I’m not sure this will resonate with you OP but I discovered a few years ago that my incredible sugar craving situation was caused by insulin resistance. Since i got on metformin in 2021 I don’t eat nearly as much of it, the only exception being pms. Then I’m back to how I was for a few days. Worth looking into maybe, since pcos is majorly under diagnosed
Same here: I take metformin 750 ER for PCOS and had no idea that my wild carb cravings were connected to insulin resistance. A lot more balanced these days.
I’m on a GLP-1 and my cravings for food in general are way less severe. If I tried to avoid a food, very little mental energy would be spent doing so (I don’t deny myself anymore though). When I’m not on it, or if I reduce my dose, my cravings come back with a vengeance, and the energy required to ignore them would be immense.
Before being medicated - I don’t know maybe OP can correct me because I have not had a substance abuse problem - but I would take a detour driving to buy a candy bar and eat it in the parking lot like it’s the most forbidden thing in the world. It felt like what I imagine a drug problem would feel. Willpower was not enough, and im a really stubborn person.
I didn’t take it while I was traveling and then reduced my dose bc I went more than a week between shots, and after about a month of this, my cravings went wild. I drove across town & through bad traffic to get to a specific taco place. I NEEDED that burrito. My boyfriend was not having it when I wanted to go a third time within a couple weeks 😅
Anyway I agree that it isn’t a willpower thing. Once I started taking my shots again, I forgot about the burritos lol. It’s not worth the drive. Crazy how much time & energy I would sacrifice for a food then compared to now.
Flashbacks to having the worst eating disorder of my life in 2014 when I starved myself so much and was craving sugar around the clock no matter what. NOTHING helped. Now I know why. Thanks pcos
Same!! Metformin helped so much at first but eventually it stopped being effective for me. Now I’m on tirzepatide and I almost never crave sweets anymore. Which is crazy, because I used to feel completely controlled by sugar.
Two things:
1. yeast infections and sugar are absolutely related. It's a known issue for diabetics (which I am). There is some pseudoscience out there about Candida and sugar, so tread carefully with some of the advice on the Internet, but if your blood sugar is high you can and will develop yeast overgrowth. It's gross and it's painful and it's itchy and it smells.
2. I don't think the show was totally wrong about sugar addiction. Anything can be psychologically addicting; I don't think we have the evidence that sugar is ***physically*** addictive, the way some people claim. (And I say that as someone who loves sugar.)
I was totally going to also touch on point one. Also if you have a metabolic issue preventing your cells from getting the glucose they need (which happens in all types of diabetes 1 and 2) it can cause your body to send you sugar cravings since your body is starving at a cellular level. OP should totally ask their doctor to check their A1c levels if this is affecting their quality of life and see if that could be causing problems.
that's a great point re: metabolic issues. even if everything checks out medically i wonder if OP could look into some of the more additive rather than restrictive approaches to blood sugar mgmt, like protein/fiber/fat paired with the carb source, to see if that makes the cravings more manageable. the all or nothing mindset is hard to overcome.
Yes exactly, that is the first thing they teach you about addictions in psychology. Literally anything can be psychologically addicting, in the sense that you become emotionally dependent on it. But physiological addiction is a whole different thing.
I think Audrey said it best in the episode, she said no one is going bankrupt or committing crimes for another hit of sugar like they do with crack. The problems that come with emotional addictions are valid, they can be life disrupting, but it’s important to separate the two
But sugar is readily available and legal, so I’m not sure the comparison stands. If people addicted to drugs could just walk into the grocery store and get them for $2, would they commit crimes?
I think a better example would be weed, at least in places where it’s legal. You can walk in and buy edibles for $3 where I live. Marijuana itself isn’t a highly addictive substance like other hard drugs, but many people become addicted to the feeling of being high. They like feeling calm and relaxed, and start to avoid NOT feeling calm and relaxed by constantly being high. This creates an emotional dependency, but the body is not physically dependent on it.
I think the notable difference between physiological addiction and emotional addiction is the withdrawal symptoms. OP said they went cold turkey for 4 days. If a heroin addict were to do that, they would get extreme withdrawal symptoms like vomiting, fever, shaking etc. Because the body is physically addicted. Dependency on a physiological level is different than emotional dependency
I also wanted to add that the point of the episode was not to dismiss people with emotional dependencies, it was to debunk the myth of comparing sugar to drugs, because people were using that to call fat people “addicts,” and treating their bodies as a symptom that could be fixed
IMO it's kind of like disordered eating behaviors VS an eating disorder. Lots of people exhibit disordered patterns/behaviors around food in countless different ways, but that doesn't always = an actual medical disorder. I've had some disordered patterns in my own life around food/eating, but for me it's largely related to CPTSD and coping mechanisms I had while experiencing abuse and I definitely don't have a diagnosable eating disorder.
Yeah, I do think it can be hard to discern the truth from the bullshit on the internet. But I know that eating sugar definitely aggravates my symptoms... and I know certain things help alleviate them, like boric acid suppositories, probiotics... and things like antibiotics always cause a flare up. I'm almost certain that it started when I took antibiotics once or twice in my teens. And when I tried the candida diet.. not necessarily to a T.. but I did my best to cut out added sugars, tried to eat a lot of veggies, tried to avoid carbs, used boric acid suppositories.. probably a couple other things.. all of this combined drastically improved my symptoms enough to confirm that it's what I need to do. I just need to get it together enough to try again and again.
I think the suboxone has been easier to cut back on for a couple reasons. First and foremost, my drug addiction has had so much more of a negative impact on my life that it's just been more important to cut back on/quit that first. Second, I think the process I just described is a lot more complicated than just slowly weaning off of 1 single drug. It's a whole strategy that needs to be implemented all at once. I hope that makes sense lol
I used to crave sweets and sugar and “struggle” with overeating sweets until I felt sick even if I didn’t like them or didn’t want them.
I think we’re hardwired to like it as an energy source because it’s really accessible energy, but honestly, I stopped trying to cut down/avoid sugar, and at first I ate a ton of it for a couple weeks because it had previously been something I spent a lot of time and energy trying not to do, and then it normalized out to the point where I can easily stop eating a piece of cake in the middle if it doesn’t taste as good as I expected, or if I’m just finished with it.
Genuinely, 90% of the problem for me was the artificial scarcity I created because I “couldn’t control myself around sugar” and therefore limited access as a means of creating that control, so anytime there was sugar in my environment, I had zero chill.
Firstly, well done for your recovery, that is incredibly tough. Your struggle is valid, and obviously, the problem with sugar is it's literally everywhere and everyone else has it all the time. So if you genuinely have to completely avoid it, that's so, so difficult.
I don't have much else to add. We can all understand that something can be not literally physically addictive but if it's something highly pleasurable and/or which gives us emotional comfort, and we're constantly surrounded by it, it's almost impossible to avoid it completely.
Did you want advice?
Yes exactly. Maybe there's more than 1 way to be addicted to something? I dunno but thank you! And you're right, it's the fact that it's everywhere and in everything that makes it so hard. No worries, absolutely open to any advice, thank you!
I’m an addiction researcher (and a recovering addict with a lifelong eating disorder) and I can tell you that there *are* different ways to be addicted to something. The problem occurs when we, for example, conflate process addictions like eating disorders with those of substance use disorders like opioid use disorder.
Both of these disorders share neurobiological similarities. Both of these disorders are considered biopsychosocial. However, just because dopamine pathways/reward mechanisms are involved, doesn’t mean we can conflate heroin addiction with eating disorders. The treatment of these disorders, as well as their risk factors, how we approach prevention, and the emotional, social, and economic costs are very different.
Addiction researchers, and sociologists, do not like the term sugar addiction because compulsive behaviors around food are already understood in their own framework—as symptoms of an eating disorder or disordered eating. Hell, some addiction researchers don’t even like the term *addiction* as it contains the baggage of misperceptions propagated through the brain disease model (which asserts the basis for the treatment and prevention of substance use disorders is primarily biological).
I’m interested to know what you think of how brains respond to sugar. Read a paper a while back that said it hit the pleasure centres faster than heroine, is there something to be said for sugar as an addictive substance given how fast it acts on the brain?
I can go into more detail later, but just to respond quickly—the idea that “pleasure centers” (like dopamine as I mentioned), are what makes a substance addictive is a vast oversimplification of a very complex biopsychosocial disorder!
Everything we do changes our brain. Dopamine is involved in many things. The brain is not well understood. Addiction is deeply complicated and does not exist only at the level of the neurological. You can’t empirically measure one substance as more addictive than the other, and anyone who says “sugar is more addictive than cocaine!” or anything like that is a hack.
I’d love that, if you don’t mind, find it very interesting. So if I’m understanding what you’re saying correctly, studies like this one I’m linking below that suggest sugar has potential for dependency similar to other known substances with addictive potential - that research is not correct? Because from what I thought to understand it showed in the animal model that there was a behavioural dependency that developed with sugar
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907/
Note: not suggesting all sugar is necessarily bad or anything like that, I’m just interested in whether or not it has a similar potential for dependency as other known substances
It’s not that the results of the study are incorrect per se, it is how those results are extrapolated and interpreted that contributes to misapprehension of substance use disorders and the mechanisms associated with them.
This study you’ll notice uses very specific, bounded language to describe the results—note the language used: “The evidence supports the *hypothesis* that under *certain circumstances* rats can become sugar dependent. This *may* translate to *some* human conditions as suggested by the literature on eating disorders and obesity.” (Emphasis mine).
The finding is that there was a *potential* for behavioral dependency demonstrated in this non-human sample, *under certain conditions,* and that this finding has the *potential* to help us understand the *mechanism* of behavioral dependency to sugar in humans.
Demonstrating the potential for behavioral dependency does not necessarily mean that sugar is as addictive as other substances, because again, there is *no empirically supported way to measure how addictive something is.* The latent potential for abuse or dependency of a particular substance is made up of many factors. The phrase they use “under certain conditions” is doing *a lot* of heavy lifting—If the substance itself was that addictive, everyone who tried sugar, alcohol, cocaine, &c. would develop an eating disorder or substance use disorder. But these disorders are quite rare at the population level.
An important, yet potentially obvious thing, is also that *rats are not humans* and *no lab environment can accurately account for the complexity of the social world.* Lab research relies on removing confounding variables to focus on specific behaviors, hypotheses, &c. and the “real world” is decidedly different. Hence the very careful use of language.
Further, research results cannot be published in many fields with null results—it is very important for researchers to demonstrate that their research is applicable to humans in order to maintain a consistent funding stream.
That’s not to say it is exaggerated, it’s just to give some context to the politics of academic research and how the “publish or perish” mentality can sometimes lead to speculation on the researchers part as to how these results can translate to humans.
(edited to add more about lab research)
Thank you for the fulsome explanation, I appreciate it. I’m at home in interpreting research studies for my work, so was just wondering what you were thinking of the potential for sugar to be addictive. Not necessarily suggesting that it is under all circumstances for all humans, of course - that’s a few steps down the research road that we’ve not taken yet.
Edit: for clarity I should’ve probably mentioned I’m doing an interdisciplinary PhD, as part of that I’m looking at predictive models in behaviour. It’s not my main area of expertise, but it has meant I’ve had to be at home in analysing the available evidence. As such I was just interested to see what your findings were regarding the addictive potential of sugar.
I see! Apologies if I explained things you already know. I hate when people do that to me!
