Relax! Sugars are good for our health after all!

Sugar cravings are not only peculiar to Indians, with the large
numbers of sweets being served in every celebration of religious
events and festivals, but certainly Indian cooks excel in these
delicacies probably more than anywhere else in the world! The
obvious purpose of such delicacies is to boost the mood of the
participants! In fact the word "sugar" ultimately originates from the
Sanskrit word sharkara, and the first production of sugar from sugar-
cane took place in India. We do not therefore need any further
explanation on why the Indian population has such a large incidence
of Diabetes.

Craving for sugar and many other causes of cravings can be found at:

http://www.naturalhealthtechniques.com/Diet%20%20&%
20Nutrition/food_cravings.htm

The contents of glyconutrients in many fruits and vegetables can be
found on:

http://www.naturalhealthtechniques.com/Basics%20of%
20Health/glyconutrients%20and%20sugars.htm

The best Glyconutrient foods are all available on the above site,
together with their sugar content.

Despite many glycosugar foods having been given there, author would
like to emphasize some particularly beneficial foods, in particular
for Indians.

· Molasses and jaggery - A leftover sludge of the sugar making
process. While teeming with minerals and vitamins, it contains more
calcium than milk, more iron than eggs, and more potassium than any
other food; all the minerals are highly bio-available. It's great for
problems of anemia. Tastes almost like honey, without slightly bitter
aftertaste. Same properties also for organic jaggery. This jaggery is
about thrice costlier than white sugar. Available in Mumbai. The
brown sugar, better known as Khandsari sugar is inferior to jaggery,
but convenient to use.

· Dates: Slightly sticky fresh dates are a good tonic for
children, pregnant/nursing mothers, petite kids, as already discussed
by author in various other posts on ayurvedaonline. Dried dates can
be powdered for adding to milk when boiling, just before bedtime to
make a good tranquiliser.

· Dried Black grapes: They are used in many herbal remedies and
when soaked for 8 hours and taken, are great for anemia. Tablets made
from pounded mixture of dried black grapes, haritaki and ardusi
powder is a coagulant, helpful to stop nosebleed, menstrual and piles
bleeding. A jam made from these grapes is Drakshavaleha, useful for
pregnant women to stop vomits and obtain iron for foetus. Licorice is
another herb, useful to boost immunity as well restore hormones.

· Honey: There already exists a full file honey.pps in group
files, it can be given to infants also, if diluted in water. Please
ignore some of the comments on the above site that it should not be
given to babies.

· Blackberries: These are mentioned here since they are a
diabetic medicine, as well as good for curing jaundice.

· Aloe Vera: Use only if you have a plant in your home. Take
with a little turmeric and Saindhav salt on an empty stomach early in
the morning. Wait for an hour before taking anything else. This is a
good remedy for Jaundice, Hepatitis, Cirrhosis.


The role played by sugars in cellular communication has attracted a
large amount of scientific research in last decade (see
glycoscience.org). Studies on Glyco-sugars is a relatively new science
with considerable clinical research behind it. However, ayurvedic
acharyas have known this topic fully for many centuries. A number of
remedies were developed using honey, dates and raisins, combinations
of haritaki, ginger root and jaggery etc. If a mother finds her
breast milk supply reducing, she will feed jaggery solution in warm
water to the baby and take milk+dates for herself. Many tablets are
made using honey or guggulu as a binder. And when it comes to potent
micro medicines(Bhasmas), taking them in honey is almost a must. Ayurvedic
acharyas were saints and sage, community help their main concern, not
profit motives of modern pharma industry to develop patent products
such as Ambrotose (Mannatech).

What we may not be aware of, however is that guggulu also contains
glycosugars, being a natural tree resin. Rasayana means "causing
transport of rasa", and author used to wonder why most rasayana
tablets contain guggulu. This is because it is the glycosugar content
in the guggulu that causes the nutrients to reach the cells. Just as
there are essential fatty acids, essential amino acids and essential
vitamins and minerals needed by the body, so are there essential
sugars that the body needs too.

