One of my favorite books on low carb eating is Barry Groves book, Trick and Treat. After reading the chapter “Why Five Portions?”, I realized just how dangerous sugar was.
This chapter is about why and how the daily recommendation of fruits and vegetables became 5 portions. But, to me, the most profound section in this chapter was the one on how sugars, especially fructose, depress our immune systems and disable our white blood cells ability to destroy bacteria and illness causing organisms.
In 1973 a study was done to measure the effects a range of sugars had on our immune systems. One type of white blood cell responsible for immunity is called a leukocyte. Leukocytes travel around in our blood system and eat up bacteria, viruses and things that don’t belong. The measure of how many organisms a Leukocyte can eat in an hour is called the Leukocyte Index (LI). So, if a leukocyte eats 10 organisms an hour, it has an index of 10.
The following chart shows just how compromised our immune systems become with various sugars. As you can see fructose (Fruit) is the worst! That “healthy” mango will compromise your immune system by 45% for over 5 hours!
With sugar and fruit consumption at an all time high, it is no wonder people are so sick all the time!
It now makes sense why the “cold and flu” season is right around the high sugar and treat holidays of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and Valentines Day.
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