Sport and Sugar

As a kid I was quite active. I would play around a lot. I was a fast kid so I enjoyed running fast, I did track later on, I tried rollerblading, I would bike through forests and go off of dirt jumps. I really enjoyed a lot of sport and activities with my body. I joined soccer when I was in grade 3, which I enjoyed a lot because I could run a lot and use my speed to my advantage, and attempt to win. From the age of 4 or 5 until I was 10-11 I was very active, most days doing something. I was also heavily, not addicted per say, but participated in video games and television…actually yes I would say I was addicted. When I was younger I remember on the weekends always renting a video game, wanting to beat it quickly I would wake up really early, and basically play it the entire day, with periods of activity in between, that was the majority of my time. I would also come home and sit down for hours watching television and being influenced by that. Luckily the activity that I did was a balance with my sedentary lifestyle.

My diet consisted of candy, and carbohydrates. Fruit and vegetables was rarely in any of my meals, I was brought up on grilled cheese, peanut butter and jam sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, cereals, and whenever I could get my hands on candy I would consume it until I was ill. I remember being given the opportunity to go down to the store and buy myself my own cereal. Previously to this I had wanted the most sugar infused cereal possible, always being denied getting it as many parents do in the grocery store. Now I was free from parental supervision, and I was able to get what I wanted. So I got cereal that I saw as loaded with sugar, looking for the words chocolate and a picture of a cereal that had candies embedded in the cereal as well. All of this food was not balanced through the intake of fruits and vegetables which would give me fibre to assist in breaking down the extensive amount of carbohydrates that I was eating. The fiber would have created somewhat of a balance to the food that I was eating and stop the excessive carbohydrates that I was eating. My addiction to sugar was extensive as well. My relationship with sugar has always been a reward system and I associated sugar with happiness, so if I was feeling down I would turn to sugar to keep myself happy, I allowed my world to revolve around sugar, and through the influence of media with kid shows demonizing vegetables…"Ew, Broccoli" I decided in that moment that I as well didn't like broccoli, then with the constant commercials supporting high sugar food and candies I started to want those too. Understand that my mother was a single mother, and living in a suburban neighbourhood I was easily susceptible to these things. She had to have time to herself to, she could not easily manage 2 kids, a full time job, and then her other responsibilities on the side, so I was left to find my own way basically. Then with the media's influence on children I became a violent, sugar abusing, little shit that wanted what I wanted without compromise.

In sports as well they would give out the majority of the time popsicles, candy, other various frozen treats, and when they did give fruit I did not like it so much because it wasn't candy. So eventually I ended up quitting soccer because I was not winning as much, in that looking for another happiness source to maintain the influx of happiness, in which I turned to more sugar, and more of a sedentary lifestyle wherein it was easy for me to win at videogames so I started to play them more and it was easy for me to generate emotions and feelings when watching a television show so I started to do that more, still playing with friends from time to time, but we would then mostly play video games together. My diet stayed the same, mainly carbohydrates and candy, rarely eating fruits and vegetables, not getting the necessary fiber that I needed.

All of the carbohydrates that I was taking in had a massive effect on my body and it took 2 years for it to manifest into diabetes. Too many carbohydrates meant that my pancreas was producing an extensive of insulin in order to maintain my blood sugar at the levels that they are supposed to be. Over time breath by breath the amount of carbohydrates became too much and the body started to react to the insulin that I was producing because with all the food that I was consuming with less and less activity the cells has an enormous amount of energy that they could use but weren't so the body saw that the insulin was damaging the cells through being a transmitter of the glucose in the blood stream to the cells and since there was no activity to use up the glucose in the blood stream the body said, what the fuck is going on?, and decided to attack the insulin producing cells in the pancreas to stop the harm that I was doing to the body, causing the sugar in the blood stream to build up causing a physical consequence that I could see with me being thirsty and having to pee at an alarming rate.

So here are the factors that was involved in me being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Take into consideration what children are doing to their bodies with the sugar intake and consider what influences them in their food intake. The media is a terrible fucking perpetrator in the push for more sugar consumption, and look at all the foods that are designed for children, they have outrageous quantities of sugar in them. Diabetes will become more of an epidemic than it is now if things are not changed, because we are getting more sedentary than ever before.

When I Fainted In Class

I was in grade 8 at the time of the incident, making me 14. I had been drinking excessive amounts of liquids. I would drink a litre carton of juice in 15 minutes and pee it out in the next 15 minutes. The thirst that I has was unquenchable, and I tried fucking hard to quench it. My family first noticed this when I was out for dinner with my father. I told him that evening that I had been incredibly thirsty for quite some time so I would like a large drink. Usually I would never finish my drink when going out on the weekly dinner with my father, but this time it was the first thing I finished. We went driving around for a bit and I asked if I could get some water went to a coffee place and got a cup of water that tasted like it had coffee in it. I didn't care though I drank that as fast as I could, to which he replied "Wow you really are thirsty today". Nothing was questioned in this moment, all I knew is that I was incredibly thirsty and peeing a lot. This was, of course, a major difference in my body function and at that time I was assuming that it would eventually go away, which it did not. This thirst lasted for, from what I can remember a bit over a week, until I fainted in class, when my world changed.

