I knew I had a problem when I developed a chronic sore lower back. Although at the time I didn’t know it had a connection with sugar. The signs were there before that with my Carpel Tunnel Syndrome and developing hypertension, the doctors all saying they were caused by my job, a postman. I left my job, convinced it was the cause of my health problems to start my own business, which also helped to stabilise my obesity problem (not much time to eat). It wasn’t till one day I was in the local library researching what I could do about my sore back and arthritis (by now I was developing sciatic nerve problems, my left leg was getting numb) that I came upon a sentence in a book that said something like “It could be caused by what you eat”. Hmmm, what am I eating too much of? In those days I had a taste for white bread and jam. Must be the bread, I thought, so I gave up the bread (no bread, no jam). Strange, for the first time in eight years, after a week or two, bad back better, a month later, the arthritis, gone. Must have been the starch I thought. I experimented around with my food for a few years, still believing starch was the problem. Trouble was, I would get a sore back (only lasting about three or four days) after eating a mango, where’s the starch in that? I could eat potatoes till the cows come home, no sore back. It wasn’t till my twenty five year old son came up to me and said “Dad, I can’t walk any more, my left leg is aching and numb. The doctor wants to send me to hospital”. I asked my son what he eats and drinks a lot of. “I’m addicted to orange juice” was his reply. Two weeks later, he was walking without a limp and back to emptying my fridge when he visits, but he doesn’t drink fruit juice any more. It was then that the penny dropped for me. It wasn’t the bread, it was the jam. Last July (2012) I did a search in itunes and found the book “Big Fat Lies” for my new fangled ipad. I have read the three books now and I am tackling my obesity problem, with limited success. It is still early days for me and I make a few mistakes, but I am sticking to the policy of surviving the rest of my life with as little fructose as possible. Thanks David for doing the hard work.