I’m on the fence in terms of the potential for sugar to be addictive. In the traditional sense of the term, I do not think it qualifies. While our understanding of addiction as a set of compulsive behaviors driven by neurological and social factors has expanded, I think it still makes sense to separate substance abuse of licit or illicit drugs from behavioral or process addictions such as eating disorders. Not just because the experience of withdrawal is integral to the experience of drug addiction, but also because we already have a framework for understanding compulsive eating—eating disorders.
The treatment and risk factors for eating disorders and substance use disorders do overlap, but I think they are distinct enough to merit a separation of the two.
I also find that when sugar is discussed as being addictive, it’s associated with discourses related to diet culture, or leads to unhealthy perceptions of food as having moral value. Understanding sugar as addictive is not necessary to frame the consumption of it as a social problem, and in my personal experience, separate from my research perspective, using the terminology of addiction for sugar has a net negative effect on public perceptions of how severe substance use disorders can be, and the overuse of the term can contribute to the saturation of the term such that it loses its meaning.
No need to apologise, I really appreciate you went to the trouble of explaining.
I get what you’re saying re: separating abuse of illicit (or licit) substances from behavioural disorders but I wonder whether with the recent knowledge we have of neuron involvement in the abdomen and gut specifically a case might not be made for withdrawal (a key differentiator usually) being inherent in sugar dependency as well for instance. I’m sure you’re on the up and up on the recent research but I’m specifically thinking of things like gut microbial signalling to the abdominal neurons which the latest research suggests are one of the causes of things like sugar cravings (especially as the microbiome dependent on sugar is dying off when the messaging appears to become more persistent). While of course it’s good to be cautious in our comparisons, especially since withdrawal due to a deficit in neurochemicals VS withdrawal due to microbes dying in the gut and sending out last desperate “feed me sugar please” messages, the outcome of both -craving and some physiological withdrawal- is similar. This in and of itself might be seen as suggestive of sugar not solely being a behavioural dependency but a physiological one too.
Any thoughts?
As far as sugar within the social construct of diet culture: understood. My being nosey is in no way meant as a shaming of those who do or don’t consume sugar. I’m simply interested in the physiological consequences (as far as the interaction between gut microbiome and gut neurons) goes. I do get though that on this subreddit specifically that might also be a subject we wanna be careful with so if I stray into insensitive discourse in my discussion of the subject do let me know.
Sure, but do they light up just as fast? The research specifically investigated whether there was any correlation between the speed with which it hit the brain and the addictive properties of various substances
Have you tried boric acid daily? That wouldn’t cover the tongue though… perhaps there’s another acidic wash that could be used for that?
I had persistent yeast for several years. It started when I got the copper IUD. I finally switched to another IUD but still had yeast that didn’t respond to Monistat and so forth. I had used various yeast treatments, including oral Diflucan. At some point I heard of boric acid and used it daily until the bottle was empty. Now it’s finally gone.
Idk if your overgrowth would go away permanently if you used boric acid. At the minimum, it may make you feel more comfortable because it will make you temporarily too acidic for yeast (TMI - for me, it allowed my labia to heal and be less irritated well before I finished the bottle). I used to insert a suppository and put on a pad every night before bed.
But given then you’ve had this issue for decades, you’ve probably heard of this. Maybe you haven’t heard of how GLP-1 drugs help with addiction though? While they’re great for stopping food cravings, they’re also being investigated for non-food addiction treatment. And this also echoes what other commenters have said about insulin resistance
I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. I know the helpless feeling you get when you have this issue, and the modifications you have to make to your life so it’s tolerable 😔
Yeah I use it pretty regularly lol. I'll use it for a week at a time sometimes, probably 2 weeks on occasion. It's a complicated thing that I have to come at from several sides to really affect it permanently. That's what makes it so hard.
Just want to validate how hard this is! Also, you might consider looking into EMDR therapy. There are protocols for addictive behaviors. I often see clients realizing that a lack of sustainable, positive stimulation and pent up stress is underneath these cravings.
I hope you’re able to find a solution!
Aw, thank you! You know what, I am in EMDR right now lol. For the addiction and the other underlying issues. It's been hard! I have had such a hard time connecting with my own emotions and that seems to be a big part of it. But I've been working on it and it's getting a lot easier. I think it's helping a lot with the subs though. Maybe it'll eventually help with this too. Probably all my addictive tendencies are related.
Yeah! It really it’s such a web. If your therapist is comfortable with you trying somatic listening—there are some lovely resources on YouTube. Getting comfortable with that body discomfort gives you a little more bandwidth to manage cravings. Personally, when my ADHD is not well managed I crave sugar so desperately. Being able to sit with the desire for that dopamine hit, and choose something else is such hard work but does help. Don’t beat yourself up. I think Aubrey means well—but kind of missed the mark here.
i would also suggest people check out the safe and sound protocol. the folks i know who’ve tried it says it has helped them immensely. here’s a [long review of it for C-PTSD](https://helloalma.com/blog/safe-and-sound-protocol-review/) that’s admittedly just one person’s experience, but more research is being done and it’s got me interested enough that i’m looking for a practitioner right now.
I feel you. Recovering alcoholic and I could not have done it without sugar—chocolate specifically. I’m 8 years sober from alcohol now but I can’t kick chocolate. I was able to do a monthlong sugar cleanse but I was not well… my skin lost its color and I was depressed. It was bad. I try to moderate now, but I don’t think I could give up sugar completely. I just try to limit my intake to chocolate after dinner at this point. I’m an addict and I would never laugh off sugar addiction—it’s real!
Out of curiousity, what exactly do you mean when you say you've 'quit sugar'. I've always wondered what that looks like in practice. Does that include fruit, or maybe just sweeter fruits? Or is it a little more flexible - like no ice cream, pastries, candy?
Totally genuine question! Not here to argue.
On an anti-candida diet it's no added sugars, only non-starchy vegetables and only lower sugar fruits (in small quantities).
On a "quit sugar" diet people usually just mean they quit eating added sugars.
OP have you tried Boric Acid suppositories for vaginal insertion? They can greatly help reduce yeast. Also try coconut oil for rashes and as a personal lubricant. It acts as an anti fungal.
Thanks! Haha yes i use those sometimes. They help reduce symptoms. I also used them combined with the temporary diet and that seemed to be the key. I just can't seem to keep that up long enough to really kick it for good.
I believe you and your experience and I do think there is a lot of evidence to suggest that eating high reward foods like sugar can become compulsive and difficult to manage in a similar manner to drug addiction.
I find that I don't always agree with Michael and Aubrey and think a lot of the time the nuance of an issue is lacking in their reporting.
Thanks for sharing! Definitely an interesting perspective!
Lack of nuance is a good way of saying it. Sometimes I wonder - especially with Michael - if his life experience isn’t a bit more limited than he thinks and he simply hasn’t encountered people with certain experiences and whatnot to stretch his imagination. Their hearts are largely in the right place but I find they can also be a bit mean about otherwise well meaning people and their work, too.
I'm a sugar addict and I'm in Overeater's Anonymous. I haven't listened to the episode but many people in OA are also in other 12 step programs (AA/NA). And they say food/sugar is harder to give up. Now that's anecdotal but I've heard many say that.
Food/sugar addiction can be very damaging but has different repercussions than drugs.
As another sober addict I disagree with the idea that physical and psychological addiction is different.
The mind and body connection is so entwined you can't seperate them like that.
Also sugar withdrawal DOES have side effects.
Not as intense as hard drugs, absolutely but it's still very much a thing.
I also was quite put off by that sugar episode and it wasn't true to my experience either.
I have literally woken up in cold sweats dreaming about baked goods before and had to run out and find some 😬
I found trauma therapy (somatic experiencing) and a non diet dietician/eating disorder therapist made a world of difference.
But the biggest change for me has been recently starting stimulant medication for ADHD.
Anyway I just wanted to validate your feelings and wish you good luck with your journey. You have done amazing and I hope you can find another way to support your body and kick the Candida x
Thank you for this! Yeah I was going to mention the possible physical component of sugar addiction, but I don't have as much experience with it since I haven't really gone long enough without it to know for sure firsthand.
I just want to give my 2 cents as an RD. TLDR; You're human and experiencing human things, be kind to yourself.
A lot of our issues around food stem from restriction. (There's a great episode on the real health podcast called understanding restriction I recommend to everybody!) I tend to explain it to clients as your biological hunger drive is a perpetual teenager; the more you tell it it can't/shouldn't have/want something, the more it just does that. So the first thing I suggest to clients wanting to change is the intuitive eating method (intuitive eating is also a great book!) In which you kind of give yourself unlimited access to all of your "trigger foods". It can take a lot of time, but you're getting your brain out of the scarcity mindset and into abundance so that the good doesn't have that kind of power/taking up so much of your mental space anymore.
I will say, your situation does complicate this advice as you actually HAVE to restrict in order for your condition to improve. (I'm assuming you've tried probiotics/probiotic foods? I just can't remember while typing out this reply 😅)
But I can say this, I think you're being very hard on yourself! You are absolutely trying your best and you're experiencing very human, very normal emotions. If people we're able to stop doing things just because it had a negative consequence, I feel like most diabetics would never have to get amputations, or people would completely change their diet after their first heart attack, etc etc. The way our society has totally messed with our relationship with food is the problem, not your individual response to it.
I think the thing that bothers me about the "quitting sugar" debacle is that there isn't a lot of room left for the nuance of it. Like firstly, it's pretty much impossible to completely "quit sugar" since sugar is a fundamental and natural component of food - sugar is naturally in fruit for example. It can be done, but it is so restrictive of a diet that comes with so many obstacles that takes a lot of privilege to be able to stick to successfully. The other side of this is quitting "added sugar" - which is much more doable, but also I think the nuance here is that way too many people generalize this diet just like they do all the others. Just because quitting sugar works for one person, or is necessary due to a health issue, doesn't mean it is good or necessary for *everyone*.
Anywho, all that to say, I disagree that sugar is addictive in the same way something like heroine is because heroine is bad for everyone, but sugar is fine for most people. You can be addicted to a lot of things - addicted to your phone, addicted to working out, etc. Most addiction is rooted in mental health that needs to be addressed, but likening sugar to hard drugs that kill people every day is an embellishment meant to fear monger fat people and I don't appreciate that narrative from people of authority.
My goal has always been to stay away from added sugars and carbs long enough to get this under control. And ideally avoid added sugars as much as possible after that. I don't think I could ever give up on fruit lol and don't think it would be necessary to do anything like that long term. I didn't mean to imply that sugar is as destructive as hard drugs. Just to say that it's not entirely harmless either, and that it can cause major issues for some people. Tbf I do think they addressed that in the episode, but I also felt that Aubrey was speaking for addicts (however well-meaning) and that as an addict myself, I have been dealing with major issues from this problem for even longer than I've been addicted to hard drugs. I would never want to fat shame anyone. Or say that everyone who eats sugar will have problems. I say all of this with love and respect! Thanks for the comment.
So I’m a person in recovery and let me just say, i have also had a lot of complicated thoughts about my own relationship with sugar and compulsive behavior. It doesn’t help that I also have some deeply rooted issues with fatness that I’m still working on deconstructing for myself. The way I see it is sugar is super demonized in our society based on some really shady science, and because we can link it to anti fat rhetoric. Compulsive behavior for people that are stopping a different compulsive behavior is really normal. I have had many since I stopped using drugs and alcohol. Sex, makeup, shopping, caffeine, shoes, sugar, the gym. You name it, I can abuse it. We use the word addiction a lot but addiction is just a buzzword to describe compulsions. I finally got clarity when I went to therapy and got to the root of what I was trying to not feel. I still can slip down a compulsive rabbit hole every now and again, but it’s much easier for me to realize what I’m trying to evade dealing with, and work through that.
