Our sugar sensitivity story includes some crucial data that has not been available to the general public before. This information is about the vital role played by the brain chemical beta-endorphin. Beta-endorphin and its better-known partner, serotonin, can have dramatically positive -- or negative! -- effects on your moods, your behavior, and your energy level.
Billions of brain cells talk to each other moment by moment via a network of interconnecting cells. However, these cells do not actually touch one another; there is a tiny space between them. Information is passed across this space by way of chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. The mood-elevating brain chemicals serotonin and beta-endorphin are both neurotransmitters.
The message of serotonin, for example, is "calm down". When one brain cell wants to send a message to another, it releases the relevant neurotransmitter, which floats across the tiny space between cells and looks for the receptors in the target cell that match its molecular shape.
A serotonin neurotransmitter, for example, can only pass its message to a serotonin receptor. The same is true with beta-endorphin. If any other kind of neurotransmitter hits the receptors, nothing happens; the message does not get delivered.
Serotonin
When your serotonin is at an ideal level, you feel mellow and relaxed, hopeful and optimistic. You have a sense of being at peace with life. You are creative, thoughtful, and focused. You also have a lot of impulse control, which enables you to "just say no" more easily.
People who are sugar-sensitive have naturally low levels of serotonin. As a result, you do not have good impulse control. It is almost impossible for you to "just say no" because there is such a short time between your getting the urge to do something and then doing it. The insufficient serotonin level in your brain isn't giving you the time you need to make good decisions.
Besides being impulsive, you may feel depressed and find yourself craving foods such as bread, pasta or candy. This craving is the work of your brain, not your ego, because your brain knows that getting you to eat such foods will temporarily raise your serotonin level. Unfortunately, it will also have a devastating boomerang effect and cause all sorts of negative feelings. Having low serotonin can cause these feelings:
• Feeling depressed
• Acting impulsively
• Feeling blocked and scattered
• Having a short attention span
• Feeling suicidal
• Craving sweets and simple carbohydrates
Beta-Endorphin
The brain chemical beta-endorphin acts likes a powerful natural painkiller.
You may have heard of the "runner's high" (also called an "endorphin rush"), when the body responds to the pain of long-distance running by flooding the brain with beta-endorphin. Beta-endorphin produces a sense of well-being, reduces pain, eases emotional distress, increases self-esteem, and even creates a sense of euphoria.
Sugar-sensitive people have a naturally low level of beta-endorphin.
Their biochemical response to foods (like alcohol) that cause the release of beta-endorphin can be significantly greater than that of people with an ordinary body chemistry.
Whether you are sugar-sensitive or not, sugar, like alcohol, causes a release of beta-endorphin. It can make you feel high and can reduce both physical and emotional pain. People with normal body chemistry can enjoy this without ill effects. But sugar-sensitive people respond to the beta-endorphin effect of sugar in a bigger way because their brain cells have far more beta-endorphin receptors than ordinary people.
For sugar-sensitive people, eating sugar can make you feel and act as if you’ve been drinking wine!
Sugar can make you funny, relaxed, silly, inappropriate, talkative, and temporarily self-confident. You feel great -- and you long to feel this way again and again.
You have probably noticed this drug-like effect after eating sugar. Unfortunately, people don't take this response seriously. They make jokes about being a "chocoholic", but rarely speak of the real pain caused by the continuing and compulsive use of sweets, the end result of which is a drop in beta-endorphin.
Having low beta-endorphin means:
• Feeling tearful, isolated, depressed, and hopeless
• Having low self-esteem
• Feeling "done to" by others
• Having a low tolerance for pain (emotional and physical)
• Feeling emotionally overwhelmed
• Craving sweets
The task for healing is to increase levels of beta endorphin without spiking or using. The program will teach you this.
