That’s why we call junk foods “empty calories”-there’s nothing in them to help your body keep its organs, tissues, and cells humming along the way they should.

Here’s what happens when you open wide and shovel sugary foods into your mouth:

First, your body screams, “Oh, no! I’ve just been fed pure, refined carbohydrates. Doesn’t she know I  can’t process that unless vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients are present? Doesn’t she or he knows I can only metabolize the ‘good’ carbs found in nature’s plants?”

After your body recovers from “sugar shock,” its balancing defenses go into action.

There are several  ways your body deals with a sugar rush.

Tapping Mineral Reserves: The body taps our reserves of minerals, like sodium, potassium, and  magnesium, to replace the empty calories.

If your reserves are already low from a diet high in empty carbs and low in vegetables, stripping away what little life forces you have left is bad news.

Doing so will zap your energy and weaken the defenses that work to keep disease away, which means your organs can’t stay in tip-top shape.

Calcium Stripping: Daily high sugar intake can lead to an overly acidic body. To combat that, your  body will try to balance your acid/alkaline factor by stripping calcium from your bones and teeth, which can lead to osteoporosis and arthritis.

Obesity: One of the organs most affected by your sugar intake is your liver. That’s because the liver is where excess sugar in the form of glucose is initially stored.

When you eat refined sugar everyday, your liver will eventually be filled to the brim with glucose. When that happens, the excess glucose is sent back into the bloodstream in the form of fatty acids.

Guess where those end up-on your buttocks, belly, breasts, and hips! Now, combine too much sugar with too many starchy, refined carbohydrates pasta, rice, chips, pretzels, etc. and you’ve got a recipe for obesity-and heart
disease.

Impaired Organ Function: After your liver has filled up your inactive body parts (belly, hips, buttocks, and breasts), those fatty acids have to go somewhere else, so your body divvies them up between your heart and kidneys.

Eventually your heart and kidneys slow down and the tissues degenerate and turn to fat. Now your body is in real trouble! You’ll have trouble with high blood pressure, a compromised immune system, and even impaired brain function.

Toxic Metabolite: Because your body can’t metabolize bad carbs, something called “toxic metabolite” results. That’s when pyruvic acid accumulates in the brain and nervous system, and sugars that have been transformed into alien carbon atoms settle in your red blood cells.

Now your red blood cells can’t breathe properly, causing some of them to die off and eventually leading to degenerative
diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.

Dull Brain: Even in the short term, your brain is affected by sugar. In fact, you’ll feel the effects right away. Sugar dulls your brain, so you’ll feel sleepy. You’ll probably also find yourself forgetting things or having trouble making simple calculations. That’s because the brain needs glutamic acid to function properly.

B vitamins help glutamatic acid, a vital compound found in many vegetables, divide the brain’s stop-go responses. Unfortunately, eating refined sugar daily kills off the symbiotic, or “good,” bacteria living in your intestines, and those bacteria are responsible for producing extra B vitamins.

Scared yet? I know I was!

It has been determined that a high concentration of sugar in the blood is likely responsible for cross-linking and any foods that have such a high concentration, such as sodas, should be generally avoided.

Inflammation can also be caused when foods high in sugars, known as high glycemic level foods, are ingested. This process will also release a high proportion of free radicals into the body.

Total holistic health solutions suggest a balanced, if not defensive approach to nutrition as we age. Foods which are known to be problematic should naturally be avoided, but we tend to avoid taking an overall view of holistic nutrition and often take shortcuts due to our busy schedules. It is unfortunate that we often put good health far down the list of priorities, until we suffer an unfortunate wake-up call of some kind. We can deduce from this that we do not prioritize our lives correctly and should put good health and longevity right at the top of the list.

There are enough medical and scientific studies around to show us that the ingestion of saturated fats and high levels of cholesterol are significantly bad for our health and cause premature aging. Sugar may be one of the silent killers, as it is not regarded with such anticipation as those foods which are high in fat. The truth is that sugar has zero nutritional value and has been shown to cause a spike in appetites as well.

Further studies by dermatologists suggest that eating sugary foods can significantly contribute to the development of wrinkles. Once again it is found that when glucose enters the bloodstream it attaches to the proteins used by the body to keep our skin supple and affects their ability to perform. In such situations collagen and elastin are no longer able to help us in our battle against a weathered look.

Aging should be a natural process and we should not contribute to its acceleration. If we were to treat our bodies as a temple and take a much more educated look at what we eat or drink on a daily basis, then we would feel more productive and more able to take on the trials and tribulations that life presents to us each day. Many people preach that caloric restriction extends life expectancy by keeping the flow of insulin in check. Sugar addiction can cause insulin levels to become highly elevated and it follows that we will age before our time, unless we’re careful.