Due to our poor dietary habits and the degeneration of the
environment around the world, our bodies are lacking in some of these
essential sugars. If we are missing four, five, or six of these eight
vitally important sugars, we are always going to be lacking perfect
health because our cells are unable to communicate with each other
without them. The pharmaceutical companies know this and have spent
$billions in an attempt to manufacture synthetic glyconutrient
equivalents. (SCIENCE, March 23 issue, 2001). Our body needs these
biological carbohydrates, (saccharides) also now known as
glyconutrients or Super Carbs, namely: glucose, fucose, mannose,
xylose, galactose, N-acetylglucosamine, N-acetylglactosamine and -N-
acetylneurominic acid. These 8 essential sugars are needed by all of
our trillions of cells in order for them to function.

A number of high profile, well marketed diets (such as Low-Carb, Low-
Fat, etc ) have never bothered about these essential truths, possibly
oblivious to the fact that dietary galactose or glucose stimulates
calcium absorption in normal human volunteers, an activity that could
be beneficial in preventing calcium deficiency diseases, such as
osteoporosis. This is the secret of action of a panch gavya medicine
(Nari Sanjivani) for peri and post menopausal women, preventing
osteoporosis by balancing estrogen, restoring skin glow and blood
circulation by increasing the flexibility of the arteries.

We need to change our way of thinking, away from seeing carbohydrates
only as a fuel supply, to seeing them as vitally essential biological
carbohydrates. We crave refined carbohydrates and processed sugars
because we are nutritionally deficient in the essential sugars. Just
as children crave mud and ice because they are zinc deficient, salt
because they are sodium deficient and various foods to complete their
mineral, vitamin, amino acid and antioxidant deficiencies, so people
also crave sugar because of their protein deficiencies. Just look at
a this single fact that Cystic Fibrosis-Normalization (i.e. mucus
stops forming) occurs by adding Fucose to the diet. Thats right! No
other medicine is needed to reduce mucus formation! The working of
Green gram malt receipe for children, given in Message# 6572 may also
be clear now. It is a complete diet, consisting of carohydrates,
proteins, vitamins, glycosugars. The green gram proteins which are
easiest to digest. are made more so during the process of sprouting.
And some Vitamins also become more digestible during the process of
sprouting.

If we ate a perfectly balanced and healthy diet, we would not need to
obtain glycosugars from supplements. The human body previously had
the ability to manufacture all these essential elements for itself.

Biochemical pathways are extremely complex. For example, to produce
one molecule of fucose from glucose, involves 100's of chemical steps
where at any point along the way the process can be modified or
changed if the liver is not functioning at 100% efficiency, resulting
in non-production of this essential molecule which has potentially
serious health implications. However, if liver is detoxified, the
body is pre-programmed to fix itself.

We produce 150 billion new cells every day and to do this efficiently
we need 5 - 7 servings of fruits and veggies each day, according to
research reported in JAMA, 2002, 287: 3127 – 3129. Natural fruits,
vegetables and honey etc., can give us everything we might need.
Remember, none of the Pharma laboratories have ever yet been able to make a
single drop of human blood or urine, it always has to be created
solely from the natural foods that we ingest and by the body itself.

Many of the plants around the world that have a high glyconutrient
content are known as `healing plants.' These essential sugars are
also found in breast milk, coconut meat, echinacea, maize, pectins
from fruits, some algae, aloe vera, astragalus, saps, gums, garlic,
certain mushrooms, yeasts, husks and certain herbs, including stevia.

Finally, author would like to provide a quote from the book 'SUGARS
THAT HEAL' by Emil Mondoa MD:

"Even tiny amounts of these sugars - or lack of them - have a
profound effect. In test after test conducted at leading institutes
around the world, these saccharides have been shown to lower
cholesterol, decrease body fat, accelerate wound healing, ease
allergy symptoms and allay autoimmune diseases such as arthritis,
psoriasis, MS, and diabetes. Bacterial infections, including
recurrent ear infections in toddlers, often respond remarkably to
saccharides, as do many viruses, from herpes to HIV. The debilitating
symptoms of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia frequently abate after
adding these sugars. And for cancer patients, saccharides mitigate
the toxic affects of radiation and chemotheraphy while increasing
their cancer killing effects, resulting in prolonged survival and
improved quality of life."

The Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR) for Non Prescription Drugs and
Dietary Supplements also lists these sugars.

"Clinically proven to be absolutely safe, glyconutrients are exactly
the same sugars that your body produces, making it physiologically
impossible for them to interfere with prescription drugs or harm you
in any way."

Safe and natural, mother's milk has these same essential sugars.

Does anyone have any doubts that mothers' milk is the best for baby,
and she should eat many of these sugars to obtain the best foundation
of health?

So diabetes or not, enjoy the good sugars and then you will be able
get rid of the diabetes. Sugars build the "satvic" mind,
leading to the health of the spiritual body which then takes care of
every disease the body might entertain. It was for this reason,
acharyas used to eat fruits vegetables and cereals most of the time.
Milk gave them animal proteins so that their food was then drawn from
all species. If we want to live as a vegan, please know that milk
contains Tryptophan, which is a precursor of serotonin (a
neurotransmitter), melatonin (a neurohormone), and niacin.

Tryptophan, found as a component of dietary protein, is particularly
plentiful in chocolate, oats, bananas, dried dates, milk, yogurt,
cottage cheese, sesame, peanuts. meat, fish, turkey, and chicken.
Therefore, milk+dates is a tranquiliser. The appearance of cottage
cheese in Budwig cancer fighting diet and sesame in Sankranthi sweet
may not surprise you any more. And that also tells us how acharyas
new the importance of sweet food items, without coining terms such as
glycosugars, and guarding community health by asking people to eat
Sesame-jaggery sweet (Tilgul) on sankranthi, neem leaves on Gudi
padwa etc. When some practice is built into religious "karma", people
adopt it automatically. This tells us that vaidyas should develop
proficeincy for community health, rather than trying to give
medicines whose formulations are kept secret to develop monopoly.
Indians struck down with cancer, who may find flaxseed oil, flaxseed
and cottage cheese difficult to swallow in the Budwig diet, may
substitute these items with sesame oil and seeds and yoghurt. The
reason that black sesame seeds are frequently recommended with
jaggery for patients suffering from excess bleeding in piles,
menorrhagia may also be clear. These foods energise the pancreas and
cells to utilise glucose in the blood which is why patients who eat
dates remain within normal limits even when fasting/random blood sugars are
measured. And though their sugar is seen to be within normal limits,
they still prefer to continue their Panch Gavya medicines in smaller
doses, as beneficial effects are experienced.

We end our discussion where we began, with Diabetes.

To sum up, glyconutrients are essential in the formation of higher
dhatus, which governs the health of both mind and body. Lack of
higher dhatus leads to infertility. Meda, obesity and infertility are
connected, as observations have shown.

Just as no organ works alone, no cell works alone, no system works
alone, and no nutritional element works alone, so people still need
to be more fully aware of this. There is far too much deception out
there about these facts. We can't bake a cake with flour alone. We
need a great many ingredients. Cells too need a great many
ingredients.

When all the ingredients needed for optimal nutrition are present,
they kick in a self-healing autonomic system response, so that the
healing physician that dwells within is called into action. This is
the catalyst that ends up triggering our self-healing systems to
repair any cellular damage there might be. And then the symptoms of
cellular damage or cellular malfunction go away on their own.

This completes our discussion on cellular nutrition.

In the next post in this series, we discuss bio-identical hormones or
hormone-like substances, which are necessary to mitigate the effects
of the chemical sea around us, a need perhaps not imagined by ancient
acharyas but one which has become a vital requirement in the function
of cellular health. Some discussion on Glycosugars will be
encountered there too.

Editing help from Jane MacRoss is gratefully acknowledged.

Dr Bhate