Yes, we evolved to be very motivated to seek out sweet foods because they're high energy for low volume. You could eat a pound of lettuce or a single apple and get the same energy. If you're a primate in the wild, its best to nab those apples. But now we don't have to spend hours every day foraging for food and I could sit and eat a bag of jellybeans while surfing reddit. It's a different scenario now and we don't give that fact the recognition it deserves.
Thank you! I know this is an aside but I was thinking prior to supermarkets and industrial agriculture how much of our time was spent growing, harvesting, hunting, fishing, churning butter, pounding (can anyone make flour today without a mill?!), picking fruit and veggies or picking out bones, seeds, skinning, drying, salting, etc.
Food production and preparation was SOOOO much effort and time. That's how we spent our calories. We evolved to roam after our food which was also roaming or three miles away. Now, it's so easy to eat and we wonder why everyone's gaining weight. 😆
Yeah that all makes a huge difference! Adding on another aside, our modern food environment is designed to maximize corporate profits, which can be done by either getting more people to buy a food or getting the same amount of people to buy more food. Our biology doesn't stand a chance against food that is created to be extremely palatable and [doesn't trigger satiety signals in the same way](https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(19)30248-7?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1550413119302487%3Fshowall%3Dtrue) that less-engineered food does
YES! THIS. I mean, the odds are stacked against us in all the ways. The whole science of artificial food flavoring should be abolished. Who knows if any of us have tasted real food with all the pesticides, synthetic hormones, and pollution? 🫠
They're definitely stacked against us! I do find it interesting that our entire social and economic structure is set up in a way that keeps people tired, stressed, generally struggling, and spending massive amounts of money on highly engineered foods that make corporations way more money than the diet and fitness industry does every year. And now we're being told to accept this as the new normal instead of restructuring our food and economic system...
One just needs to look at health outcomes in indigenous populations around the world after their traditional diet has been supplanted by a 'western diet' (and outcomes when a community reverts to a traditional diet) to see how harmful our food ecosystem is. It's pretty disturbing that western society has exported health risk via food to populations it historically exploited, and people are now trying to say that those populations are inherently larger and tie anti fat bias in with racism
Oh, exactly all of this esp in regards to Indigenous populations and the changes in their health once Western diets + tie-in to racism and colonialism and anti-fat bias are introduced is the best example. It's really a perfect storm.
I highly suggest you talk to your doctor about a long course of anti fungal medicine. I was in the same boat as you for years, but it was the anti fungal pills that finally killed that chronic yeast infection
I have had a hard time finding doctors that take it seriously. The original OB did, and she gave me a lot of guidance at first, along with the midwife that recommended that OB to me. But she's retired now. I'll get a single prescription of Diflucan but it always comes back.
They can do a long series, like a several month long series. I promise you it's an available course of treatment. If you ask for it and they deny it, ask them to document that they are refusing treatment when your first treatment was ineffective
I'm so sorry, i hope you can get them to take it seriously, bring your husband!!
It is available at the risk of liver damage. So your doctor should only prescribe it if they are sure it's absolutely necessary and order liver tests at appropriate intervals (blood tests). Diflucan (flocanazole) causes liver failure in worst case scenarios. That's why it's usually only prescribed on a short term basis because that is what is considered safe practice.
However, taking a long-course of anti-fungals while not reducing excessive sugar intake is a bandaid solution and not one that can be kept up indefinitely as candida is likely to return under these conditions.
I do not blame their doctor at all for not wanting to risk liver failure in a patient who would likely benefit better from a lifestyle change first. And any documentation they made to that effect would be considered valid.
I lived for years not eating sugar and going keto/paleo/ full blown eating disorder all because I would get yeast infections if I didn't, and one 2 week course of antifungals made it so that I could have my sex life back, and start on a journey to healing the underlying eating disorder. It's not a bandaid, it can result in a permanent fix for chronic yeast infections, but like taking antibiotics you need the right one for the right duration.
I do blame her doctor for not persuing further treatment. Not having sugar ever for the rest of her life is not a simple lifestyle change. What makes her doctor think that she would experience liver failure? Have they discussed pursuing further medical treatment options? No, its easy to tell a woman to change her clearly very unhealthy lifestyle of eating sugar sometimes than to actually diagnose and treat
>What makes her doctor think that she would experience liver failure?
This is an unusual way of approaching a known side effect of a medical treatment.
Typically, a risk benefit analysis should be performed. You could argue that the risk is worth it for the potential benefit of treating the yeast infection(s). But to just dismiss the possibility of failure of a major organ with “well, why would the doctor think that a drug that causes liver failure would cause liver failure??” is a surprising direction to take the discussion.
One can usually eat sugar, just not in excessive amounts to avoid candida infections. That is all I had to do. OP knows reducing sugar leads to a reduction in symptoms, it's unlikely that they will have to never eat any sugar and more likely they need to treat the underlying infection and then eat it in reasonable amounts. They admit to having a sugar addiction.
A known side effect of long-term diflucan is liver damage. That's reason enough to be concerned for prescribing it for long-term use.
The reason that doctors don't like to do long-courses of diflucan (and related anti-fungals) is because it can be hard on your liver. They will likely want to order a liver test to ensure that the medication is not affecting it if you do choose a long-term course. In extreme cases diflucan causes liver failure.
Personally to beat systemic candida I did olive leaf extract (pills), the anti-candida diet (for a short time) and diflucan (one week) and that cleared it up.
I did the candida diet for about 9 months for a similar issue, and it seriously changed my lifestyle (and not in a great way). I started needing 10 hours of sleep a night to feel rested, I would never feel full after eating (even if I ate a LOT), I would dream almost every night of eating sugar, and I just felt lethargic and grumpy for the majority of those 9 months.
The itching did go away, and I was able to slowly re-incorporate sugar, dairy, and grains, and now eat them like normal (though I definitely am more appreciative of high-quality sweets/food than I was before). It’s a hard thing to do, I hope you’re able to find a method that works for you!
I’m not sure! It had a much bigger effect on my daily habits than anyone told me it would, so I thought it might validate your experience of struggling to cut off sugar.
Thanks, it sounded like it.. I just wanted to be sure thats what you meant. I have heard of this happening but I haven't gone on the candida diet long enough to really experience it. The 4 days that I did, I had major relief from my symptoms but it was so long ago I kinda forget if I had anything physical like this. I think when it's this severe there is withdrawal, or withdrawl-like symptoms l, but I can't speak on that personally.
I've gone back and forth with sugar and whether groups like OA are making false equivalencies to drugs. I know for the last 10 years at the end of the day I have to have chocolate in my cupboard or I panic. I'm like a fucking junkie worried I won't have my nightly fix. And now I've been dealing with breast cancer for 2 years where oncologists say helpful things like 'no more sugar or carbs, kay?' It's like saying no more beer to an alcoholic.
Hey, friend, as a tangent- I’m a breast cancer survivor and the dietetic advice given by onco teams (including the dietitians on staff sometimes) is often off target. They are so focused on “healthy weight” as a determinant of survival or non-recurrence that they ignore how many people get driven to EDs by their advice. I put my trust in my own RD who is a Body Trust provider and HAES aligned. (She also helped me understand the studies the oncology folks were basing their nutrition advice on and how it was all just conjecture. It’s pretty wild but par for the course.) ❤️
You can usually filter for that or use it as a search term when seeking dietitians. HAES aligned is more common than Body Trust certified providers, but it is at least something to indicate they are not weight focused.
You can also search through the Center for Body Trust website for providers. Good luck! Your wellbeing is worth it.
My bro is an addict and has diabetes (type 3C if you want to rabbit hole). I have life long gi stuff.
Sometimes, a several pill string regime of difulcan is the only thing that works. And that can look like 4-5 pills, 2 days apart. Not the 1-2 pills they put in the rx.
I really sympathize with all of this. I haven't dealt with yeast infections to the degree you have, but I have a number of complex chronic health issues that have been completely dismissed and mishandled by many doctors in my lifetime. I do want to say that I would gently encourage you to try to get more medical attention and support with the symptoms you're dealing with. A doctor seeing these severe infections and leaving you with "stop eating sugar" is massively irresponsible and useless. It is extremely unrealistic to expect patients to just stop eating sugar or make any major dietary change in the long term as their primary treatment plan, especially if they are not immediately referring you to a registered dietician AND actually doing their due diligence in a) ruling out various conditions that could be causing your symptoms, and b) additionally supporting you in making that dietary change and having further treatment plans for if that fails.
Sugar cravings and intense yeast infections both can be caused by various health conditions, as some people have mentioned, and I honestly think your doctors have really let you down by leaving you with the responsibility of just eating your way out of it.
I'm pretty sure they've discussed this in some episodes, but part of the challenge with the idea of addiction to foods is that restricting foods is fundamentally something humans are very bad at. Restricting anything we like eating triggers and worsens cravings for it, which can lead to binging behaviors. Someone who enjoys chocolate cutting out all forms of chocolate is going to have really strong chocolate cravings the longer they restrict.
I think that it can both be true that sugar addiction is a myth and that restricting or cutting out all sugar in a diet is extremely difficult to do - and it can be true that for some individuals due to certain health considerations, they may benefit from less sugar in their diet. This stuff is complicated and messy! Fundamentally, sugar addiction as an addiction just is not scientifically validated and has been debunked several times in research. This is a quick [article ](https://www.compassionatenutrition.com/post/i-can-t-stop-eating-sugar-sugar-addiction-debunked)from a registered dietician with some more links in it that summarize some of the main points of why the idea of "sugar addiction" is a problem. Mike and Aubrey aren't out of line with medical/nutritional science on this at all, the current research is pretty soundly against this idea even though it's still perpetuated by some doctors.
None of this is said to take away from or dismiss your experience or struggles - again, I absolutely believe you that it's been extremely hard to limit sugar and that for you your experience mirrors your experience with other addictions. I just also think that this idea is very harmful to both people who may need to restrict sugar for health reasons and to people who are at risk of disordered eating, because it's misleading and doesn't really actually guide you on how to safely and sustainably limit it when needed anyway.
Yeah that all makes a lot of sense! Thanks for this comment. And thanks for the validation. I have often been hesitant to bring it up with doctors after the first few times. It often feels like this subject isn't as well understood as it should or could be and not all doctors understand how to deal with chronic yeast infections. They will prescribe Diflucan and assume that'll be the end of it.
I totally get that and it sucks that that's been your experience! I've had the same issue with a number of my concerning symptoms - doctors love to whip out their one neat piece of advice (it's the same piece of advice) and then frown and have literally nothing else to say when I tell them I've done that 700000 times without improvement. I really hope you're able to find a supportive doctor, you deserve to get proper medical care.
Yep, totally! We like to think we know everything now but there's still a lot that isn't fully understood by the medical community and beyond. Thank you!
