 Oh! I will cut back on my receptors because I don't really want that much sugar in my system in my cells. Even artificial sweeteners can lead to what really happens when you quit sugar now for just one week. Hello everyone, Dr. Ergen here, a metabolism specialist, your go-to endocrinologist on YouTube. Everyone talks about how good you will feel after quitting sugar, right? And I'm here to tell you what will really happen when you quit eating sugar for just one week. I will be broadly honest with you as I am typically not the sugar-coding type of the experience of cutting the sugar especially. I will of course go over all the benefits in the scientific terms and I will tell you now how to be able to make that transition painlessly when with less effort. So I have seen videos about what happens when you quit sugar totally for like two weeks, four weeks, etc. What I have not seen is what happens when you quit sugar for 10 years. Why? Because everyone talks about the benefits of quitting sugar called turkey. Nobody digs into all the pain and suffering people go through during the withdrawal period. As a result, most people quit sugar way too soon. Well, they quit quitting the sugar way too soon. The truth is that if you have spent your entire life eating carbs and sugar it won't be easy to simply just cut them out as demonstrated in this video. So quitting sugar includes the same side effects in reality as quitting narcotics such as the symptoms would be like fatigue, headaches, mental fog, and irritability. Sugar withdrawal symptoms are very similar to those. The cocaine or alcohol addiction, etc. You can even have stomach issues with those withdrawal symptoms. So why is that? Well, sugar releases this feel-good hormones such as dopamine and serotonin which activates your body's reward system. So the more sugar you consume, the better you feel, at least temporarily. But when you stop eating sugar altogether, however, your body goes through that horrible, horrible withdrawal period. It's not pleasant for your body or your brain. See, you do know the numbers, right? Your body detects the changes, so your body doesn't know the numbers. So when there is a major swing in your blood sugar level which could be, you know, it doesn't have to be sugar, it could be sodium or potassium levels, etc., your body will immediately show signs and symptoms. Your body will immediately realize that something is not right. Something is missing. Also, the body has an interesting adoption mechanism. So what happens is, when there's a lot of abundance of a substance running in your bloodstream, your cells will down-regulate the receptors that take the signals from that substance to prevent the over-stimulation within the cell. So the opposite happens when your body is deprived of a substance and the receptors will be up-regulated. So why is that important? Well, think about it. If you have lots of sugar in your system and your body thinks, well, I will cut back on my receptors because I don't really want that much sugar in my system, in my cells, and the same happens to your dopamine and serotonin receptors. Now suddenly, there is very little sugar coming in but your body did not have time to adjust to the new glucose levels and your body goes into a panic mode and it starts screaming all these panic hormones which makes you feel horrible, irritable, moody, and giving your headaches. Same thing with the serotonin and dopamine. When you do not have enough of that, you are going to feel like you are extremely having deficiency of those hormones. Many people experience fatigue, even a feeling of sadness or depression as their body is adjusting to the lower levels of glucose, even dopamine and serotonin as we discussed. After a week or so, your energy will begin to improve and you will feel more alive and less irritable. So yes, you will have to put up with these signs and symptoms for anywhere from one to three weeks depending on the individual. People who have been eating a lot of sugar over a long period of time may experience a withdrawal that lasts like two to three weeks. So even artificial sweeteners can lead to addiction and withdrawal as a result of that addiction. For that reason, artificial sweeteners like aspartame should not be used as a substitute for sweets that include sugar as often. Exercise can help with the headaches while you are in this period and the flu-like symptoms as well. So take a brisk walk or jogging can definitely help raising the circulation, the metabolism, and stimulating your immune system and giving the person something pleasant to concentrate on. Otherwise, you will be thinking about your withdrawal symptoms and you will be by yourself and you will be struggling. Also, remember to try our sugar-empty fat burner or weight loss formula which is specifically designed to help you with the sugar cravings. So you will have plenty of that when you're trying to get rid of all the goodies that you love. And if you're trying to quit sugar, you will need some help unless you have a strong willpower that you can go through all those symptoms. Now let's talk about the rewards of quitting sugar in the long term. Just a side note, I am not a big believer in the carnivore diet or the keto diet which is very hard to maintain. Many nutritious, God-given fruits and vegetables have very natural sugars in them and thanks to their fiber content, those natural sugars are not going to cause blood sugar spikes unless you are making very little to no insulin in your body. I think the majority of the people take an all-or-nothing approach and 95% of the time in my experience they fail because almost every natural plant has some sort of sugar in it. Most people cannot keep up and they just give in. On the other hand, I almost always promote a balanced diet rich in healthy fats, protein and carbs, low in glycemic index with fruits and vegetables. So what they all need to really quit when it comes to sugar is the sucrose which is your table sugar that are in bakeries, the desserts, etc. And those processed sugars are the