“If only a small fraction of what is already known about the effects of sugar were to be revealed in relation to any other material used as a food additive, that material would promptly be banned” , John Yudkin
This is my 79th post on fibromyalgia and/or chronic fatigue and I often wonder what I will write about next. I recently read an interview with Woody Allen who said he walks around and stories come to him. The same seems to apply to me. This time it is about sharing a dark, deep secret.
I am a sugar addict. There! I’ve said it publicly, even though I have known it for many years. I crave it. I like to mainline it with candy. Cookies and cakes…these take too long to give me the sugar high; candy is the fastest hit, especially chocolate. Years ago I read Sugar Blues and thought it did not apply to me. Like all addicts I thought I could stop at any time; I was mistress of my domain. I have rarely met a candy I did not like. I would hide it away from my kids. I would freeze it. I would ask my husband to hide it from me, knowing full well that I would seek it out within minutes of the hiding. Peppermints lined the bottom of my purse. Desk drawers were stuffed with candy wrappers. But, wait! I did not turn my nose up at ice cream or cakes or cookies! They were a pleasant second choice. Often I would say with pride that I did not take sugar in tea or coffee. That proved that I was not an addict, right? But then, I rarely drink either coffee or tea so who was I fooling? The experts say that I should substitute refined sugar with fruit. But, this doesn’t work very well for me, psychologically.
After menopause, the addiction became much worse and the weight issue became serious. The blood sugar levels began to rise. The fibro muscle pain increased with the amount of sugar intake. Still, the temporary comfort of the sugar hit was a craving I could not deny. This past winter I decided to go ‘cold turkey’ and lost 20 lbs and my blood sugar levels dropped to normal. I even went through the Christmas season without any sweets in my life. I thought I had finally conquered it! But then, like the alcoholic I tried a little taste of a digestive cookie, then a few weeks later a mint, a wee bit of ice cream; the increase in muscle pain was noticeable, yet I continued on this path. Very moderate exercise which is all we with fibromyaliga can tolerate, is more painful after the sugar indulgence.
Do I read labels? Of course! Yet, I persist on choosing that which has more sugar to feed my addiction. Here is an example: recently a friend gave me a jar of Newman’s Own mango salsa. I love salsa passionately and ate it all within a week. Not able to find it locally I bought a brand from my supermarket but it did not give me the same high as the Newman’s Own. I compared labels:
Local Mango and Lime: Sugar…2 g, Newman’s Own 3 g. Local Mango : Sodium 135 mg, Newman’s 180g. Local Mango: Carbos 3g, Newman’s 5 g. Local : Vit C…4, Newman’s 0. So, did I content myself with the local mango which is the better choice? Of course not! I wrote a note to the management to bring in the higher sugar, carbo and sodium brand of Newman’s Own, which tastes so wonderful. This is but one small example of how even such a tiny difference in sugar content can affect my taste buds! It is no doubt due to emotional eating, which affects so many of us with chronic pain,but the comfort is short lived. I want this sugar fix, but it is not a biological need, rather a brain/mind longing. In the July, 2011 edition of the Shambhala Sun magazine, Sasha Loring writes about How to Tame the Wanting Mind with regard to eating issues. It has been most helpful.
What is to be done? I chastise myself regularly. Berating myself does not work; I only feel worse. I have self talk about discipline. I meditate. I do as much light exercise as I can tolerate without a flare up, yet at the end of the day, the addiction rears its ugly head. For the most part of the day I eat a very healthy diet, but when that urge comes upon me, I struggle, then often give in to it. I know the strategies: eat more fruit, don’t buy high sugar foods, avoid baking, eat only small amounts of high sugar and salt foods. I have lapsed once again. Sugar is in everything it seems, accompanied by its hateful cousin, salt. But, Loring offers expert advice on how to tame this unhealthy wanting.