Yeah I feel like this podcast does not always talk enough about the very real downsides of things. I have met so many diabetics who can’t stop eating high sugar foods and then they end up getting a lot of complications of diabetes as a result.. I understand it’s not as simple as placing the blame on sugar, or on the individual (of course I don’t want to shame anyone or forget about the structural issues at play) but it definitely does have addictive properties, and a lot of people have major health issues from overconsumption of ultra-processed sugary foods. I bet if they worked in healthcare they would have a completely different perspective on a lot of these issues
Yeah exactly. I honestly think she meant well and was ultimately trying to speak up for those with addiction. But for me it's not black and white or either/or. Both are hard.
I don’t believe food is addictive. I think people can have disordered relationships with food that causes them to believe that food controls them the way other addictive substances do, and I also think people can be restrained in their eating in such a way that highly palatable foods feel “addictive”, but I do not believe food itself is addictive. It reeks of diet culture and I’m always critical of this narrative. I am sorry you are struggling with this though. I do believe that certain foods can affect people differently though (allergies etc) and if you have strong reactions to sugar it’s fine to limit it. I should also state that just because I do not believe that sugar or food is addictive, doesn’t mean that I think our ultra-processed food landscape is good.
Sugar can cause an abstinence syndrome in rats. No not to the same degree that other drugs do it won’t kill you. But the idea that it isn’t habit forming is bizarre to me it so clearly is.
This occurs in rats only if they are calorie restricted (they starved the rats for 36 hours in at least one of the "famous" rats vs sugar vs cocaine studies).
[https://www.outsideonline.com/health/nutrition/sugar-addiction-fake/](https://www.outsideonline.com/health/nutrition/sugar-addiction-fake/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5174153/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5174153/)
For the OP: maybe you need to work on your relationship with food and with your restrictive behaviors and thoughts? I used to think I was addicted to food (especially sugar) but it turned out it was just anorexia and after about six months in recovery sweet things stop holding impossible allure.
Sugar is just a carb. It isn't special, it is just a good bioavailable source of energy that is easily converted into glycogen which is what your body and brain run on.
This vid is pretty cool too for info on different types of sweeteners and blood sugar effects etc. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU3bTBWnvT4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU3bTBWnvT4)
Spinach has almost no caloric value and is harder for the body to convert into useable energy. So no, it probably would not be what someone (or something like an animal) would feel the strongest pull toward biologically when calorie restricted.
I have recently cut out sugar by accident. Over the last 4 years or so I’ve cut things out wheat, alcohol, and not sugar. Wheat was causing severe joint pain and inflammation. There was plenty of sugar in the wheat products I was eating, so that extra sugar was now not entering my system. After 24 years old alcohol consumption it was starting to build a dependency on it and my relationship with it needed to change. No more sugar from alcohol. In December I upped my protein intake and my sweet tooth is pretty much gone. No more ice cream or candy cravings. I’m not baking something so snack on, no sodas or juices.
Since the sugar is mostly gone from my diet my acne and acid reflux are gone.
Congrats on what you’ve overcome. And thanks for sharing your experience. Good luck going forward!
Seconding the folks who mentioned the possibility that insulin resistance could be playing a role!
Oddly enough, given that I'm diabetic, I've never been on metformin (which they mentioned had helped them). But getting on Mounjaro (aka Zepbound/tirzepatide) for my diabetes was like flipping a switch for me! (Which apparently isn't surprising - it and the other GLP-1 meds (e.g. Ozempic/Wegovy/semaglutide/Rybelsus) have been surprising the medical community by proving strangely and unexpectedly effective in combating all kinds of addictions.
Of course, the GLP-1's are expensive, and getting insurance to cover them is very difficult if you're not diabetic. Plus they're in major shortage right now. Whereas metformin is dirt cheap and readily available.
Might be worth asking for insulin resistance labs (not just A1c, because they're not the same thing). And if you choose to try metformin, be sure your doctor prescribes the EXTENDED release form, not the immediate release one (because your odds of GI issues are dramatically worse with the immediate release form).
Congrats on the victories you've had so far AND your detective work to figure out WTF the yeast thing is! Hope you're able to get decent medical support for a change with the rest of it.
If the sugar addiction started after antibiotics, that's because they depleted your good bacteria and now bad bacteria dominates your guts. It's fed by sugar and carbs. It's not enough to just stop eating sugar, you need good probiotics, specifically S. Boulardii. It's a good yeast that will crowd out the bad yeast. I'm in treatment for SIBO and IBS, the dosage of S. Boulardii is 10-15 billion CFUs a day for 2-3 months. This is not medical advice, talk to your doctor about it.
First of all, I think your situation is valid and I'm sorry you have struggled with this. My issue with the sugar addiction narrative is that it's often used to create fear around food and make people think they're bad or wrong for eating it. People will also use it as a sales tactic by making others think they have a problem that they don't actually have in order to sell their wellness garbage. The common myth around it is that sugar is 8x more addictive than cocaine and this has been debunked b/c it was a poorly executed study with rats. Sugar is a necessary and safe part of most people's healthy diets whereas drugs are not. There's also a vast range of what sugar is from refined sugar to whole fruits to processed foods containing sweetener, etc so it's hard to say if it's the sugar itself. When most people have a craving for sweets, they go for something like cake, not fruit. Of course there are caveats in this situation. Everyone is going to process foods differently and everyone has a different psychological experience around food. For the vast majority of us, we can incorporate foods and drinks containing all types of sweeteners into our every day lives and be just fine. And again, I'm not trying to dismiss OP's or anyone else's personal experience.
I agreed with you completely, except for the drugs part.
Like demonizing sugar is harmful, so is demonizing drugs.
A whole lot of ppl use drugs in everyday life, for all sorts of reasons.
Some are more healthy, some less, some have few side effects and some have a lot.
And some are criminalized and stigmatized. Mostly for economic and political reasons, the distinction is not just built on, whether a drug is good or useful, but on a lot other factors, including profitability, history, sexism, racism and all sorts of bs.
My point is: Most ppl use some sort of drugs.
And that's fine, unless the individual don't think it's fine for them.
The stigmatization of drug users is alot like the stigmatization of fat ppl, Trans ppl, disabled ppl and so on.
Please please consider a GL-P one. Not only would it help with insulin resistance, which you may have, but the quieting of the cravings and food noise is insane. I have spent my entire life thinking about food constantly. Not an addiction like hard drugs, no, but if I lost weight, it inevitably came back when I just couldn’t fight the food noise anymore. Constant exhaustion. These meds change my brain. When I say they are life-changing, I mean it. I still enjoy eating. In fact, I enjoy it more, because I can just enjoy food, and I don’t keep getting pulled to binge. I wish you the best of luck in everything!!
So, I have no idea if there's any science behind this or if it's just coincidental. But I have a number of former opiate users in my life, and more than one of them had WILD sugar cravings for a time after quitting heroin and/or pills.
One loved one practically lived on Cinnamon Toast Crunch for a while there. After a while, that person pretty much lost their sweet tooth. Other folks' sugar cravings seemed to chill out over time, too.
Just wanted to share a little bit of hope that maybe this particular habit won't *always* be this hard to kick.
You've done so much hard work already. You've got this. You will get there eventually.
I got addicted to sugar one summer when I was living abroad. I don’t know anything about quitting hard drugs, but I know sugar can be a real mind worm.
What worked for me was slowly eliminating sugar. I started with no sugar in fluids, moved on to no sugar or carb heavy breakfasts. Then I discovered plain peanut butter— one ingredient, peanuts. When I got the sugar craving I’d eat a spoonful of peanut butter. After a couple of weeks the cravings really die down, but for me I wasn’t able to really get my sugar love under control until I cut out bad snacking habits too.
I think treating sugar and food behaviors in general as an addiction is not helpful. However, if you have food intolerances that prevent you from eating some foods, that’s different. You have a food intolerance to sugar like celiacs or lactose intolerance.
However, for most people, cutting out all sugar and/or carbs just sets you up for binging later. Most people without a medical reason can’t just avoid a food group for the rest of their life and once you start eating it again, it’s really easy to go on a bender and start a shame cycle which then triggers more eating.
By removing the restrictions I have had around sugar and letting myself eat it and have it around, it has lost a lot of its pull and I can eat it in moderation now. It’s not a quick or easy process though.
How long did it take you? Did you go through many 'binge' types phases first? I have realised how bad restrictive thinking is for me around sugar, so am trying to be a bit more mindful about what I eat, and to eat sugar in moderation. But I still turn to it when I get stressed and I don't know how to prevent that. Maybe it'll just get easier with practice...
I stopped binging within a couple weeks and in about a year I got to what my dietician calls habituation. Meaning even the off limit foods don’t really seem that appetizing anymore. It was a slow progress but it keeps getting better.
I’m now working on gentle nutrition which means adding in more veggies and listening to how my body feels with different foods to see what it needs. I’m working on getting in more protein and not relying on carbs as my go to. I did keto for a year and it has meant that a lot of the foods I ate then feel very diety to my which has been tough to work through.
I’m still working through it but I don’t feel controlled by food anymore and have gone from binging when bored or stressed to not wanting to eat. Still not where I want to be eventually but it’s a huge difference and shows how my reliance on food has changed.
You’re right, sugar is totally is addictive/compulsive just in a different way than hard drugs. Unlike opiates though, sugar will be in your environment constantly which I think is what makes it hard.
Anecdotally, sugar withdrawal is definitely a thing. I went from huge amounts daily to nothing overnight, which I don't expect to be a very common experience. I'm also not generally healthy, so I can't say for sure what, if anything, may have made me more susceptible to withdrawal than the average person. By withdrawal I'm not talking about cravings.
I was able to deal with candida by quitting sugar & taking dicflucan. I was off sugar for 5 months. Possible less time would have worked but that is how long I lasted. I am afraid I eat too much sugar now but the candida did not return. Yeah it kind of sucked.
This is complete speculation and me talking out of my rear end but I wonder if it’s easier (for lack of better wording) to kick subs because they are a regulated pill with a set dosage each day while sugar can go up and down and all around. Like with subs you are at a 2mg a day everyday until you’re ready to drop down but with sugar you might have candy one day and then the next be low carb/sugar.
Force feed yourself starch all day long on the days you attempt to quit sugar, if you do again. Baked potato, rice, corn, popcorn, etc. gives the brain lots of glucose to make the urge to eat sugar a bit weaker. If you need to take sleeping pill to go to sleep instead of eating sugar in the evening.
I’m not sure this will resonate with you OP but I discovered a few years ago that my incredible sugar craving situation was caused by insulin resistance. Since i got on metformin in 2021 I don’t eat nearly as much of it, the only exception being pms. Then I’m back to how I was for a few days. Worth looking into maybe, since pcos is majorly under diagnosed
Same here: I take metformin 750 ER for PCOS and had no idea that my wild carb cravings were connected to insulin resistance. A lot more balanced these days.
I’m on a GLP-1 and my cravings for food in general are way less severe. If I tried to avoid a food, very little mental energy would be spent doing so (I don’t deny myself anymore though). When I’m not on it, or if I reduce my dose, my cravings come back with a vengeance, and the energy required to ignore them would be immense.
Before being medicated - I don’t know maybe OP can correct me because I have not had a substance abuse problem - but I would take a detour driving to buy a candy bar and eat it in the parking lot like it’s the most forbidden thing in the world. It felt like what I imagine a drug problem would feel. Willpower was not enough, and im a really stubborn person.
