Why I'm Happy I Moved Away From Refined Sugar.

I was a sickly child, often had colds and ear infections. In my teens, my weight would yoyo between 7 and 8 stone. Just when I was getting back up to 8 stone, I’d get sick again and my weight would plummet. When I did finally get over 8 stone my health improved a fair bit.

Fast forward a few years, when my children started school and I started getting colds more often again. That wasn't too surprising as children do pick up a lot of viruses, but it got you the point where after each cold I would get a sinus infection, no matter how mild the cold was. This would take weeks to shift, then once I did shift it, I'd be lucky to have a couple of healthy weeks before the next cold hit me.

Moving from England to South Australia took me out of a damp, polluted environment to a much drier cleaner one. I arrived with the last dregs of a cold and sinus infection. However, things improved and I finally got to enjoy life with a lot less colds, although gastro became a bit more common.

Fast forward again to a few year's ago and I was watching The Quest For the Cures Continues. One of the things discussed was refined sugars and how they lower your immune system. They weren't referring to naturally occurring sugars, just the manmade, refined ones. I wasn't sure how or why, but I decided to start weaning us off them. That Sugar Film clinched it for me.

Sweets and lollies were fairly easy to cut out, as we aren't big consumers of them anyway, then we started substituting honey in our baking and checking labels for hidden sugars. I had no idea just how many things sugar is added to, including savoury items! I started cooking a whole lot more and avoiding prepackaged foods.

A few months in and I realised we hadn't been sick for weeks, despite everyone with their colds around us. This was actual confirmation for me that refined sugar really could be damaging to the immune system. Curious, I looked up why this might be. The theory is that the refining process makes it mimic vitamin C. Immune cells need vitamin C to do their job; it's like the ammunition. Without it they may as well be firing blanks. When your body is full of refined sugar, the immune cell receptor slots this in, blocking vitamin C from being taken on as it should be, dramatically reducing the effectiveness of the immune system.

I probably still get the occasional virus. Maybe once a year it will make me obviously sick, but recovery is usually fairly quick. Other times I might feel a bit drained for a few days or get a headache. Other times colds and flu will be doing the rounds, but seem to miss me.

It's entirely possible that cooking from scratch more often has also helped my general health, but I've noticed certain family members who have added more sugary treats back in have increased their occurrence of sickness.

Another benefit of reducing sugars in our diet has been an improvement in being able to taste the actual flavours of the food we're eating and having less of a craving for sweet things. There are certain foods I just can't face any more. Then I can't go without acknowledging the fact that my teeth are thanking me for kicking sugar too the curb too.

I will admit, there are occasions when I will eat something which I know has sugar in it as a treat or because I'm out and about and the choice is limited. However, as it's no longer in my diet every day, throughout the day, this isn't a big issue.

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This was written in response to the @naturalmedicine contest exploring The healing power of food. I’ve taken a bit of a different approach in that this is more along the lines of the removal of something from our food, but it's my best food healing experience.

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