In all my readings and attempts at dieting I have found that Weight Watchers is the most sensible eating regime to follow. It isn’t a diet per se but a life style change to healthy eating. It requires discipline and making conscientious choices. But, for those of us who are extremely fatigued, particularly at the end of the day, the desire to eat a comfort food is overwhelming and being sensible isn’t high on the priority list. Fruit, yogurt, and other healthy choices require motivation and a change of mind. The challenges continue. Today though will be a sugar free day…one day at a time. Hopefully, a pain flare will not arise as I strive once more to forgo the temporary comfort of my addiction. This is now the time to change my brain since I have been advocating this approach for those of us with fibromyalgia for the past 2 years! It is about truly recognizing that there are other ways of being happy and uplifted and working with the sense of being unfulfilled. Walking when the weather permits, meditating when the craving descends upon me, these among other strategies suggested by Loring are crucial aspects of taming my mind…I know all the fundamentals. Now to find joy in spite of pain, fatigue and ending the desire to find something outside myself to give me comfort. I am the one I have been looking for! In the words of Judith Viorst “Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands-and then eat just one of the pieces”.
Hi Barbara…just stumbled on this site as I was researching fibromyalgia symptoms and was quite taken by your book. I too am a nurse, graduated from Victoria General in Halifax and am presently living and working in Maine. Oh yeah, and I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia a few years back but when I think about it the symptoms started after my first son was born 12 years ago ( but was treated for many years for other things mostly unsucessfully and and felt that maybe my symptoms were just a result of my being a hypocondriac or due to stress and anxiety.) With 20 years of acute floor nursing experience from medical to presently ICU, I have found this diagnosis is very widespread in our profession( maybe not but it sure seems so) and that is why the relationship between fibromyalgia and “hyperarousal of the nervous system from worrying about others before ourselves and producing a heightened sense of intuition regarding others’ needs, with constant stressful outcomes ” caused me to further investigate and inform my fellow suffering nurse friends. We will be reading the book shortly. Then I discovered that you lived in Halifax and taught at Dalhousie School of nursing. Small world. I am presently reading the entries in your blog and as I said will be reading the book. Trying to learn and understand what is happening to me and why. But mostly I am trying to find a way to not this this control my life and to live to the fullest. Thanks Deana
Hi Deana: It is a small world indeed! I was very happy to hear that you think fibro is so common among nurses. I believe that it is the result of caring for others before ourselves and our intense empathy which is ‘over the top’. Read some of the blogs on empathy and in the book as well. I laid the foundation for the theory that I developed in the book and it has never failed to guide me in my understanding of the issues. It is so difficult not to label ourselves as neurotic, but then it is also a challenge to be struggling with always wondering what will happen next as peculiar symptoms develop that change almost hour to hour sometimes. I would really love to hear more about the nurses you know who also have fibro. I wrote a blog some time ago about Florence Nightingale as I and many others believe she too had our syndrome! Please keep in touch. Kind regards, Barbara
Hello dear Barbara! This wonderful post reminded me of how I weaned myself off adding TWO spoons of sugar in my morning coffee many years ago.
We had an elderly family friend whom everybody called Granny Peg; she offered me this sugar-weaning advice:
“You take a Nanaimo Bar (…do you have these on the East Coast, by the way? Very sweet, sticky chocolate/creamy confection!) and you get your cup of coffee, but no sugar added this time. You take one bite of your Nanaimo Bar, then two sips of your hot coffee. Repeat until both are gone. By the end of two weeks, you will be completely off adding sugar to your coffee anymore!”
She was right.
Of course, I’d gained five pounds and was now addicted to my daily Nanaimo Bars . . .
Hugs
C.
Oh how I love your comments Carolyn. These so called ‘comfort’ foods are so difficult to let go of. I will never be able to say I have conquered that sugar addiction but it won’t be for lack of trying! The struggles and challenges we face trying to become healthy! B.
Barbara,
Relax,meditate, no guilt,keep going and know that you can do anything your heart desires.
Remember the want factor. What do I really want right now?
Sometimes sugar will win.
