Your earliest birthday memory may help you understand why you make the choices you make. Take a moment and walk down memory lane. How old were you when you celebrated? Who was there to celebrate with you? How did you feel when you were surrounded by loved ones? Are you passing those same experiences to your loved ones? The truth is that history does tend to repeat itself. If your earliest memory of celebrating your birthday is filled with joy, happiness, games, laughter and fun, you want to pass that on to your offspring, right? Do you remember what you ate when you were celebrating? If you've been reading my stories, you may have a good idea why I'm asking all these questions about birthdays.
The story I'm sharing today is the one I wanted to offer yesterday. I just couldn't do it. I didn't want to be the grinch of the family since two of my siblings were celebrating birthdays on the same day. I was entertained by their recollection of early birthdays. The older sister remembered how her birthday celebration was "interrupted" when our mom needed to rush to the hospital to give birth to our youngest sister. Now that the birthdays are over, it's time to talk about the elephant in the room. Yes, it's the birthday cake. It's also the ice cream. If today happens to be your birthday or if you have one coming up soon, you may want to stop reading and exit right now. I'm going to share what happens when you eat one slice of birthday cake. It's not pretty. I'm the bad big brother. At least I waited one day to share what a friend shared in a text message about one slice of birthday cake. I must admit this made me feel a bit queasy in the stomach.
Here are the facts (thank you to my pharmacist friend, Theresa for sharing)...
Our bloodstream can only handle 5mg/dL of carbohydrates at any one given time. This is why we have a pancreas (our very own fire hose of insulin that gets the sugar out of our blood and keeps it at a homeostasis level of 5mg/dL at all times).
That cake: 61 grams of carbohydrates which equals 12 times (yes, TWELVE) times the amount of sugar (carbohydrates) that a human body can handle.
If you live in the United States, you're not done when you eat that slice, are you? Don't you need to top it off with something sweet to drink? Don't forget the sandwich that has a bun. How about some crackers? How high do you think your insulin is now? If I were a betting man, I would wager that you're already craving more sugar within the next couple of hours before your insulin levels even had a chance to recover.
I hope I didn't depress you too much here. Maybe you believe it's too late. Who knows? Maybe those permission slips you carry around are enough for you to keep consuming all that sugar. How many of those do you have? I'm referring to those pills your doctor is prescribing so you can keep eating all that sugar.
Let's end on a good note. In my opinion, it's never too late. If you think otherwise, please at least consider the generations that are coming into this world now. Think about creating new birthday memories for them that aren't centered around those gigantic birthday cakes loaded with poison. Yes, you got that right. Let's call it what it is...poison. The good news is you can have more birthdays at the end of your life cycle if you heed this warning. Have a great day.
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