We have all heard over and over again that sugar is bad for you. It is part of our common knowledge. But do you ever wonder what that really means?

What does sugar do to my body?

The impacts of sugar begin as soon as it hits your tongue.  When you taste something sweet, the brain sends a signal to the pancreas to release a hormone called insulin. (This doesn’t even have to be sugar – artificial sweeteners also create the same reaction.) Insulin helps sugar, in particular, glucose, to pass through the cell walls so that it can be used by the cells for energy.

All cells need energy to do their jobs. However, when the body is flooded with too much sugar the pancreas has to work extra hard to produce enough insulin to get the sugar into the cells.

Think of sugar as a catered meal for your cells and insulin as the catering trucks that drive around in your bloodstream. Your body’s cells are the buildings with workers who  need food deliveries for energy. These buildings/cells also need other kinds of deliveries like growth hormones, repair molecules, and reproductive hormones.

Each building/cell has a parking lot designed to hold a certain number of delivery trucks. These parking lots are the “cell’s receptors.” When there is a large amount of food to be delivered (sugar in the blood stream) the catering trucks (insulin) will begin to fill up the parking lots. This is bad news for several reasons.

When the parking lot is full, none of the other delivery trucks/hormones can get in- leaving the building without repairs or other needed supplies. This also means the extra catering trucks/insulin are stuck doing circles in the blood stream and unfortunately they are not very good drivers. They tend to bang into the walls causing damage and inflammation!

Seeing the need to reserve their spot in the parking lot/cell receptors, over time, the catering trucks/insulin will create signs that say “catering only” not allowing other trucks to park there in the future- continuing the blockade of repair and maintenance and hormone regulation.
All that food is not going to get eaten by the workers in the building, it’s just too much. Not to worry though, the body can easily put the extra food into the storage shed for later- in the form of fat.


When there are food trucks running about in the blood the body won’t use the food reserves. The body will not burn fat if there is too much insulin in the bloodstream.
 Over time the factory (the pancreas) that makes the trucks/insulin starts to run out of resources. It gets tired and can begin to break down. Without enough insulin in the bloodstream, the amount of sugar will rise and the body is then well on it’s way to becoming diabetic. This is truly bad news!

These are really just the basics of what happens when there is too much sugar in the body. Research has shown that this excess can have devastating consequences. Besides diabetes, it has been linked to an impaired immune system and chronic allergies – not to mention many diseases including Alzheimer’s, cancer, arthritis, obesity, malnutrition, dental cavities, leaky gut syndrome, candida infections, polycystic ovarian syndrome…. and the list goes on.

When it comes down to it, too much sugar can be just plain toxic!