Janet
Thanks Janet. I guess it isn’t really my ‘heart’ but what my brain desires:-) You are right though, give up the guilt! Regards, Barbara
Hi I was just searching for a relationship between fibromyalgia and sugar when I came across your site. It’s very good to know that I wasn’t just imagining it, that when I eat sugary food late at night ( usually chocolate in bed after 9pm) that the pain starts raging. I am a nurse also and knew that stress was a trigger but never thought of empathy as a stressor. My family and friends all say that I am far too empathic and that I take other peoples pain and suffering to personally. I’ve always seen this as an attribute not a weakness, but I guess always worrying about everyone takes it’s toll. I have suffered form depression for 20 odd years and never put the angst of this together with the pain of fibro. At least something good has come out of my sitting up at 1 in the morning in pain and trying to find a link. Thankyou ladies for all your help. Julie-Ann Brisbane Australia
Hi Julie-Ann: Empathy, yes! Overly empathetic, no! Nurses are so prone to fibro and that goes with my theory in my book about women’s roles to over-care! So good points you make. AND, sugar! It gives so much TEMPORARY comfort, but the price we pay for it is heavy! I kow your story all too well, Best wishes, Barbara
I know a bunch of people will probably jump all over me here, but I am used to skepticism and derision as a fibromyalgic, so here goes….
My life is all about conserving energy, in multitudes of ways, so I can squeeze in enough energy to get through the day and do something I want to do (like write to your blog). Otherwise I would succumb to the feeling of being nothing more than an old draft horse that just leans in its traces and plods ever onward.
I too am a sugar addict in the ways you describe, and ooo ahhh, I love it. But I have also had nutrition courses, which say that virtually all food is broken down into sugar before our body can use it. How does it break down all those complex foods? Energy…. I don’t like whole grains, because I feel drained and fatigued, and I don’t even want to talk about the bloating and the gas.
Yes, I love vegetables, and eat a lot with the love of my life (who is waay more “crunchy granola” than me). I do feel I am doing better with more of the home-grown stuff, but I attribute that to not living a block from five types of fast food…I am 25 miles from the nearest MacDonald’s. But then again, I am here at 2:15 AM because my intestines are roiling, and I cannot sleep.
I have a lot of studying to do tomorrow, because I am halfway through business school in the mid-nineties, and it is the hardest thing I have ever done, even though it is only community college. It is a crap shoot (no pun intended) on getting a job (having spent a large part of my net worth on international tuition and to move to Cape Breton), but Canada is the only place I have ever felt at home, and people have been very kind and helpful here.
Someone could take a new tack here (I am speaking to all you scientists out there) and study the issue of energy conservation from the inside-out. Calories are a measure of energy. Complex molecular bonds in proteins and carbohydrates are broken apart to digest our food with…you guessed it, energy. I see a great deal of discussion on IBS and other intesinal problems and wonder about this a lot, when I want to lie down and pass out after eating whole grain bread.
Certainly, artificial stimulation is an understandable desire to those who cannot escape the stresses of daily life. Coffee gets me to get out of bed in the morning, sugar gets me through the terrible terminal yawns of an afternoon of classes where sitting is so painful I cannot follow what the teacher says, and my hands so painful writing is unintelligible. In the depths of my frustration at my bleak future in a poor economy and an unreliable body, I will go out for a quick smoke. Yeah, I know it is not good, but I can’t afford any of the really expensive stuff (wholistic, pharmaceutical, or otherwise), and it seems, invariably, I think of a new idea to try, or a reason for hope to keep pushing on when I am out there puffing quietly. No, it doesn’t work when I just go sit outside.
I sound like a mess. Maybe I am, but we grow a lot of what we eat, and avidly collect wild foods, canning and preserving what we can. I also get a lot of exercise, chant, stretch, and do regular research on fibro when depressed to read the stories of others to help keep my chin up in the face of many people who just think I am worthless because I don’t have a Phd or a lot of money.
My boyfriend hasn’t quite figured out that this is why I don’t really care what other people think about anything any more. He can’t understand why I gave up an screen addicted husband of $70,000/year to move to Cape Breton to be with him and go to business school at 50. It is because I am alive again! And though desperately scraping by, I would not trade this quieter life and time to think for anything.