main problem. Plus, although the fruits and vegetables may have sugar in them, and you will be able to taste them better when you quit the artificial sugars, they also have a lot of antioxidants and they protect your body from a lot of carcinogenic effects and so forth and you need that antioxidant effect. It's a lot easier to transition to a healthy carb low glycemic index diet also instead of just jumping to a no-carb diet which will be extremely difficult. So what happens when you stop eating the bad table sugars, the bakery stuff, the sweets, they're artificial and so on? Let's talk about that. Number one, your skin will glow. You will appear younger for sure. Diets high in those refined sugars cause excessive insulin spikes, as you know, if you have insulin. In turn, it triggers inflammation in your skin. As a result, you will lose that elasticity which is the collagen that makes your skin nice and glowy. It will become damaged, it's going to cause premature wrinkling, sagging, acne and rosacea. So reducing your sugar intake will do just the opposite. Number two, you'll get more rest. To be honest with you, when I do not eat well, let's say I went out and had some dessert or something, I wake up next day feeling pretty shitty. Like stiff joints, I'm tired, I feel like I'm hit by a truck, I can't get out of the bed. No, I don't drink alcohol, it's not that. It's not a hangover, okay? Thankfully, the majority of the time, I stop eating food early and go to bed feeling after a healthy dinner and feeling half hungry and so forth. Then when I wake up, I'm energized. I'm ready to jump off the bed and go for a run. This is because the foods containing this high amounts of refined sugar lower the degree of your slow wave sleep, which is a form of restorative sleep. So all the insulin and glucose running in your system will trigger also inflammation signals in your body and will prevent having a good sleep. Also, if you consume something sweet before you go to bed, you run actually the risk of having low blood sugar, which is a form of reactive blood sugar crash or reactive hyperglycemia, we call it. This may not be applicable to all diabetics, but you may experience, for example, night sweats if you are having low blood sugars after high blood sugar, etc. In addition to that, stress hormones can be greatly increased if you consume sugar, especially before bed, which eventually raises your blood sugar later. It will cause quite a bit of difficulty sleeping because it's like you're on steroids. Well, number three, I think you were waiting on that one, I know, and that was the losing weight, of course, sugar has a great effect on the area of your brain that regulates your hunger. So when you consume too much sugar, your brain believes you are still hungry if and if you are not sugar also alters the brain, it gets affected, it gets addicted to the sugar and making you crave more and more sugar and the more you eat, it is a self-fulfilling cycle. While everyone's weight loss method is quite different, no matter who you are, but you will lose weight considerably more quickly if you quit eating the bad sugars. You'll probably lose water weight fairly quickly because when insulin goes down in your body, your body basically stops retaining water, but then it may slow down later because the burning fat requires caloric deficiency and think about that one gram of fat is nine calories versus one gram of carb is four calories. And if you're eating a lot of fat now, you may start plateauing. So don't overcompensate with fat and protein, people stop eating a bunch of meat and they just stop losing weight. And that's one of the reasons you should still be plant-based heavy if you want to be able to lose weight. And if you keep your carbs in a low glycemic index range, you will steadily lose weight. As long as you have a manageable, not overly torturous diet, you will be fine. Another weight loss benefit of low sugar consumption is of course your belly will be a lot slimmer. Everyone knows that daily sweetened beverage habit or beer can add up pretty quickly, especially around your midsection. So you want to get rid of that, quit sugar. So you may not be aware of the problems also linked to the abdominal fat, but you know, added sugar not only raise your blood sugar and cause a lot of insulin, but also helps build fat to develop around your midsection over time, which leads to insulin resistance even more. So these fat cells are deep in your abdomen. Do we call them visceral fat is pretty much the most dangerous fat because they basically stopped adipokines, which are the healthy chemicals, and they induce a lot of inflammation that can lead to heart disease and cancer. So even if your blood sugars are okay, you still have to pay attention to slimming your belly and abdominal circumference. So cutting down on soda and desserts will help you to lose that belly fat clearly, right? So number four, as you might expect your blood sugar control will be much, much better, especially if you have diabetes. If you are cutting sugar, no brainer, right? Number five, well, you'll be happier. I know what you're thinking. How I can be happier if I quit everything I love? I rather die. A lot of people say that to me. Well, what if I told you that you would be happier if you quit drinking when you're an alcoholic? Well, sugar is no different really. All those candy bars and cakes that make you happy just make you a slave to keep eating them. So when you quit eating sugar, you can declare your freedom and start tasting the real natural sugar in the real food. So a fairly recent study, for example, published in the American Journal of Nutrition found that women who ate sugary foods with a high glycemic index increased their risk of depression. Another study published in 2017 in the Journal of Scientific Reports found that men who consumed more than 67 grams of sugar, not just carbs, but pure sugar, every day they increased the risk of depression as well when compared to men who ate less than 40 grams each day. So again, cutting down on