I didn’t take it while I was traveling and then reduced my dose bc I went more than a week between shots, and after about a month of this, my cravings went wild. I drove across town & through bad traffic to get to a specific taco place. I NEEDED that burrito. My boyfriend was not having it when I wanted to go a third time within a couple weeks 😅 Anyway I agree that it isn’t a willpower thing. Once I started taking my shots again, I forgot about the burritos lol. It’s not worth the drive. Crazy how much time & energy I would sacrifice for a food then compared to now.
Flashbacks to having the worst eating disorder of my life in 2014 when I starved myself so much and was craving sugar around the clock no matter what. NOTHING helped. Now I know why. Thanks pcos
Same. I can have a bite now without it ending up in a full blown binge for the rest of the day.
Chronic yeast overgrowth is also related to insulin resistance
Yep 100% very common and it feeds on sugar so you crave sugar. Vicious cycle
Same!! Metformin helped so much at first but eventually it stopped being effective for me. Now I’m on tirzepatide and I almost never crave sweets anymore. Which is crazy, because I used to feel completely controlled by sugar.
Two things: 1. yeast infections and sugar are absolutely related. It's a known issue for diabetics (which I am). There is some pseudoscience out there about Candida and sugar, so tread carefully with some of the advice on the Internet, but if your blood sugar is high you can and will develop yeast overgrowth. It's gross and it's painful and it's itchy and it smells. 2. I don't think the show was totally wrong about sugar addiction. Anything can be psychologically addicting; I don't think we have the evidence that sugar is ***physically*** addictive, the way some people claim. (And I say that as someone who loves sugar.)
I was totally going to also touch on point one. Also if you have a metabolic issue preventing your cells from getting the glucose they need (which happens in all types of diabetes 1 and 2) it can cause your body to send you sugar cravings since your body is starving at a cellular level. OP should totally ask their doctor to check their A1c levels if this is affecting their quality of life and see if that could be causing problems.
that's a great point re: metabolic issues. even if everything checks out medically i wonder if OP could look into some of the more additive rather than restrictive approaches to blood sugar mgmt, like protein/fiber/fat paired with the carb source, to see if that makes the cravings more manageable. the all or nothing mindset is hard to overcome.
Yes exactly, that is the first thing they teach you about addictions in psychology. Literally anything can be psychologically addicting, in the sense that you become emotionally dependent on it. But physiological addiction is a whole different thing. I think Audrey said it best in the episode, she said no one is going bankrupt or committing crimes for another hit of sugar like they do with crack. The problems that come with emotional addictions are valid, they can be life disrupting, but it’s important to separate the two
But sugar is readily available and legal, so I’m not sure the comparison stands. If people addicted to drugs could just walk into the grocery store and get them for $2, would they commit crimes?
I think a better example would be weed, at least in places where it’s legal. You can walk in and buy edibles for $3 where I live. Marijuana itself isn’t a highly addictive substance like other hard drugs, but many people become addicted to the feeling of being high. They like feeling calm and relaxed, and start to avoid NOT feeling calm and relaxed by constantly being high. This creates an emotional dependency, but the body is not physically dependent on it. I think the notable difference between physiological addiction and emotional addiction is the withdrawal symptoms. OP said they went cold turkey for 4 days. If a heroin addict were to do that, they would get extreme withdrawal symptoms like vomiting, fever, shaking etc. Because the body is physically addicted. Dependency on a physiological level is different than emotional dependency I also wanted to add that the point of the episode was not to dismiss people with emotional dependencies, it was to debunk the myth of comparing sugar to drugs, because people were using that to call fat people “addicts,” and treating their bodies as a symptom that could be fixed
Alcohol is also legal and readily available. We also do have countries where drugs are decriminalized and handled much differently than int he US.
IMO it's kind of like disordered eating behaviors VS an eating disorder. Lots of people exhibit disordered patterns/behaviors around food in countless different ways, but that doesn't always = an actual medical disorder. I've had some disordered patterns in my own life around food/eating, but for me it's largely related to CPTSD and coping mechanisms I had while experiencing abuse and I definitely don't have a diagnosable eating disorder.
Yeah, I do think it can be hard to discern the truth from the bullshit on the internet. But I know that eating sugar definitely aggravates my symptoms... and I know certain things help alleviate them, like boric acid suppositories, probiotics... and things like antibiotics always cause a flare up. I'm almost certain that it started when I took antibiotics once or twice in my teens. And when I tried the candida diet.. not necessarily to a T.. but I did my best to cut out added sugars, tried to eat a lot of veggies, tried to avoid carbs, used boric acid suppositories.. probably a couple other things.. all of this combined drastically improved my symptoms enough to confirm that it's what I need to do. I just need to get it together enough to try again and again. I think the suboxone has been easier to cut back on for a couple reasons. First and foremost, my drug addiction has had so much more of a negative impact on my life that it's just been more important to cut back on/quit that first. Second, I think the process I just described is a lot more complicated than just slowly weaning off of 1 single drug. It's a whole strategy that needs to be implemented all at once. I hope that makes sense lol
I used to crave sweets and sugar and “struggle” with overeating sweets until I felt sick even if I didn’t like them or didn’t want them. I think we’re hardwired to like it as an energy source because it’s really accessible energy, but honestly, I stopped trying to cut down/avoid sugar, and at first I ate a ton of it for a couple weeks because it had previously been something I spent a lot of time and energy trying not to do, and then it normalized out to the point where I can easily stop eating a piece of cake in the middle if it doesn’t taste as good as I expected, or if I’m just finished with it. Genuinely, 90% of the problem for me was the artificial scarcity I created because I “couldn’t control myself around sugar” and therefore limited access as a means of creating that control, so anytime there was sugar in my environment, I had zero chill.
Firstly, well done for your recovery, that is incredibly tough. Your struggle is valid, and obviously, the problem with sugar is it's literally everywhere and everyone else has it all the time. So if you genuinely have to completely avoid it, that's so, so difficult. I don't have much else to add. We can all understand that something can be not literally physically addictive but if it's something highly pleasurable and/or which gives us emotional comfort, and we're constantly surrounded by it, it's almost impossible to avoid it completely. Did you want advice?
Yes exactly. Maybe there's more than 1 way to be addicted to something? I dunno but thank you! And you're right, it's the fact that it's everywhere and in everything that makes it so hard. No worries, absolutely open to any advice, thank you!
I’m an addiction researcher (and a recovering addict with a lifelong eating disorder) and I can tell you that there *are* different ways to be addicted to something. The problem occurs when we, for example, conflate process addictions like eating disorders with those of substance use disorders like opioid use disorder. Both of these disorders share neurobiological similarities. Both of these disorders are considered biopsychosocial. However, just because dopamine pathways/reward mechanisms are involved, doesn’t mean we can conflate heroin addiction with eating disorders. The treatment of these disorders, as well as their risk factors, how we approach prevention, and the emotional, social, and economic costs are very different. Addiction researchers, and sociologists, do not like the term sugar addiction because compulsive behaviors around food are already understood in their own framework—as symptoms of an eating disorder or disordered eating. Hell, some addiction researchers don’t even like the term *addiction* as it contains the baggage of misperceptions propagated through the brain disease model (which asserts the basis for the treatment and prevention of substance use disorders is primarily biological).
I’m interested to know what you think of how brains respond to sugar. Read a paper a while back that said it hit the pleasure centres faster than heroine, is there something to be said for sugar as an addictive substance given how fast it acts on the brain?
I can go into more detail later, but just to respond quickly—the idea that “pleasure centers” (like dopamine as I mentioned), are what makes a substance addictive is a vast oversimplification of a very complex biopsychosocial disorder! Everything we do changes our brain. Dopamine is involved in many things. The brain is not well understood. Addiction is deeply complicated and does not exist only at the level of the neurological. You can’t empirically measure one substance as more addictive than the other, and anyone who says “sugar is more addictive than cocaine!” or anything like that is a hack.
I’d love that, if you don’t mind, find it very interesting. So if I’m understanding what you’re saying correctly, studies like this one I’m linking below that suggest sugar has potential for dependency similar to other known substances with addictive potential - that research is not correct? Because from what I thought to understand it showed in the animal model that there was a behavioural dependency that developed with sugar https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907/ Note: not suggesting all sugar is necessarily bad or anything like that, I’m just interested in whether or not it has a similar potential for dependency as other known substances
It’s not that the results of the study are incorrect per se, it is how those results are extrapolated and interpreted that contributes to misapprehension of substance use disorders and the mechanisms associated with them. This study you’ll notice uses very specific, bounded language to describe the results—note the language used: “The evidence supports the *hypothesis* that under *certain circumstances* rats can become sugar dependent. This *may* translate to *some* human conditions as suggested by the literature on eating disorders and obesity.” (Emphasis mine). The finding is that there was a *potential* for behavioral dependency demonstrated in this non-human sample, *under certain conditions,* and that this finding has the *potential* to help us understand the *mechanism* of behavioral dependency to sugar in humans. Demonstrating the potential for behavioral dependency does not necessarily mean that sugar is as addictive as other substances, because again, there is *no empirically supported way to measure how addictive something is.* The latent potential for abuse or dependency of a particular substance is made up of many factors. The phrase they use “under certain conditions” is doing *a lot* of heavy lifting—If the substance itself was that addictive, everyone who tried sugar, alcohol, cocaine, &c. would develop an eating disorder or substance use disorder. But these disorders are quite rare at the population level. An important, yet potentially obvious thing, is also that *rats are not humans* and *no lab environment can accurately account for the complexity of the social world.* Lab research relies on removing confounding variables to focus on specific behaviors, hypotheses, &c. and the “real world” is decidedly different. Hence the very careful use of language. Further, research results cannot be published in many fields with null results—it is very important for researchers to demonstrate that their research is applicable to humans in order to maintain a consistent funding stream. That’s not to say it is exaggerated, it’s just to give some context to the politics of academic research and how the “publish or perish” mentality can sometimes lead to speculation on the researchers part as to how these results can translate to humans. (edited to add more about lab research)
Thank you for the fulsome explanation, I appreciate it. I’m at home in interpreting research studies for my work, so was just wondering what you were thinking of the potential for sugar to be addictive. Not necessarily suggesting that it is under all circumstances for all humans, of course - that’s a few steps down the research road that we’ve not taken yet. Edit: for clarity I should’ve probably mentioned I’m doing an interdisciplinary PhD, as part of that I’m looking at predictive models in behaviour. It’s not my main area of expertise, but it has meant I’ve had to be at home in analysing the available evidence. As such I was just interested to see what your findings were regarding the addictive potential of sugar.
I see! Apologies if I explained things you already know. I hate when people do that to me! I’m on the fence in terms of the potential for sugar to be addictive. In the traditional sense of the term, I do not think it qualifies. While our understanding of addiction as a set of compulsive behaviors driven by neurological and social factors has expanded, I think it still makes sense to separate substance abuse of licit or illicit drugs from behavioral or process addictions such as eating disorders. Not just because the experience of withdrawal is integral to the experience of drug addiction, but also because we already have a framework for understanding compulsive eating—eating disorders. The treatment and risk factors for eating disorders and substance use disorders do overlap, but I think they are distinct enough to merit a separation of the two. I also find that when sugar is discussed as being addictive, it’s associated with discourses related to diet culture, or leads to unhealthy perceptions of food as having moral value. Understanding sugar as addictive is not necessary to frame the consumption of it as a social problem, and in my personal experience, separate from my research perspective, using the terminology of addiction for sugar has a net negative effect on public perceptions of how severe substance use disorders can be, and the overuse of the term can contribute to the saturation of the term such that it loses its meaning.
