditions and body types. Of course most of the time the people who need sweet the most are not the ones who crave and seek it. Good digestion and use of all 6 tastes are useful tools to build health in Ayurveda.
Tastes and smells trigger the brain in a powerful way. Many Americans connect sweetness to celebration and joy, from stored memories of birthday parties and trick or treating on Halloween. Because of these memories and associations, sweetly flavored treats can become a habit to self soothe. This is not good self care!
It is no mystery then why the word sweet has been used to convey the flavor of a loveable and charming person. In the past sweetness was a rare treat, but in these times of plenty it is ever-present and almost overbearing. Sweetness has hijacked our palettes. Our ability to appreciate all 6 tastes is out of balance.
You start to wonder what can you eat. There are a wide variety of natural sourced food additives for sweetness. Do plant-based sugar substitutes and alternatives work? Do you want to explore them? What are you seeking in sweetness?
Agave, Coconut Sugar, Honey, Maple Syrup, Stevia, Sugar, Turbinado are all natural sweeteners. There are many others. Most have a high glycemic index or at least trigger the memories of sweet in body. Glycemic Index is a measure of how quickly a food raises blood sugar.
Low Glycemic index, zero calorie sweeteners, plant based sweeteners are all just ways to stay out of balance with sweet taste. Stop looking for a magic substitute for sugar. Bite the bullet instead of the doughnut.
Jump off the sugar train
How do you replace the need for sweetness in your diet and your life?
Recognize cravings as different than body hunger. In response to a sweet craving, bring sweet smells, sounds and touch into life to offset the need for sugary foods. Begin to emphasize other tastes, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent. Over time, you can train your taste buds to be more appreciative and sensitive. Things that I once loved no longer taste good at all. They taste sickly sweet and unpleasant.
It makes the most sense to train your taste buds to recognize the value of all 6 tastes. Use sweeteners less often and in smaller amounts. Go for eye candy in the beauty of blue sky or in a fresh bloom. Sweetness is all around us for all our senses to enjoy. You get plenty of sweet in your foods without adding sugar.
Balance the six tastes in your diet and increase nutrient density. This is great for Lyme disease and health in general. Choose to reduce the amount of added sweet you eat. The World Health Organization and other health professionals suggest less than 10% of your calories each day come from sugar. Go for less with Lyme. Get off the sugar train and help yourself heal.