Calibrate Your Normal

These days our culinary enemies have shifted from red meat to sugar becoming the principal poison in our lives. Sugar is now cited as the cause of various chronic illnesses, from diabetes to Alzheimer’s disease. The American Heart Association recommends that men consume no more than nine teaspoons of added sugars daily, and women no more than six. The World Health Organization suggests that all adults and children consume less than five teaspoons of sugar excluding fruit and milk, if possible.

Real food, unlike sugar, is its own best regulatory system. Four apples contain sixteen teaspoons of sugar — way more than the recommended daily limit for added sugars. But few people want to eat that many apples, because the fruit contains fiber and other nutrients that help tell our bodies when we are full. Turn those four apples into juice, however, and we can circumvent the body’s signals, basically mainlining the excess sugar directly into our bloodstream. We get the bad stuff without the good stuff.

Sugar by any other name is still sugar: agave, honey, castor sugar, and even the much reviled high-fructose corn syrup all have similar effects. Eat too much of any one of them and we overtax our insulin, the hormone in our bodies that breaks down sugar, metabolizes it and stores what we don’t need. This can easily lead to diabetes, liver disease and other ailments.

For sugar to exist as a normal, safe part of our food – we need to maintain balanced diets. The problem, of course, is that we don’t. And if you have diabetes, then we need solutions such as Abbott’s Freestyle Precision Neo blood sugar monitoring system to give an accurate reading on how we can comfortably live with blood sugar in a safe range.

To all lifeaholics out there – if we can learn anything from diabetes it’s that sometimes the darkest times can bring us to the brightest places. Our character is tested by the many fires of life. If we are willing to seek out the good in all situations including life with diabetes, we can turn adversity into an advantage. We are all stronger than we think. Being motivated to fight diabetes creates clarity on what success means and defining very specific, realistic and attainable benchmarks. At Abbott, the motivation is to develop the most innovative solutions to defeat diabetes and for people around the globe to live longer. 

In our resolve against sugar, our presence becomes a present. We can all choose to give presence to ourselves and to all the relationships in our lives to make them more valuable than ever. Go for life. A well balanced life. Health is what we do everyday. New positioning for Abbott featuring the Neo blood glucose measuring device from Digitas Health in San Francisco.