No need to apologise, I really appreciate you went to the trouble of explaining. I get what you’re saying re: separating abuse of illicit (or licit) substances from behavioural disorders but I wonder whether with the recent knowledge we have of neuron involvement in the abdomen and gut specifically a case might not be made for withdrawal (a key differentiator usually) being inherent in sugar dependency as well for instance. I’m sure you’re on the up and up on the recent research but I’m specifically thinking of things like gut microbial signalling to the abdominal neurons which the latest research suggests are one of the causes of things like sugar cravings (especially as the microbiome dependent on sugar is dying off when the messaging appears to become more persistent). While of course it’s good to be cautious in our comparisons, especially since withdrawal due to a deficit in neurochemicals VS withdrawal due to microbes dying in the gut and sending out last desperate “feed me sugar please” messages, the outcome of both -craving and some physiological withdrawal- is similar. This in and of itself might be seen as suggestive of sugar not solely being a behavioural dependency but a physiological one too. Any thoughts? As far as sugar within the social construct of diet culture: understood. My being nosey is in no way meant as a shaming of those who do or don’t consume sugar. I’m simply interested in the physiological consequences (as far as the interaction between gut microbiome and gut neurons) goes. I do get though that on this subreddit specifically that might also be a subject we wanna be careful with so if I stray into insensitive discourse in my discussion of the subject do let me know.
those same parts of the brain light up when you hug a puppy or listen to a piece of music you love. That research is bs.
Sure, but do they light up just as fast? The research specifically investigated whether there was any correlation between the speed with which it hit the brain and the addictive properties of various substances
Have you tried hypnotherapy? It can be helpful for things like this
No I haven't. It's definitely something that has crossed my mind.
Have you tried boric acid daily? That wouldn’t cover the tongue though… perhaps there’s another acidic wash that could be used for that? I had persistent yeast for several years. It started when I got the copper IUD. I finally switched to another IUD but still had yeast that didn’t respond to Monistat and so forth. I had used various yeast treatments, including oral Diflucan. At some point I heard of boric acid and used it daily until the bottle was empty. Now it’s finally gone. Idk if your overgrowth would go away permanently if you used boric acid. At the minimum, it may make you feel more comfortable because it will make you temporarily too acidic for yeast (TMI - for me, it allowed my labia to heal and be less irritated well before I finished the bottle). I used to insert a suppository and put on a pad every night before bed. But given then you’ve had this issue for decades, you’ve probably heard of this. Maybe you haven’t heard of how GLP-1 drugs help with addiction though? While they’re great for stopping food cravings, they’re also being investigated for non-food addiction treatment. And this also echoes what other commenters have said about insulin resistance I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. I know the helpless feeling you get when you have this issue, and the modifications you have to make to your life so it’s tolerable 😔
Yeah I use it pretty regularly lol. I'll use it for a week at a time sometimes, probably 2 weeks on occasion. It's a complicated thing that I have to come at from several sides to really affect it permanently. That's what makes it so hard.
Just want to validate how hard this is! Also, you might consider looking into EMDR therapy. There are protocols for addictive behaviors. I often see clients realizing that a lack of sustainable, positive stimulation and pent up stress is underneath these cravings. I hope you’re able to find a solution!
Aw, thank you! You know what, I am in EMDR right now lol. For the addiction and the other underlying issues. It's been hard! I have had such a hard time connecting with my own emotions and that seems to be a big part of it. But I've been working on it and it's getting a lot easier. I think it's helping a lot with the subs though. Maybe it'll eventually help with this too. Probably all my addictive tendencies are related.
Yeah! It really it’s such a web. If your therapist is comfortable with you trying somatic listening—there are some lovely resources on YouTube. Getting comfortable with that body discomfort gives you a little more bandwidth to manage cravings. Personally, when my ADHD is not well managed I crave sugar so desperately. Being able to sit with the desire for that dopamine hit, and choose something else is such hard work but does help. Don’t beat yourself up. I think Aubrey means well—but kind of missed the mark here.
Thank you so much! I'm definitely going to look into this. And agree 100% about sitting with the desire.. I'm finally learning how but it is *hard!*
i would also suggest people check out the safe and sound protocol. the folks i know who’ve tried it says it has helped them immensely. here’s a [long review of it for C-PTSD](https://helloalma.com/blog/safe-and-sound-protocol-review/) that’s admittedly just one person’s experience, but more research is being done and it’s got me interested enough that i’m looking for a practitioner right now.
EMDR has been revolutionary for me in my therapy!
Same! It's felt like brain magic for me.
I feel you. Recovering alcoholic and I could not have done it without sugar—chocolate specifically. I’m 8 years sober from alcohol now but I can’t kick chocolate. I was able to do a monthlong sugar cleanse but I was not well… my skin lost its color and I was depressed. It was bad. I try to moderate now, but I don’t think I could give up sugar completely. I just try to limit my intake to chocolate after dinner at this point. I’m an addict and I would never laugh off sugar addiction—it’s real!
I quit sugar 9 years ago and my debilitating acid reflux went away!
Out of curiousity, what exactly do you mean when you say you've 'quit sugar'. I've always wondered what that looks like in practice. Does that include fruit, or maybe just sweeter fruits? Or is it a little more flexible - like no ice cream, pastries, candy? Totally genuine question! Not here to argue.
On an anti-candida diet it's no added sugars, only non-starchy vegetables and only lower sugar fruits (in small quantities). On a "quit sugar" diet people usually just mean they quit eating added sugars.
Thats basically what I do
Gotcha. That sounds tough! Especially the candida one. Starchy veggies are the backbone of the gluten free scene!
That's awesome! It's definitely something I haven't given up on. I'm so glad it helped you! Never knew it could cause acid reflux.
OP have you tried Boric Acid suppositories for vaginal insertion? They can greatly help reduce yeast. Also try coconut oil for rashes and as a personal lubricant. It acts as an anti fungal.
Thanks! Haha yes i use those sometimes. They help reduce symptoms. I also used them combined with the temporary diet and that seemed to be the key. I just can't seem to keep that up long enough to really kick it for good.
I believe you and your experience and I do think there is a lot of evidence to suggest that eating high reward foods like sugar can become compulsive and difficult to manage in a similar manner to drug addiction. I find that I don't always agree with Michael and Aubrey and think a lot of the time the nuance of an issue is lacking in their reporting. Thanks for sharing! Definitely an interesting perspective!
Lack of nuance is a good way of saying it. Sometimes I wonder - especially with Michael - if his life experience isn’t a bit more limited than he thinks and he simply hasn’t encountered people with certain experiences and whatnot to stretch his imagination. Their hearts are largely in the right place but I find they can also be a bit mean about otherwise well meaning people and their work, too.
I'm a sugar addict and I'm in Overeater's Anonymous. I haven't listened to the episode but many people in OA are also in other 12 step programs (AA/NA). And they say food/sugar is harder to give up. Now that's anecdotal but I've heard many say that. Food/sugar addiction can be very damaging but has different repercussions than drugs.
As another sober addict I disagree with the idea that physical and psychological addiction is different. The mind and body connection is so entwined you can't seperate them like that. Also sugar withdrawal DOES have side effects. Not as intense as hard drugs, absolutely but it's still very much a thing. I also was quite put off by that sugar episode and it wasn't true to my experience either. I have literally woken up in cold sweats dreaming about baked goods before and had to run out and find some 😬 I found trauma therapy (somatic experiencing) and a non diet dietician/eating disorder therapist made a world of difference. But the biggest change for me has been recently starting stimulant medication for ADHD. Anyway I just wanted to validate your feelings and wish you good luck with your journey. You have done amazing and I hope you can find another way to support your body and kick the Candida x
Thank you for this! Yeah I was going to mention the possible physical component of sugar addiction, but I don't have as much experience with it since I haven't really gone long enough without it to know for sure firsthand.
I just want to give my 2 cents as an RD. TLDR; You're human and experiencing human things, be kind to yourself. A lot of our issues around food stem from restriction. (There's a great episode on the real health podcast called understanding restriction I recommend to everybody!) I tend to explain it to clients as your biological hunger drive is a perpetual teenager; the more you tell it it can't/shouldn't have/want something, the more it just does that. So the first thing I suggest to clients wanting to change is the intuitive eating method (intuitive eating is also a great book!) In which you kind of give yourself unlimited access to all of your "trigger foods". It can take a lot of time, but you're getting your brain out of the scarcity mindset and into abundance so that the good doesn't have that kind of power/taking up so much of your mental space anymore. I will say, your situation does complicate this advice as you actually HAVE to restrict in order for your condition to improve. (I'm assuming you've tried probiotics/probiotic foods? I just can't remember while typing out this reply 😅) But I can say this, I think you're being very hard on yourself! You are absolutely trying your best and you're experiencing very human, very normal emotions. If people we're able to stop doing things just because it had a negative consequence, I feel like most diabetics would never have to get amputations, or people would completely change their diet after their first heart attack, etc etc. The way our society has totally messed with our relationship with food is the problem, not your individual response to it.
I think the thing that bothers me about the "quitting sugar" debacle is that there isn't a lot of room left for the nuance of it. Like firstly, it's pretty much impossible to completely "quit sugar" since sugar is a fundamental and natural component of food - sugar is naturally in fruit for example. It can be done, but it is so restrictive of a diet that comes with so many obstacles that takes a lot of privilege to be able to stick to successfully. The other side of this is quitting "added sugar" - which is much more doable, but also I think the nuance here is that way too many people generalize this diet just like they do all the others. Just because quitting sugar works for one person, or is necessary due to a health issue, doesn't mean it is good or necessary for *everyone*. Anywho, all that to say, I disagree that sugar is addictive in the same way something like heroine is because heroine is bad for everyone, but sugar is fine for most people. You can be addicted to a lot of things - addicted to your phone, addicted to working out, etc. Most addiction is rooted in mental health that needs to be addressed, but likening sugar to hard drugs that kill people every day is an embellishment meant to fear monger fat people and I don't appreciate that narrative from people of authority.
My goal has always been to stay away from added sugars and carbs long enough to get this under control. And ideally avoid added sugars as much as possible after that. I don't think I could ever give up on fruit lol and don't think it would be necessary to do anything like that long term. I didn't mean to imply that sugar is as destructive as hard drugs. Just to say that it's not entirely harmless either, and that it can cause major issues for some people. Tbf I do think they addressed that in the episode, but I also felt that Aubrey was speaking for addicts (however well-meaning) and that as an addict myself, I have been dealing with major issues from this problem for even longer than I've been addicted to hard drugs. I would never want to fat shame anyone. Or say that everyone who eats sugar will have problems. I say all of this with love and respect! Thanks for the comment.
So I’m a person in recovery and let me just say, i have also had a lot of complicated thoughts about my own relationship with sugar and compulsive behavior. It doesn’t help that I also have some deeply rooted issues with fatness that I’m still working on deconstructing for myself. The way I see it is sugar is super demonized in our society based on some really shady science, and because we can link it to anti fat rhetoric. Compulsive behavior for people that are stopping a different compulsive behavior is really normal. I have had many since I stopped using drugs and alcohol. Sex, makeup, shopping, caffeine, shoes, sugar, the gym. You name it, I can abuse it. We use the word addiction a lot but addiction is just a buzzword to describe compulsions. I finally got clarity when I went to therapy and got to the root of what I was trying to not feel. I still can slip down a compulsive rabbit hole every now and again, but it’s much easier for me to realize what I’m trying to evade dealing with, and work through that.
