Table Of Content
CONTENTS
Foreword by Dr. A. Lee Dellon, M.D., Ph.D.
Introduction
PART I: THIS FINE SWEET MESS
1 : The 500-Pound Canary: A Sugar Tsunami
2 : The Nerve of It All: How Chronic Inflammation Crashes Your Miraculous
Hard Wiring
3 : Killing You Softly: The Creep of Compression
4 : Slightly Diabetic: The Metabolic Syndrome and Its Ugly Cousins
PART II: THE TRAIN TO NOWHERE
5 : On Track for Nerve Damage: Are Your Nerves Already Inflamed?
6 : The Five Phases of Peripheral Neuropathy: Heed the Clarion Call
7 : Meanwhile, Just Make It Stop: What We Suffer to Ease the Pain
PART III: SO NOW WHAT’S STOPPING YOU?
8 : The Sugar Addiction: #kickingthehabit
9 : The Big Fat Lie: Educated into Ignorance
10 : So Then What Can You Eat?: Hot Buttered Coffee WITH JUDY NICASSIO
Epilogue: My Own Awakening
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
FOREWORD
I
t is exciting to be at the tip of the spear in the war on sugar.
It is a war that not only we United States citizens have been losing; it’s also
being lost by anyone in the world who eats prepared food. Only farmers still
living off the land and eating the fruits of their own labors are safe.
Sugar, sweetie, and honey are terms of endearment, but not when we
consume sugar to the extent that it has become responsible for more deaths per
year than the Vietnam War, more deaths per year than alcohol, and more deaths
per year than tobacco.
I personally first became familiar with the effects of sugar as a child, during
my early visits to the dentist. Ouch! The memories border on post-traumatic
stress. The remaining deposits of silver in my teeth are testimony to the insidious
destruction of our bodies by sugar. In my adult life, there is the continual
struggle to keep myself from becoming prediabetic or even diabetic. You can
only exercise so much, and then you must take control of your own diet. This is
where this exciting new book, Sugar Crush, enters the picture.
Dr. Richard Jacoby, coauthor of Sugar Crush, has been my friend for more
than a decade, since the first time I met him in my Advanced Lower Extremity
Peripheral Nerve Workshop. He was already an expert foot and ankle surgeon.
He responded to my lectures and teachings about the relationship of the
peripheral nerve to sugar and to chronic nerve compression in a way the other
352 students of my thirty workshops had not. Perhaps it was his background in
chemistry. Perhaps it was just simply his ability to incorporate my surgical
research related to chronic nerve compression, my basic science research related
to diabetes and chronic nerve compression, and his own patients’ relief of pain
and recovery of sensation in those who responded to the surgery he learned to do
in that workshop. Rick Jacoby has now moved well beyond the operating room.
Sugar Crush is an intriguing detective story implicating the food industry,
processed foods, marketing, well-meaning but misguided nutritional science, and
an individual’s “Bliss Point” for carbohydrates in a conspiracy that places sugar
at the crime scene of many of our most common diseases and disabilities.
My own life has already improved since reading Sugar Crush. I was able,
having been educated now by my student, to go through the prepared foods in
my own kitchen cabinets and discard those with lots of sugar; replacing them
with healthier yet still tasty substitutes.
While the food industry will not like the information contained in Sugar
Crush, I believe readers interested in improving their own health, and the health
of their families, will treasure this book and use it as a road map to improved
health.
A. Lee Dellon, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Plastic Surgery
Professor of Neurosurgery
Johns Hopkins University
INTRODUCTION
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as
being self-evident.
—ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The Why Should I Read This Book? Quiz
(Check Each Truthful Statement)
When someone serves birthday cake, I like the piece with the most
icing.
There’s a supersized jar of Excedrin in my office desk drawer.
I’ve had a medical procedure with the suffix -ectomy.
I could lose a few pounds, but I don’t need another diet book. They
don’t work.
Sometimes at night, my feet itch or feel tingly.
Every winter I have a runny nose; every spring I get sinus headaches.
I love anything crunchy/salty and can drink olive juice straight from
the jar.
I’m often tired. In fact, I could take a nap right now.
My parents and/or grandparents had diabetes.
I like my toes and want to keep them.
SCORING:
1 to 2 items checked: Let’s consider denial.
3 to 4 items checked: Not bad, but you should read on.
5 to 10 items checked: Forget about the weight you’ll lose; this book could save
your life.
So What’s the Book About?
My purpose is to get your attention—to demand you recognize how sugar:
• chemically causes inflammation that damages your nerves,
• results in excruciating pain often made worse by prescription drugs, and
• will inevitably kill you before your genetic timetable.
Carbohydrates (sugar) + Trauma =
Nerve Damage, Pain, and Dysfunction
This is the sugar crush. And it begins with subtle clues such as having too
many headaches, a runny nose, adult acne, and a diet full of salty snacks,
chocolate, and processed foods.
I’m asking you to derail the express train taking you straight from sugar to
peripheral neuropathy—then onward to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke,
and many other neurologic disorders—including multiple sclerosis (MS),
migraine, carpal tunnel syndrome, and Alzheimer’s disease, to name a few.
Why a Podiatrist?
Peripheral neuropathy is the clarion call I witness every day. And it’s noisy. It’s
what literally wakes you from your sleep. It is painful. Like hot needles, it stings
and it burns. It starts in the autonomic nervous system of your legs and feet, then
*
on to the sensory fibers, and finally lodges in the motor fibers. That’s usually
when I’m called in.
As a young surgical student in Philadelphia, I experienced my first
amputation—to remove a gangrenous leg from a man suffering with diabetes.
Even though I’d spend the next thirty years as a podiatric surgeon and conduct
tens of thousands of foot surgeries, including amputations on patients with
diabetes, this first gruesome procedure is the one I remember most.
I was the third assistant. My job was to hold the rotting leg as the orthopedic
surgeon sawed it off just above the knee. The stench of a gangrenous leg is
putrid and overpowering, so much so that we had to put peppermint oil in our
masks to endure it. As I held the leg and struggled with the smell and the sound
of the saw, I was struck not only by the impersonal, awful nature of the
procedure—but by the enormous weight of the diseased leg as it fell into my
arms.
I stood confused in the middle of the room. Clutching the heavy burden and
wondering what to do with it, I saw a nurse nod toward the medical waste
container. No longer viable, this once healthy, functioning leg was now trash.
That amputation was the end result of diabetic peripheral neuropathy—
precipitated by pain and numbness, caused by damage to the nerves of the foot.
Had we not removed this man’s grossly infected leg, the gangrene would have
killed him. But how did it get to that point? This is the question that eventually
led me to write Sugar Crush.
There’s no reason for you to wait until someone like me must cut off your
gangrenous toes or relieve the pressure of your inflamed nerves, when the
answer could be so simple.
Stop eating sugar.
Richard P. Jacoby, D.P.M.
Diplomate, American Board of Podiatric Surgery
PART I
This Fine Sweet Mess
