Richard Jacoby - Sugar Crush: How to Reduce Inflammation, Reverse Nerve Damage, and Reclaim Good Health

I t is exciting to be at the tip of the spear in the war on sugar.

It is a war that not only we United States citizens have been losing; its also being lost by anyone in the world who eats prepared food. Only farmers still living off the land and eating the fruits of their own labors are safe.

Sugar, sweetie, and honey are terms of endearment, but not when we consume sugar to the extent that it has become responsible for more deaths per year than the Vietnam War, more deaths per year than alcohol, and more deaths per year than tobacco.

I personally first became familiar with the effects of sugar as a child, during my early visits to the dentist. Ouch! The memories border on post-traumatic stress. The remaining deposits of silver in my teeth are testimony to the insidious destruction of our bodies by sugar. In my adult life, there is the continual struggle to keep myself from becoming prediabetic or even diabetic. You can only exercise so much, and then you must take control of your own diet. This is where this exciting new book, Sugar Crush, enters the picture.

Dr. Richard Jacoby, coauthor of Sugar Crush, has been my friend for more than a decade, since the first time I met him in my Advanced Lower Extremity Peripheral Nerve Workshop. He was already an expert foot and ankle surgeon. He responded to my lectures and teachings about the relationship of the peripheral nerve to sugar and to chronic nerve compression in a way the other 352 students of my thirty workshops had not. Perhaps it was his background in chemistry. Perhaps it was just simply his ability to incorporate my surgical research related to chronic nerve compression, my basic science research related to diabetes and chronic nerve compression, and his own patients relief of pain and recovery of sensation in those who responded to the surgery he learned to do in that workshop. Rick Jacoby has now moved well beyond the operating room.

Sugar Crush is an intriguing detective story implicating the food industry, processed foods, marketing, well-meaning but misguided nutritional science, and an individuals Bliss Point for carbohydrates in a conspiracy that places sugar at the crime scene of many of our most common diseases and disabilities.

My own life has already improved since reading Sugar Crush. I was able, having been educated now by my student, to go through the prepared foods in my own kitchen cabinets and discard those with lots of sugar; replacing them with healthier yet still tasty substitutes.

While the food industry will not like the information contained in Sugar Crush, I believe readers interested in improving their own health, and the health of their families, will treasure this book and use it as a road map to improved health.

A. Lee Dellon, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Plastic Surgery
Professor of Neurosurgery
Johns Hopkins University

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as
being self-evident.

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

(Check Each Truthful Statement)

When someone serves birthday cake, I like the piece with the most icing.

Theres a supersized jar of Excedrin in my office desk drawer.

Ive had a medical procedure with the suffix -ectomy.

I could lose a few pounds, but I dont need another diet book. They dont work.

Sometimes at night, my feet itch or feel tingly.

Every winter I have a runny nose; every spring I get sinus headaches.

I love anything crunchy/salty and can drink olive juice straight from the jar.

Im often tired. In fact, I could take a nap right now.

My parents and/or grandparents had diabetes.

I like my toes and want to keep them.

SCORING :

1 to 2 items checked: Lets consider denial.

3 to 4 items checked: Not bad, but you should read on.

5 to 10 items checked: Forget about the weight youll lose; this book could save your life.

My purpose is to get your attentionto demand you recognize how sugar:

chemically causes inflammation that damages your nerves,

results in excruciating pain often made worse by prescription drugs, and

will inevitably kill you before your genetic timetable.

Carbohydrates (sugar) + Trauma =
Nerve Damage, Pain, and Dysfunction

This is the sugar crush. And it begins with subtle clues such as having too many headaches, a runny nose, adult acne, and a diet full of salty snacks, chocolate, and processed foods.

Im asking you to derail the express train taking you straight from sugar to peripheral neuropathythen onward to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and many other neurologic disordersincluding multiple sclerosis (MS), migraine, carpal tunnel syndrome, and Alzheimers disease, to name a few.

Peripheral neuropathy is the clarion call I witness every day. And its noisy. Its what literally wakes you from your sleep. It is painful. Like hot needles, it stings and it burns. It starts in the autonomic nervous system of your legs and feet, then on to the sensory fibers, and finally lodges in the motor fibers. Thats usually when Im called in.

As a young surgical student in Philadelphia, I experienced my first amputationto remove a gangrenous leg from a man suffering with diabetes. Even though Id spend the next thirty years as a podiatric surgeon and conduct tens of thousands of foot surgeries, including amputations on patients with diabetes, this first gruesome procedure is the one I remember most.

I was the third assistant. My job was to hold the rotting leg as the orthopedic surgeon sawed it off just above the knee. The stench of a gangrenous leg is putrid and overpowering, so much so that we had to put peppermint oil in our masks to endure it. As I held the leg and struggled with the smell and the sound of the saw, I was struck not only by the impersonal, awful nature of the procedurebut by the enormous weight of the diseased leg as it fell into my arms.

I stood confused in the middle of the room. Clutching the heavy burden and wondering what to do with it, I saw a nurse nod toward the medical waste container. No longer viable, this once healthy, functioning leg was now trash.

That amputation was the end result of diabetic peripheral neuropathyprecipitated by pain and numbness, caused by damage to the nerves of the foot. Had we not removed this mans grossly infected leg, the gangrene would have killed him. But how did it get to that point? This is the question that eventually led me to write