 Okay, if you want to be severely traumatized, go check out this website. Forbes did a infographic on Americans and their sugar consumption, which ultimately your sugar that you eat gets turned into glucose as you digest it, break it down into glucose, and then absorb it into your blood. So, I kind of want to cry right now, but maybe it's throw up is more accurately what I want to do. And I'm like, I know that I'm right. I mean, I'm probably double this. Americans eat 130 pounds of sugar every year. And this is growing. Like, check out, I mean, we're increasing the amount of sugar that we're eating each year. Oh, I don't want to know how much sugar. We eat 3,550 pounds of sugar in a lifetime, three pounds of sugar in a week. That's like whatever that number is of Skittles. I've probably already eaten that many Skittles. Oh my God, we can fill the entire dumpster of sugar. You got to go check this out yourself. I have to stop looking at it. The fact is that sugar, like we're having some serious sugar issues in our country and probably all over the place. I don't know. I find it extremely disturbing. There's research out there that indicates that sugar is addictive, like as addictive as cocaine. It makes me feel a little bit better about my sugar problems. But nonetheless, maybe if I had to write an essay right now on a lifestyle change that I should make to increase my health, maybe I should stop eating sugar. Oh, holy heck. Well, let's look at some basic sugar facts. Because here's the deal. Glucose concentrations in your blood are highly regulated. And when you can't regulate your glucose homeostasis, you have some serious problems going on. Why? You know what, regardless of anything else, glucose is a very important substance, primarily because you know what, your brain needs it. Your brain only metabolizes glucose. It doesn't eat other substances. And so if you don't eat any sugar at all or any carbohydrates at all, then your brain is going to starve and that ain't cool, dog pound. That ain't cool. However, that doesn't mean that you need to eat 130, whatever that was, pounds of sugar every year. Your brain doesn't need that much of it. So let's look at some clinical levels. First of all, when you are fasting, so this just means you haven't had a meal for about two hours, your glucose levels are at about 80 to 90 milligrams per deciliter. Okay, that's cool. After a meal, your glucose levels go up. And does this not make sense? It's going to go up dramatically because you just absorbed a whole bunch of glucose into your blood. Now, if you maintain above this number chronically, so if you have prolonged glucose concentrations above 120, so 120 plus, then that's called hyperglycemia. And that's a problem. Hyperglycemia, now this is prolonged because within two hours, your glucose concentrations should return to fasting even though they get high immediately after a meal. And we're going to talk about how your body does that. Your body does that by producing insulin. Insulin is required for glucose to be absorbed into your cells, most of your cells. So hyperglycemia is going to happen if your glucose levels don't return to fasting after two hours of time. You can have hypoglycemia, hypoglycemia, and hypoglycemia is less than 70. I know, okay, less than 70, greater than 120. I think that's right. So if your glucose levels drop below 70 again for prolonged periods of time, you can have hypoglycemia. And actually, if they go below 50 below 50, you can end up with a hypoglycemic shock. That can cause irritability, fainting, seizures, coma, sad story. Hyperglycemia, some issues that you're going to have with this. Number one, you're going to have osmotic problems because glucose is going to increase the concentration of your blood. You're probably going to excrete glucose in your kidneys. You're probably going to exceed transport maximum. So you're going to pee out glucose, which means you're also going to pee out a lot of water. So you're probably going to end up with dehydration issues. And the other issue with hypoglycemia is that glucose in your blood vessels acts as an inflammatory agent. So high levels of glucose can actually damage the endothelium in your blood vessels. Damaged endothelium is where cardiovascular atherosclerotic plaques start forming. So if you are having chronic high levels of glucose in your blood, then you're more likely to form plaques in your blood vessels, and that can lead to cardiovascular disease. So basically, what we conclude is that maintaining glucose homeostasis really is important to do. So how do we do it? Well, after you eat, you better figure out a way to get the glucose out of your blood. You just absorbed it into your system and now we need to get it out.