Are you addicted to stimulants?

Do you need a cup of coffee, a cigarette or something sweet to get you going in the morning?  Do you feel low in energy or drowsy during the day and rectify it with a bar of chocolate or a coffee?  Do you suffer from frequent headaches or sweating?  Are you rarely wide-awake within 20mins of rising?  If you answer ‘yes’ to these questions you may be relying too much on stimulants for your energy.  The result may be that you also suffer from fatigue, irritability, depression, crying or aggressive outbursts, forgetfulness or blurred vision.

When we eat sugar or refined carbohydrates (white flour, white rice), the sugar from the food goes quickly into the bloodstream.  Too much sugar in the blood is dangerous so the body works hard removing it from the blood into the cells, where it can be used for energy or stored as fat.  Immediately after eating the food you may feel energetic, as you’ve been given a ‘lift’.  Once the body has removed some of the deadly sugar into the cells (maybe ½ hour later), you start to feel low in energy once again, or dispirited.  The hand reaches out for another cigarette, coffee or chocolate, to lift you up again.  Perhaps after your bowl of sugary cereal and coffee at breakfast, you may need a cigarette during the mid morning, and then lots of white bread, tea and chocolate at lunch, sweets in the afternoon, drinks in the evening…the stimulants go on throughout the whole day.  Consistently eating these sugary foods will cause a yoyo effect of rapidly rising and falling blood sugar.  This will cause an imbalance of glucose to the brain resulting in the mental and emotional side effects mentioned in the first paragraph.

Alcohol, nicotine in cigarettes and caffeine in coffee, tea and chocolate are also stimulants, causing adrenalin to be released.  This in turn releases sugar into the blood and if this happens regularly the yoyo effect occurs again.  Long term, the hormones responsible become tired and over used, they then may become sluggish and eventually may no longer work – they have been worked to the ground.  This may result in problems (besides the irritating symptoms mentioned in the first paragraph), such as diabetes, heart disease, hormonal imbalance problems…

Keeping your blood sugar balanced, and not yoyo-ing up and down is probably the most important factor in maintaining energy levels and weight.  Besides the obvious removal of sugar from the diet and cutting down on coffee, cigarettes and alcohol, please read next weeks article to see how to keep your energy levels even, your skin clearer, have less headaches and less sweating…..!