Does Sugar Hurt Your Immune System?

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Does sugar hurt your immune system? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and fitness hall of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Connie from Instagram asks, does sugar hurt your immune system? Well, Connie, it does. And I'll tell you why and what to do about it when we come back.

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Okay, so sugar, you probably figured I was going to say it hurts your immune system. After all, I did write the Sugar Impact diet and I'm not a fan of sugar. And there is some research out there showing that eating sugar can curb the immune system cells that fight, fight bacteria. And this lasts for hours after eating it. That was done in a lab. Okay, okay. But here's the bigger deal. Sugar can lead to insulin resistance, which creates inflammation, which is going to impact your immune system. Plus, when you're eating higher sugar impact foods, you're getting less nutrient density because they too don't go together. You're not getting a bunch of great nutrition in a food that's high in sugar. And you need a good nutrient dense diet to fight infections. You need a diet rich in zinc, selenium, vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin D, and powerhouse antioxidants like glutathione polyphenols and other antioxidants like quercetin. You're not going to get those if you're eating a bunch of sugar. Plus, high sugar impact can exacerbate anxiety and impact sleep. And we know that stress and sleep both lower your immune function. So yes, sugar hurts your immune system. And now I'm going to give you what you need to do about it. Because what I found when I wrote the Sugar Impact diet and I wrote that book, because after I wrote the Virgin Diet, the number one question I got asked was about sugar. Seemed like people were either confused, they were like, oh, it's honey, it must be all natural, it's okay. Or they were controlled by it. They're like, I tried, I tried, I tried. I can't give up my sugar. And so if you're right now looking at ways you can support your immune system and you are having trouble giving up the sugar, I can help. So the first thing you're going to want to do, and this is all in the Sugar Impact diet book, is you want to find out where the higher sugar impact foods are sneaking in. Now, what is a high sugar impact food, you ask? I'm glad you did. I classify foods as high, low, medium, and high sugar impact. Basically, I've ranked them and I'm looking at four factors. Fructose and how much of food raises your glucose, your blood sugar, insulin levels as the problematic side of it. And then nutrient density and fiber is the good side, and based on how much some things, either how much fructose it has or how much it's raising your blood sugar, insulin, versus how much nutrient density or fiber it has, will then determine where it lands on that sugar impact scale. So the first thing that I like to do is figure out what's really happening because of the diet you're eating. How do you feel? How's your energy, how's your mood, how's your joint pain, how's your weight, how's your belly fat? So we go through little checklists so we can really connect the dots between what you're eating and how you feel. And then we also look at where medium and high sugar foods could be sneaking into your diet. Now, here's the critical thing. The reason I think that people fail in trying to kick their sugar habit is because they just go, that's it. I'm done. I'm quitting. I'm all done. I will never eat sugar again. And that lasts, I don't know, a day, maybe a week. And then guess what happens? Cookies happen, Ice cream happens. Something happens and you beat yourself up and. And you give up. And you might do that a couple times before you just say, hey, you know what? This is just the way it is. Well, the reason you're not able to quit sugar is one, you've been looking at sugar all wrong. It's not about eating no sugar. It's about knowing which to choose and which to lose. And you try to go cold turkey when you really need to taper. Because if you've been eating a higher sugar impact diet, and even if you're not eating straight sugar, if you're eating a lot of white flour and things like that, you are. If you try to quit that all at once, you're going to crash, and that's going to lead you rushing back for the cookies. And quite often, people don't even realize all the crazy places that sugar is sneaking into their diet. In fact, they're trying to eat healthy. You probably try and eat healthy. You had that salad, but the raspberry vinaigrette and the glazed pecans and the dried cranberries, well, that just turned that salad into a sundae. So if you've been eating that way, chances are you're eating every two to three hours and you've got a little belly that you can't seem to get rid of. Those are two signs that you're a sugar burner, not a fat burner. And we need to transition you from a sugar Burner to a fat burner in order for you to be able to get the sugar out of your diet. So the first thing that I have you do is taper from high sugar impact to medium sugar impact. And then. And it's simple, by the way, you're trading foods, so I'm not saying, hey, you know what? I know you've been eating french fries and pizza and ice cream, and it'll be great. What we're going to do instead is we're going to have lettuce and bean sprouts and kimchi. You'd be like, are you crazy? Now what I do instead is I make some easy tapers. So if you've been eating, say, raisins, high sugar impact. I'll say, hey, have some grapes instead. Medium sugar impact. Then from grapes, we'll go to blueberries. Low sugar impact. So you probably like the foods better. You like the way you feel eating the foods better. And we're not going totally different from what you were eating. If you were used to eating white flour, then maybe we'll switch first to a brown rice flour and then maybe over to an almond flour. So simple, easy things to do. We taper by trading similar foods that have lower sugar impact. And then once you've gone through that, then we reset by going low sugar impact. And then this is important because you always want to connect the dots between how you're feeling and what you're eating. Then we go back and we go, all right, how do you feel when you eat higher sugar impact foods and we rechallenge and create the right diet for you? What works best for you, the amount of carbs, the amount of sugar impact that you can handle to have great energy, great mood, great immune system, et cetera. And it is that simple. So, yes, the answer is sugar is not good for your immune system, and it's not good for a whole host of reasons. So jump on that sugar impact diet and break free from that sugar addiction. This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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