the carbs and eating healthy carbs will dramatically improve your happiness levels actually. This may be related to the fact that sugar can cause chronic inflammation, which has an impact on your brain function. Kelly to dementia easily. If you take out the sugar, you may see a difference in your mood within pretty much one to two weeks. Number six, you won't get sick as often. So when you too much processed sugar, what do you do? You weaken your immune system. But when you stop eating sugar, your immune system will be able to function exactly as it is supposed to. Because the chronic inflammation due to high sugar consumption diminishes your body's immune response, including the COVID-19 infection, making you more susceptible to the colds and the fluids throughout the year. Number seven, if you quit sugar, you're going to improve your mental acuity and sharpness. So in a 2014 study, again, published in nutritional science, researchers found that a high glucose diet increases insulin resistance, as you know, but this happens especially in the hippocampus area, while also it's exacerbating your memory issues at the same time. Another study published in the Journal of Molecular Neurobiology found great link between sugar consumption and the negative changes in the frontal cortex of the brain, which is your decision-making center, which has been connected to other cognitive difficulties as well. So if you want to stay sharp and on top of things, avoid sweets now, especially as you become older, you will need that. You will be generally rewarded by your intellect if you quit sugar today. Number eight, your cholesterol will be better. It is extremely important for your heart health to have a good cholesterol, especially your small LDL, your triglycerides, et cetera. So as you know, if you have a higher than normal body weight at high abdominal circumference, et cetera, you're more likely to have high cholesterol levels and especially, like I said, triglycerides. So I'll say to you that right now, more than half of my diabetic patients, they have high triglycerides and they have no idea that it has actually something to do directly with your diet. So your LDL may not normalize as easily just with your diet, but your triglycerides can easily be corrected by lowering or reducing the sugar intake. But it's not just about losing weight, right? Even when people were at the same weight, people who got, for example, less than 20% of their calories from added sugars had much lower triglycerides, even if they didn't lose weight. So after consuming glucose, also endothelial function, the cells that make up the vascular wall deteriorates as well. Well, this could be due to a lot of things, right? Number one, oxidative stress caused by the high blood sugars. And the bad endothelial function means, guess what, a bad vascular system and inflamed vessels, the arteries, unfortunately, attract cholesterol and build up and as a result, the heart disease. Well, number nine, benefit of quitting sugar would be improved teeth as well. Glucose is the main source, as you know, for the bacteria in your mouth on your teeth, and it leads to decay and gum disease as well. So cavities are other dangerous infections may result as a result of that eating sugar behavior, and it can actually make your diabetes control worse. So and in addition to that, if you're not brushing and flossing your teeth regularly for infrequently, that sugar addiction, especially with soda and so forth, can definitely destroy your entire teeth line. So number 10, yeah, we are at the end. You will live longer because you watched this video, and we are at the end of this video almost, right? So if you want to have a happy and healthy life as long as possible, you need to really learn to get rid of that nasty sugars that are added to your diet. Because when our glucose levels rise, as a result of eating those junk foods, our insulin levels rise as a result, or if you don't have enough insulin, your glucose will rise and it's going to activate a component of our nervous system that also raises our blood pressure and heart rate. So a key risk factor for heart disease is also as you know, high blood pressure, which has been connected to excessive sugar consumption. And as a result, people will type two diabetes and obesity, they're both are at high risk for high blood pressure. And most of the time, the reason is excessive sugar consumption. By the way, check out our blood pressure support supplement that if you are still struggling with the blood pressure problems, even if you are doing everything you can with your diet, it's called Sugar MD Blood Pressure Support, available on our website. According to a 2014 study published in Journal of Internal Medicine, those who drank the most added sugar were more likely to die from heart disease than those who ingested the least amount of added sugar. So guys, I hope I convinced you that you should cut the carbs, not eliminate the carbs, especially if you want to eliminate something, eliminate the added sugars from your diet and keep the real food, the plant based vegetables and fruits in your diet. And if you are struggling with controlling your blood sugar, again, it's not the best recommendation to just to tell you go and become a carnivore, because that's not the health way of eating. It's not a proper human diet. It is totally improper. You need to get your vegetables, your fruits in your diet to get the most nutrition, the most vitamins, the most antioxidants in your diet. And if you are still needing help, I would suggest talk to your diabetes team. It may be medications, it may be supplements, whatever it can be, help yourself, keep your blood sugar under control and keep your overall health under control, because your health is not just about your blood sugar. Remember that and we'll see you guys in the next video. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this channel so far, and I hope you subscribed already. If you didn't do it and if you did, watch this video right there, I think that will help you too.