That day we were dong a morning exercise, that we had recently set up as a class, to get our bodies flowing in the morning. I pushed myself quite hard in the physical exercise as I have always done with physical activity. We then were in the cool down period, standing breathing, taking a rest, so that out heart rates would calm down appropriately. I was standing against the blackboard with my friend next to me, and all I remember is black going limp and then waking up on the floor with everyone in a circle around me. Through stories shared by my friends, I leaned on my friend who I was standing beside, whom was quite a large fellow…possibly I thought that he will be able to handle me as I went unconscious into blackland. During this my other friend started to yell "Woah, WOah, WOAH!," as he watched my body collapse onto my one friend. Then I woke up, was a bit dizzy then got up and felt fine after 10 or so minutes. I had no consideration if anything was wrong with my body, I felt fine so I assumed everything with me was fine. Later that day I went and got blood work done, needle in blood comes out into tubes and off I go. Little did I know that my life from then on would involve needles on a daily basis. I went home after that and was still drinking a large amount of liquids. I have a specific memory of my feet being propped up on a desk watching television with a carton of juice to my side and a bag of cinnamon hearts in my lap, getting up every half hour to take a piss.

To my knowledge everything was fine, I was only drinking lots and having to pee out lots. I was still functional, I was still breathing, I was still alive and that’s all I considered. That was the problem that lead to all this, I did not consider my human physical body at all. I did not consider what I was putting into my body, I liked sugar and that’s all I cared for, I liked eating what I wanted, when I wanted, that's all I cared for. I did not consider that my human physical body is life itself, I did not consider that this physical reality has manifested consequences through actions, I did not consider that what I put into my body and what I did with my body had a lifelong effect. I did not consider that my human physical body can be fragile to what I put in it, I did not consider that all the candy that I was eating was having a detrimental effect on my life, I did not consider myself as life in fact. So that night I ate 2 pepperettes before bed, went to sleep feeling fine to my consideration.

The next thing that happens; I am woken by my sister telling me that there is a cop at the door for me.

I will continue in the next blog.

2012 Sweet Sweet Sugary Death.

While watching a speech given entitled “Sugar: The bitter Truth” it was fascinating to see how exactly the body breaks down our foods into chemicals that the cells take in to provide nutrients to itself, and how fructose is one of the worst things the chemically break down for our body. It is equal to consuming alcohol.  In the speech he says “you wouldn’t think twice about giving your child a Budweiser but we don’t even question given them a soda”.

It is astounding to hear how much sugar we ingest in a year and how much it has increased over the years since the end of world war 2. The reason why we have started to ingest so much sugar is because of the cheapness of that sugar and the ability to use sugar to make more money off of people. For example soft drink companies put caffeine and salt into their drinks which makes us dehydrated. The reason why the drinks do not taste bitter is because of sugar, thus the sugar coats our taste buds allowing us to only taste what is sweet while we are in fact dehydrating ourselves causing us to want to drink more which then leads us to drink more soft drinks if that is what we have become accustomed to drinking.  In this example the soft drink companies know what they are doing and because of the accepted capitalistic system this is not stopped even though it is a crime towards life because it leads to diabetes, mood swings, depression, addiction, heart attacks, strokes etc, when they can easily be prevented through not allowing an abundance of sugar to permeate through our food sources.

Why this is accepted and allowed the way it is is because of the capitalistic system, where in this system anything that is able to make money is allowed to be produced. Such as the `drug war` where governments are purposely allowing drugs to move through countries and be used in order to maintain a revenue for themselves and as well create the DEA so that they can control the flow of drugs and control the flow of money and have a agency that they can monitor easily so that they actually to do not solve the problem but allow it to continue all in order to make money. This goes the same for sugar and its effects on our bodies, where it is well known how much damage sugar does to our bodies but it is not regulated nor banned because companies make too much money off of it and they also have the FDA in their pocket to allow the abuse to continue unhindered all in order to generate capital.

The only time that this abuse of sugar will stop is when money is given equally so that all may have an equal say on what they want to eat. Because the families at the bottom of the pyramidic system do not have enough funds to support themselves eating healthy, they eat what they can get and what they can get is full of sugar which only causes more problems, so it is not a possibility for poor families to stop eating sugary products and eat healthy because the healthy food costs a fuck load more than the sugary foods. So as you can see, once money is distributed equally and we change the rules of the system in support of all life equally and in support of what is best for life only then will we see a change in the way we eat and a change in the products we consume. As for now I would suggest growing your own food…as much of it as you can so that we start creating distance from companies that infest their products with sugar and sugar related substances until we have an Equal Money system in place so that we can all have an equal say on what we want to eat, stopping the influence from a lack of money to dictate what and how we eat.