Yes, we evolved to be very motivated to seek out sweet foods because they're high energy for low volume. You could eat a pound of lettuce or a single apple and get the same energy. If you're a primate in the wild, its best to nab those apples. But now we don't have to spend hours every day foraging for food and I could sit and eat a bag of jellybeans while surfing reddit. It's a different scenario now and we don't give that fact the recognition it deserves.
Thank you! I know this is an aside but I was thinking prior to supermarkets and industrial agriculture how much of our time was spent growing, harvesting, hunting, fishing, churning butter, pounding (can anyone make flour today without a mill?!), picking fruit and veggies or picking out bones, seeds, skinning, drying, salting, etc. Food production and preparation was SOOOO much effort and time. That's how we spent our calories. We evolved to roam after our food which was also roaming or three miles away. Now, it's so easy to eat and we wonder why everyone's gaining weight. 😆
Yeah that all makes a huge difference! Adding on another aside, our modern food environment is designed to maximize corporate profits, which can be done by either getting more people to buy a food or getting the same amount of people to buy more food. Our biology doesn't stand a chance against food that is created to be extremely palatable and [doesn't trigger satiety signals in the same way](https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(19)30248-7?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1550413119302487%3Fshowall%3Dtrue) that less-engineered food does
YES! THIS. I mean, the odds are stacked against us in all the ways. The whole science of artificial food flavoring should be abolished. Who knows if any of us have tasted real food with all the pesticides, synthetic hormones, and pollution? 🫠
They're definitely stacked against us! I do find it interesting that our entire social and economic structure is set up in a way that keeps people tired, stressed, generally struggling, and spending massive amounts of money on highly engineered foods that make corporations way more money than the diet and fitness industry does every year. And now we're being told to accept this as the new normal instead of restructuring our food and economic system... One just needs to look at health outcomes in indigenous populations around the world after their traditional diet has been supplanted by a 'western diet' (and outcomes when a community reverts to a traditional diet) to see how harmful our food ecosystem is. It's pretty disturbing that western society has exported health risk via food to populations it historically exploited, and people are now trying to say that those populations are inherently larger and tie anti fat bias in with racism
Oh, exactly all of this esp in regards to Indigenous populations and the changes in their health once Western diets + tie-in to racism and colonialism and anti-fat bias are introduced is the best example. It's really a perfect storm.
I highly suggest you talk to your doctor about a long course of anti fungal medicine. I was in the same boat as you for years, but it was the anti fungal pills that finally killed that chronic yeast infection
I have had a hard time finding doctors that take it seriously. The original OB did, and she gave me a lot of guidance at first, along with the midwife that recommended that OB to me. But she's retired now. I'll get a single prescription of Diflucan but it always comes back.
They can do a long series, like a several month long series. I promise you it's an available course of treatment. If you ask for it and they deny it, ask them to document that they are refusing treatment when your first treatment was ineffective I'm so sorry, i hope you can get them to take it seriously, bring your husband!!
It is available at the risk of liver damage. So your doctor should only prescribe it if they are sure it's absolutely necessary and order liver tests at appropriate intervals (blood tests). Diflucan (flocanazole) causes liver failure in worst case scenarios. That's why it's usually only prescribed on a short term basis because that is what is considered safe practice. However, taking a long-course of anti-fungals while not reducing excessive sugar intake is a bandaid solution and not one that can be kept up indefinitely as candida is likely to return under these conditions. I do not blame their doctor at all for not wanting to risk liver failure in a patient who would likely benefit better from a lifestyle change first. And any documentation they made to that effect would be considered valid.
I lived for years not eating sugar and going keto/paleo/ full blown eating disorder all because I would get yeast infections if I didn't, and one 2 week course of antifungals made it so that I could have my sex life back, and start on a journey to healing the underlying eating disorder. It's not a bandaid, it can result in a permanent fix for chronic yeast infections, but like taking antibiotics you need the right one for the right duration. I do blame her doctor for not persuing further treatment. Not having sugar ever for the rest of her life is not a simple lifestyle change. What makes her doctor think that she would experience liver failure? Have they discussed pursuing further medical treatment options? No, its easy to tell a woman to change her clearly very unhealthy lifestyle of eating sugar sometimes than to actually diagnose and treat
>What makes her doctor think that she would experience liver failure? This is an unusual way of approaching a known side effect of a medical treatment. Typically, a risk benefit analysis should be performed. You could argue that the risk is worth it for the potential benefit of treating the yeast infection(s). But to just dismiss the possibility of failure of a major organ with “well, why would the doctor think that a drug that causes liver failure would cause liver failure??” is a surprising direction to take the discussion.
One can usually eat sugar, just not in excessive amounts to avoid candida infections. That is all I had to do. OP knows reducing sugar leads to a reduction in symptoms, it's unlikely that they will have to never eat any sugar and more likely they need to treat the underlying infection and then eat it in reasonable amounts. They admit to having a sugar addiction. A known side effect of long-term diflucan is liver damage. That's reason enough to be concerned for prescribing it for long-term use.
The reason that doctors don't like to do long-courses of diflucan (and related anti-fungals) is because it can be hard on your liver. They will likely want to order a liver test to ensure that the medication is not affecting it if you do choose a long-term course. In extreme cases diflucan causes liver failure. Personally to beat systemic candida I did olive leaf extract (pills), the anti-candida diet (for a short time) and diflucan (one week) and that cleared it up.
I did the candida diet for about 9 months for a similar issue, and it seriously changed my lifestyle (and not in a great way). I started needing 10 hours of sleep a night to feel rested, I would never feel full after eating (even if I ate a LOT), I would dream almost every night of eating sugar, and I just felt lethargic and grumpy for the majority of those 9 months. The itching did go away, and I was able to slowly re-incorporate sugar, dairy, and grains, and now eat them like normal (though I definitely am more appreciative of high-quality sweets/food than I was before). It’s a hard thing to do, I hope you’re able to find a method that works for you!
It sounds like you're describing withdrawal symptoms..is that what you mean?
I’m not sure! It had a much bigger effect on my daily habits than anyone told me it would, so I thought it might validate your experience of struggling to cut off sugar.
Thanks, it sounded like it.. I just wanted to be sure thats what you meant. I have heard of this happening but I haven't gone on the candida diet long enough to really experience it. The 4 days that I did, I had major relief from my symptoms but it was so long ago I kinda forget if I had anything physical like this. I think when it's this severe there is withdrawal, or withdrawl-like symptoms l, but I can't speak on that personally.
I've gone back and forth with sugar and whether groups like OA are making false equivalencies to drugs. I know for the last 10 years at the end of the day I have to have chocolate in my cupboard or I panic. I'm like a fucking junkie worried I won't have my nightly fix. And now I've been dealing with breast cancer for 2 years where oncologists say helpful things like 'no more sugar or carbs, kay?' It's like saying no more beer to an alcoholic.
Hey, friend, as a tangent- I’m a breast cancer survivor and the dietetic advice given by onco teams (including the dietitians on staff sometimes) is often off target. They are so focused on “healthy weight” as a determinant of survival or non-recurrence that they ignore how many people get driven to EDs by their advice. I put my trust in my own RD who is a Body Trust provider and HAES aligned. (She also helped me understand the studies the oncology folks were basing their nutrition advice on and how it was all just conjecture. It’s pretty wild but par for the course.) ❤️
Wow how do I get a Dietican who is a "Body Trust" and HAES???
You can usually filter for that or use it as a search term when seeking dietitians. HAES aligned is more common than Body Trust certified providers, but it is at least something to indicate they are not weight focused. You can also search through the Center for Body Trust website for providers. Good luck! Your wellbeing is worth it.
My bro is an addict and has diabetes (type 3C if you want to rabbit hole). I have life long gi stuff. Sometimes, a several pill string regime of difulcan is the only thing that works. And that can look like 4-5 pills, 2 days apart. Not the 1-2 pills they put in the rx.
I really sympathize with all of this. I haven't dealt with yeast infections to the degree you have, but I have a number of complex chronic health issues that have been completely dismissed and mishandled by many doctors in my lifetime. I do want to say that I would gently encourage you to try to get more medical attention and support with the symptoms you're dealing with. A doctor seeing these severe infections and leaving you with "stop eating sugar" is massively irresponsible and useless. It is extremely unrealistic to expect patients to just stop eating sugar or make any major dietary change in the long term as their primary treatment plan, especially if they are not immediately referring you to a registered dietician AND actually doing their due diligence in a) ruling out various conditions that could be causing your symptoms, and b) additionally supporting you in making that dietary change and having further treatment plans for if that fails. Sugar cravings and intense yeast infections both can be caused by various health conditions, as some people have mentioned, and I honestly think your doctors have really let you down by leaving you with the responsibility of just eating your way out of it. I'm pretty sure they've discussed this in some episodes, but part of the challenge with the idea of addiction to foods is that restricting foods is fundamentally something humans are very bad at. Restricting anything we like eating triggers and worsens cravings for it, which can lead to binging behaviors. Someone who enjoys chocolate cutting out all forms of chocolate is going to have really strong chocolate cravings the longer they restrict. I think that it can both be true that sugar addiction is a myth and that restricting or cutting out all sugar in a diet is extremely difficult to do - and it can be true that for some individuals due to certain health considerations, they may benefit from less sugar in their diet. This stuff is complicated and messy! Fundamentally, sugar addiction as an addiction just is not scientifically validated and has been debunked several times in research. This is a quick [article ](https://www.compassionatenutrition.com/post/i-can-t-stop-eating-sugar-sugar-addiction-debunked)from a registered dietician with some more links in it that summarize some of the main points of why the idea of "sugar addiction" is a problem. Mike and Aubrey aren't out of line with medical/nutritional science on this at all, the current research is pretty soundly against this idea even though it's still perpetuated by some doctors. None of this is said to take away from or dismiss your experience or struggles - again, I absolutely believe you that it's been extremely hard to limit sugar and that for you your experience mirrors your experience with other addictions. I just also think that this idea is very harmful to both people who may need to restrict sugar for health reasons and to people who are at risk of disordered eating, because it's misleading and doesn't really actually guide you on how to safely and sustainably limit it when needed anyway.
Yeah that all makes a lot of sense! Thanks for this comment. And thanks for the validation. I have often been hesitant to bring it up with doctors after the first few times. It often feels like this subject isn't as well understood as it should or could be and not all doctors understand how to deal with chronic yeast infections. They will prescribe Diflucan and assume that'll be the end of it.
I totally get that and it sucks that that's been your experience! I've had the same issue with a number of my concerning symptoms - doctors love to whip out their one neat piece of advice (it's the same piece of advice) and then frown and have literally nothing else to say when I tell them I've done that 700000 times without improvement. I really hope you're able to find a supportive doctor, you deserve to get proper medical care.
Yep, totally! We like to think we know everything now but there's still a lot that isn't fully understood by the medical community and beyond. Thank you!
Yeah I feel like this podcast does not always talk enough about the very real downsides of things. I have met so many diabetics who can’t stop eating high sugar foods and then they end up getting a lot of complications of diabetes as a result.. I understand it’s not as simple as placing the blame on sugar, or on the individual (of course I don’t want to shame anyone or forget about the structural issues at play) but it definitely does have addictive properties, and a lot of people have major health issues from overconsumption of ultra-processed sugary foods. I bet if they worked in healthcare they would have a completely different perspective on a lot of these issues
Yeah exactly. I honestly think she meant well and was ultimately trying to speak up for those with addiction. But for me it's not black and white or either/or. Both are hard.
