What’s So Bad About Sugar, Anyway?

And what does it have to do with cancer, or the risk of cancer?

There have been many theories about how cancer originates in the body.

Dr. Thomas Seyfried of Boston College published the theory that cancer begins with chronic metabolic dysfunction — that is, mitochondria within a cell not being able to create good energy for a prolonged period of time — which causes them to begin creating energy through a fermentation process rather than through oxidative phosphorylation, often called OxPhos (Seyfried & Chinopoulos, 2021).

This is the key difference between healthy cells and cancerous cells: healthy cells use oxygen to create energy, while cancerous cells have reverted to an easier, ancient way to create energy (possibly from before Earth had a proper atmosphere) through fermentation of glucose (sugar) and an amino acid called glutamine.

This difference in mitochondrial function links all cancers together, regardless of which organ it appears within.

We have known this for a while. Did you know that PET scans, widely used to seek out and image cancerous activity in the body, are taken after a person ingests a sugary dye? The sugar (glucose) goes straight to the hungry cancer cells, carrying the dye that is visible to the scanner.

Why does mitochondrial dysfunction happen?

One reason why mitochondrial dysfunction happens is simply the presence of too much sugar and simple carbohydrates in a person’s diet.

These need very little digestive breakdown and go straight to the mitochondria as glucose molecules.

The mitochondria become overwhelmed with the amount of glucose they are being asked to process. They bog down and ask for help from the pancreas and insulin. They push the remaining glucose out into the blood as a sticky residue.

Have you ever felt tired, sluggish, and slow after a big meal or too many carbs? Food coma?? That is an indication that your cells are overwhelmed. You’re in a glucose storm, and your body is suffering.

This leftover glucose in the blood sticks to your hemoglobin, or red blood cells. This is the residue measured by a Hemoglobin A1C test.