Halloween Candy…Trick or Treat?
“Trick-or-treating” is a Halloween custom for children. The practice of wearing costumes or masks during this sort of end of Autumn celebration comes from a Celtic tradition: children and sometimes poor adults would dress up in costumes and go around door to door begging for food or money in exchange for songs and prayers, often said on behalf of the dead.
Nowadays, it is an excuse to load up on sugar. Sugar has a high calorie content (four calories per gram) that will give your body energy. All cells depend on blood sugar (glucose) for energy. But that energy is short lived and it can only give your system a short burst of increased productivity.
Moreover, beware of the excess of sugar:
Cancer cells have receptors called insulin growth factors, and diets that are high in sugar are a major risk factor for certain types of cancers, especially for lung and breast cancer, according to a recent animal study from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. 1 . The study, published in Cancer Research, found that mice with sucrose intake comparable to levels of Western diets had a greater risk for tumor growth and metastasis, compared to mice on a non-starch sugar diet.
This study confirms the benefits of Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT) for patients who recognize the need for chemotherapy but want to do it in a safer, gentler manner. According to Dr. Jonathan Stegall, founder of the Center for Advanced Medicine: “Because cancer cells have more of these insulin receptors, they out-compete the body’s normal cells for resources – namely, glucose. IPT uses that extreme need for sugar to its advantage, by opening cancer’s cellular membranes for significantly better absorption”.2
Overall, my advice: have fun with the costume, but not too much with the sugar.