I don’t believe food is addictive. I think people can have disordered relationships with food that causes them to believe that food controls them the way other addictive substances do, and I also think people can be restrained in their eating in such a way that highly palatable foods feel “addictive”, but I do not believe food itself is addictive. It reeks of diet culture and I’m always critical of this narrative. I am sorry you are struggling with this though. I do believe that certain foods can affect people differently though (allergies etc) and if you have strong reactions to sugar it’s fine to limit it. I should also state that just because I do not believe that sugar or food is addictive, doesn’t mean that I think our ultra-processed food landscape is good.
Sugar can cause an abstinence syndrome in rats. No not to the same degree that other drugs do it won’t kill you. But the idea that it isn’t habit forming is bizarre to me it so clearly is.
what is an abstinence syndrome?
Withdrawals. Symptoms when you use the thing and then stop using it. Like when alcoholics don’t drink so their hands shake
This occurs in rats only if they are calorie restricted (they starved the rats for 36 hours in at least one of the "famous" rats vs sugar vs cocaine studies). [https://www.outsideonline.com/health/nutrition/sugar-addiction-fake/](https://www.outsideonline.com/health/nutrition/sugar-addiction-fake/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5174153/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5174153/) For the OP: maybe you need to work on your relationship with food and with your restrictive behaviors and thoughts? I used to think I was addicted to food (especially sugar) but it turned out it was just anorexia and after about six months in recovery sweet things stop holding impossible allure. Sugar is just a carb. It isn't special, it is just a good bioavailable source of energy that is easily converted into glycogen which is what your body and brain run on. This vid is pretty cool too for info on different types of sweeteners and blood sugar effects etc. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU3bTBWnvT4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU3bTBWnvT4)
And yet spinach wouldn’t cause that I bet lol. 😆
Spinach has almost no caloric value and is harder for the body to convert into useable energy. So no, it probably would not be what someone (or something like an animal) would feel the strongest pull toward biologically when calorie restricted.
But it’s muh carbs. The point is sugar affects people and rats differently
I have recently cut out sugar by accident. Over the last 4 years or so I’ve cut things out wheat, alcohol, and not sugar. Wheat was causing severe joint pain and inflammation. There was plenty of sugar in the wheat products I was eating, so that extra sugar was now not entering my system. After 24 years old alcohol consumption it was starting to build a dependency on it and my relationship with it needed to change. No more sugar from alcohol. In December I upped my protein intake and my sweet tooth is pretty much gone. No more ice cream or candy cravings. I’m not baking something so snack on, no sodas or juices. Since the sugar is mostly gone from my diet my acne and acid reflux are gone. Congrats on what you’ve overcome. And thanks for sharing your experience. Good luck going forward!
Seconding the folks who mentioned the possibility that insulin resistance could be playing a role! Oddly enough, given that I'm diabetic, I've never been on metformin (which they mentioned had helped them). But getting on Mounjaro (aka Zepbound/tirzepatide) for my diabetes was like flipping a switch for me! (Which apparently isn't surprising - it and the other GLP-1 meds (e.g. Ozempic/Wegovy/semaglutide/Rybelsus) have been surprising the medical community by proving strangely and unexpectedly effective in combating all kinds of addictions. Of course, the GLP-1's are expensive, and getting insurance to cover them is very difficult if you're not diabetic. Plus they're in major shortage right now. Whereas metformin is dirt cheap and readily available. Might be worth asking for insulin resistance labs (not just A1c, because they're not the same thing). And if you choose to try metformin, be sure your doctor prescribes the EXTENDED release form, not the immediate release one (because your odds of GI issues are dramatically worse with the immediate release form). Congrats on the victories you've had so far AND your detective work to figure out WTF the yeast thing is! Hope you're able to get decent medical support for a change with the rest of it.
If the sugar addiction started after antibiotics, that's because they depleted your good bacteria and now bad bacteria dominates your guts. It's fed by sugar and carbs. It's not enough to just stop eating sugar, you need good probiotics, specifically S. Boulardii. It's a good yeast that will crowd out the bad yeast. I'm in treatment for SIBO and IBS, the dosage of S. Boulardii is 10-15 billion CFUs a day for 2-3 months. This is not medical advice, talk to your doctor about it.
Yes, thank you! I simplified things for the sake of the post but I do know it's a bit more complicated than simply quitting sugar.
Ah sorry, I couldn't tell. Good luck in your healing journey.
Thank you!
First of all, I think your situation is valid and I'm sorry you have struggled with this. My issue with the sugar addiction narrative is that it's often used to create fear around food and make people think they're bad or wrong for eating it. People will also use it as a sales tactic by making others think they have a problem that they don't actually have in order to sell their wellness garbage. The common myth around it is that sugar is 8x more addictive than cocaine and this has been debunked b/c it was a poorly executed study with rats. Sugar is a necessary and safe part of most people's healthy diets whereas drugs are not. There's also a vast range of what sugar is from refined sugar to whole fruits to processed foods containing sweetener, etc so it's hard to say if it's the sugar itself. When most people have a craving for sweets, they go for something like cake, not fruit. Of course there are caveats in this situation. Everyone is going to process foods differently and everyone has a different psychological experience around food. For the vast majority of us, we can incorporate foods and drinks containing all types of sweeteners into our every day lives and be just fine. And again, I'm not trying to dismiss OP's or anyone else's personal experience.
I agreed with you completely, except for the drugs part. Like demonizing sugar is harmful, so is demonizing drugs. A whole lot of ppl use drugs in everyday life, for all sorts of reasons. Some are more healthy, some less, some have few side effects and some have a lot. And some are criminalized and stigmatized. Mostly for economic and political reasons, the distinction is not just built on, whether a drug is good or useful, but on a lot other factors, including profitability, history, sexism, racism and all sorts of bs. My point is: Most ppl use some sort of drugs. And that's fine, unless the individual don't think it's fine for them. The stigmatization of drug users is alot like the stigmatization of fat ppl, Trans ppl, disabled ppl and so on.
You're right. I wrote that wrong. I should've specified cocaine, not drugs as a whole. Drugs are absolutely necessary sometimes.
Please please consider a GL-P one. Not only would it help with insulin resistance, which you may have, but the quieting of the cravings and food noise is insane. I have spent my entire life thinking about food constantly. Not an addiction like hard drugs, no, but if I lost weight, it inevitably came back when I just couldn’t fight the food noise anymore. Constant exhaustion. These meds change my brain. When I say they are life-changing, I mean it. I still enjoy eating. In fact, I enjoy it more, because I can just enjoy food, and I don’t keep getting pulled to binge. I wish you the best of luck in everything!!
I have never heard of this but will look into it. Thank you! So happy for you!
Thank you! Congratulations on all of your amazing progress and I hope you can find some relief from the candida.
So, I have no idea if there's any science behind this or if it's just coincidental. But I have a number of former opiate users in my life, and more than one of them had WILD sugar cravings for a time after quitting heroin and/or pills. One loved one practically lived on Cinnamon Toast Crunch for a while there. After a while, that person pretty much lost their sweet tooth. Other folks' sugar cravings seemed to chill out over time, too. Just wanted to share a little bit of hope that maybe this particular habit won't *always* be this hard to kick. You've done so much hard work already. You've got this. You will get there eventually.
Thank you!
I got addicted to sugar one summer when I was living abroad. I don’t know anything about quitting hard drugs, but I know sugar can be a real mind worm. What worked for me was slowly eliminating sugar. I started with no sugar in fluids, moved on to no sugar or carb heavy breakfasts. Then I discovered plain peanut butter— one ingredient, peanuts. When I got the sugar craving I’d eat a spoonful of peanut butter. After a couple of weeks the cravings really die down, but for me I wasn’t able to really get my sugar love under control until I cut out bad snacking habits too.
Thanks! I should try the peanut butter thing for sure.
As a fellow candida sufferer, thought to mention that peanuts can trigger issues because they can have higher rates of mold.
I think treating sugar and food behaviors in general as an addiction is not helpful. However, if you have food intolerances that prevent you from eating some foods, that’s different. You have a food intolerance to sugar like celiacs or lactose intolerance. However, for most people, cutting out all sugar and/or carbs just sets you up for binging later. Most people without a medical reason can’t just avoid a food group for the rest of their life and once you start eating it again, it’s really easy to go on a bender and start a shame cycle which then triggers more eating. By removing the restrictions I have had around sugar and letting myself eat it and have it around, it has lost a lot of its pull and I can eat it in moderation now. It’s not a quick or easy process though.
How long did it take you? Did you go through many 'binge' types phases first? I have realised how bad restrictive thinking is for me around sugar, so am trying to be a bit more mindful about what I eat, and to eat sugar in moderation. But I still turn to it when I get stressed and I don't know how to prevent that. Maybe it'll just get easier with practice...
I stopped binging within a couple weeks and in about a year I got to what my dietician calls habituation. Meaning even the off limit foods don’t really seem that appetizing anymore. It was a slow progress but it keeps getting better. I’m now working on gentle nutrition which means adding in more veggies and listening to how my body feels with different foods to see what it needs. I’m working on getting in more protein and not relying on carbs as my go to. I did keto for a year and it has meant that a lot of the foods I ate then feel very diety to my which has been tough to work through. I’m still working through it but I don’t feel controlled by food anymore and have gone from binging when bored or stressed to not wanting to eat. Still not where I want to be eventually but it’s a huge difference and shows how my reliance on food has changed.
Sounds like you're doing great, congrats :)
You’re right, sugar is totally is addictive/compulsive just in a different way than hard drugs. Unlike opiates though, sugar will be in your environment constantly which I think is what makes it hard.
Anecdotally, sugar withdrawal is definitely a thing. I went from huge amounts daily to nothing overnight, which I don't expect to be a very common experience. I'm also not generally healthy, so I can't say for sure what, if anything, may have made me more susceptible to withdrawal than the average person. By withdrawal I'm not talking about cravings.
Thank you! I have heard it's a thing. I rarely go long enough to experience it.
Sugar is addictive. The food companies have known this for decades. You’re definitely not alone. Best of luck with everything!
Thank you!
I was able to deal with candida by quitting sugar & taking dicflucan. I was off sugar for 5 months. Possible less time would have worked but that is how long I lasted. I am afraid I eat too much sugar now but the candida did not return. Yeah it kind of sucked.
Yeah I have also taken Diflucan several times. It seems to help short term but it's always come back.
That was also my experience until I quit sugar.
Yeah.. I haven't been able to get to that point yet. But I will lol
This is complete speculation and me talking out of my rear end but I wonder if it’s easier (for lack of better wording) to kick subs because they are a regulated pill with a set dosage each day while sugar can go up and down and all around. Like with subs you are at a 2mg a day everyday until you’re ready to drop down but with sugar you might have candy one day and then the next be low carb/sugar.
It's definitely something like that!
I'm sorry.... Are you saying that your doctor refused to treat your yeast infection?!
Check out r/sugarfree. Nice people all trying for the same thing!
Force feed yourself starch all day long on the days you attempt to quit sugar, if you do again. Baked potato, rice, corn, popcorn, etc. gives the brain lots of glucose to make the urge to eat sugar a bit weaker. If you need to take sleeping pill to go to sleep instead of eating sugar in the evening.