Doesn’t the Declaration of Independence say that we are endowed with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? What is happiness? Because it sure seems like society has lost it. Well, first off, I think we are substituting happiness with pleasure. The World Health Organization says that 22% of all Americans are clinically depressed.

What’s the difference between happiness and pleasure? Pleasure is short-term. Happiness is long-term. Pleasure is visceral, meaning you feel it physically and immediately. Happiness is felt in your mind. Pleasure is taking from something, and happiness is giving to something. Pleasure is usually experienced alone, and happiness is usually experienced in social groups/with loved ones. Pleasure can be achieved with substances, but happiness cannot be achieved with substances. Extremes of pleasure can lead to addiction. For example, shopping, eating, alcohol, cocaine, etc., in large amounts can lead to addiction. There’s an “aholic” attached to most things that we seek pleasure out of. Most importantly, pleasure deals with a completely different neurotransmitter than happiness. Pleasure is dopamine, and happiness is serotonin. These neurotransmitters in our brain act completely differently and have different mechanisms of action. Dopamine is manufactured in the brain, and serotonin is manufactured in your gut. Dopamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter. Serotonin is inhibitory. That means if dopamine is present, it will attach to receptor sites over serotonin. When dopamine is released, you get the feelings of reward, which is necessary for us to be motivated. It causes you to chase the reward more and more which creates motivation to do so but too much dopamine can cause us to “chase the high”, leading to potential addiction.

When it comes specifically to the health challenges we are facing in America daily, we must look at one of the biggest factors of our health issues, which is the American diet. How does this correlate with pleasure and happiness?

It is estimated that 73% of every item found in the average American grocery store has “added sugars” to it. What is sugar? Well, the most common Sugar (sucrose), “the stuff you put in your coffee”, is made up of two important molecules, fructose and glucose. They are different. Glucose is what we burn for energy. We need glucose for a process called glycosylation, which helps our hormones function, for example. It is essential, but it is not essential to eat. Your body will make it regardless of whether you are eating it or not. When we eat sugar, there is a dopamine response (pleasure) that causes us to crave more to get that same rewarding feeling. Eventually, that can lead down a dangerous slope of sugar addiction.

Now what about fructose? Fructose is not necessary to live, and in high doses, it is toxic. We do have the ability to metabolize sugar. Glucose gets absorbed into cells with the help of insulin made in the pancreas. Fructose, on the other hand, is metabolized differently. Our body metabolizes fructose in the same exact way that it metabolizes alcohol, and that is through the liver. Your (adult) liver can manage to metabolize, on average, 12 grams of fructose a day without causing metabolic toxicity. The average American adult consumes 100 grams of sugar a day. Yes, you read that right. Most of us don’t even know we are consuming this much sugar because it is hidden in our food. Almost all processed food has added sugar.

For children, the liver can metabolize about 4-6 grams of fructose per day. 29% of children in America consume the national school breakfast offered at public schools nationwide. This is brought to you by the USDA.  2023 stats show that roughly 14.7 million children participated in this USDA school breakfast program. That breakfast contains an average of 41 grams of fructose. This is just breakfast! Almost 10x the amount that children can metabolize. It is the liver toxicity equivalent if someone drank 8-10 alcoholic drinks in an hour. We would classify that person as an alcoholic, right? This is what is causing mental, behavioral, and physical health decline and is one of the primary contributing factors to childhood obesity. Little Johnny doesn’t have ADHD; he just needs to cut out the excess/added sugars in his food!

When your body gets certain levels of sugar in the bloodstream after you eat, insulin is released from the pancreas to regulate that level by allowing cells to absorb that glucose to use for energy. The problem is that when we consume so much sugar, our pancreas is overworked and finally gets to a point where it stops functioning properly, giving us “insulin resistance”, which is where diabetes comes from. Our cells can no longer absorb this glucose like they need to, so the glucose stays in the bloodstream and turns into fat. This drives obesity, heart disease, vascular disease, and even worse, fatty liver. Excess fructose will cause the liver to develop fat as well. Prior to 1980, the incidence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease was 0%. Today, it is about 28% and is steadily climbing. Children are also being diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease as well. Why? I think we can guess what a key factor is here, and it’s not the vegetables they are eating.

Here are some more stats for you. In the last 28 years, the WHO has released stats that show the rate of obesity has doubled since 1995. Worldwide sugar consumption has tripled in the last 50 years. 33% of sugar consumption comes from beverages. If you consume just 1 sugary drink per day, like soda, your risk of diabetes goes up roughly 30%.

So what can we do? Well, individually, let’s control what we can control. Detox your liver. We can do this through intermittent fasting, a ketogenic diet, and eliminating alcohol and added sugars in our diet. Most importantly, we must keep our cellular ATP (energy currency) high. Exercise, exposure to sunlight, grounding, red light therapy, and proper sleep will help with this. From a societal standpoint, which is less in our control, we must demand that the food industry stop mislabeling, and we must ban chemicals and toxins in our foods, similar to what Italy is doing. We must demand better for our children, or we will see continued mental and physical health decline.

Next time you go to the grocery store, look at how many foods have added sugars. Foods you wouldn’t even think about have added sugar. As I write this, I looked at two items in my own cabinet and realized they have added sugar (Planters peanuts and Wheat Thins crackers). If it’s in a box or a wrapper, there’s a good chance there is added sugar! I pray for our health.

-Dr. Emilio Galis