Thanks for letting me say my piece and having a little teeny bit of an open mind! Marian
Dear Marian:I doubt anyone would ‘jump all over’ you for what you have written. You are a thoughtful, intelligent person who has thought through these issues very thoroughly. Diet is indeed very important and bowel issues affect all of us with fibromyalgia. We have to work with what feels better to us individually. It sounds like you have developed a life style that suits you best. Best wishes with your studies! Barbara
This blog caught my attention because I too am a sugar addict! A month ago I cut it out of my diet, and I was doing really well until I baked my daughters 1st birthday cake. Now I look at the cookies I baked with my four year old (she loves baking) and think, “one won’t hurt, will it?”. But I know it will. I know it will inevitably cause something to spasm and burn with pain. Or else my hypoglycemia will read its ugly head before I can scarf down my breakfast the next morning. I was diagnosed with Fibro in 2009, I’m now 29, but I know I have had Fibro all my life. I’ve always been “sensitive” and always enjoyed that feel-good sugar high.
What I find more intriguing than your article though, is a couple of comments between you and another nurse. You say you have long thought your Fibro had come about because you care more or others than yourself and your sense f empathy is more than the average person. I have almost always put others before myself, feeling guilty when I did not. My empathetic nature earned me nicknames like “Sap” because every heart wrenching story brings tears to my eyes, not matter the way it was told to me. I swear I could go to a funeral, not knowing a soul in the building, and personally feel their overwhelming sense of loss and heartbreak. I am not a nurse though. No position I have ever held has come close to the kind of “others first” behaviour a nurse like you practices.
Is it possible that your empathy is a side effect of Fibro, and not the cause as well? I only ask because through all my research and personal experiences, it has become clear to me that my Fibro is caused by a hyperactive central nervous system. I explain it to people like my CNS is set to high volume and my brain has really sensitive hearing. I have always been sensitive to other’s moods and it has affected me greatly. I believe I’m too dialed in to everything around me and so feel everything more. I have realised that I’m sensitive because I have Fibro. I did not develop Fibro because I was sensitive.
Just my thoughts. Thanks for yours.
Hi
I have just gone through a couple of days of terrible pain having spent a weekend on a sugar binge. My pain has improved a lot over the last year since I embarked on the SCD way of eating but since I’ve started to forget how bad things were I’ve started to slip back into old ways. There have been a few times when I’ve felt that there is a link between pain/ cramps and sugar but it didn’t make sense. This weekend seemed to confirm things so I googled and here you are saying the same things. My husband is a doctor and he’s looking at how it might be possible.
Ah, the old sugar addiction. It never leaves but we CAN take control of it like many others who have addictions. Sugar seems to be in everything but we CAN begin binging for awhile on fruit that helps somewhat! Let us know what your husband thinks is the cause of this troublesome addiction! regards, Barbara
Well, dear Stephanie: I have put myself ‘out there” in my book and writings about being highly sensitive. I doubt I will ever change my perspective. I believe that we are HSPs and then develop fibromyalgia rather than the other way around and use this as the basis of my theory regarding cause. 1) HSP 2) overactive CNS as a result 3) fibromyalgia and all that comes with it. However, like any theory it is there to be challenged and refined. Therefore, I welcome comments from highly intelligent, highly sensitive persons like you:-)
Regards,
Barbara
It took me a while to figure out that there’s a sugar/fibro pain connection, but I’m convinced now. Sadly, my body craves sugar because I need the energy to get things done . . . but then the sugar causes pain, so I can’t win. Doesn’t help that I’m diabetic also. I’ve managed to kick the sugar for days at a time and resorted to fruits and veggies for my carb intake, but then all the good work comes undone with a cookie or slice of raisin bread in a moment of weakness. It’s hard to accept that I can NEVER have these things, and so I have some in a misguided effort to prove that theory wrong. All the nutritional knowledge and label-reading in the world can’t win against that moment of wanting to feel invincible. Thank you for writing about this – I was searching for confirmation that there is a connection and I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who has found this out.
Thanks for writing in Lex and in response to your earlier comment about being a man who is writing I say: GREAT! We are all in this together. The sugar addiction is one I try to cope with every day. I sometimes feel obsessed about having some particular treat that I see advertised or even seeing a candy wrapper blowing in the wind! It is dreadful and I can sympathize completely. I ‘allow’ myself one teaspoon of dark chocolate mix in a glass of milk every day to get a ‘fix’, but I could easily eat or drink much much more!
Best wishes in our joint struggle against the ‘sugar blues’
Barbara