Dietary fat was blamed for decades as the primary driver of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. That common wisdom has rapidly changed in the face of new research showing that sugar is the real danger and should be eliminated wherever possible.

“Sugar is poison,” says Richard Jacoby, M.D., a peripheral nerve surgeon based in Scottsdale, Ariz. “We’re eating too much, and it’s changing the biochemistry of our nerves.”

In his new book — “Sugar Crush: How to Reduce Inflammation, Reverse Nerve Damage, and Reclaim Good Health” — Dr. Jacoby says sugar causes a surprising range of illnesses, including ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), Alzheimer’s, autism, Bell’s palsy, cancer, carpal tunnel syndrome, diabetes, gallbladder disease, heart disease, migraines, and multiple sclerosis.

The solution to such problems, he says, is to decrease consumption of sugar, wheat, and processed carbohydrates, and eat more good fats, especially omega-3 fatty acids.

After treating thousands of patients with peripheral neuropathy, Dr. Jacoby says that he has found that sugar is the common denominator behind all neurodegenerative diseases. That’s because sugar compresses and damages nerves that carry electrical
impulses from the brain to the muscles and internal organs.

As an example, he points to one of the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: loss of the sense of smell, which is caused by olfactory nerve damage.

In addition, Dr. Jacoby tells Newsmax Health, sugar plays a key role in the development of two other major killers:

Cancer, because sugar is essential for the formation and spread of tumors.

Heart disease, because sugar inflames the lining of the coronary arteries.

“Fat doesn’t cause heart disease, and neither does cholesterol,” Dr. Jacoby says. “Sugar causes heart disease because it irritates the lining so that cholesterol sticks to it like Velcro.”

By contrast, he says, omega-3 fatty acids prevent heart disease because they keep the lining as smooth as Teflon so that nothing sticks to it.

Although Dr. Jacoby believes that all sugar is bad, the worst, he says, is high-fructose corn syrup.

“Eighty percent of the food we eat has high-fructose corn syrup in it,” says Dr. Jacoby. “The reason we like it is because it tastes great. It’s really sweet and very addictive, and it’s poison.”

High-fructose corn syrup impairs liver function. It also suppresses leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite.

That’s why people who consume a lot of high-fructose corn syrup in the form of soda and other processed products are constantly hungry, can’t stop eating, and are likely to become obese and diabetic.

“You’ve got to change your diet,” says Dr. Jacoby, who recommends eliminating sugar, wheat, and processed carbohydrates.

“If you’re going to eat a carbohydrate, make sure it’s the most complex, unrefined carbohydrate,” he says.

Fruits such as oranges, bananas, grapes, and grapefruit may not fit that description, he says, because they’ve been bred to contain high amounts of fructose.

“When you were a kid, did you put sugar on grapefruit?” he asks. “Today you don’t do that because grapefruit is 10 times sweeter than it was 40 years ago. I hardly eat any fruit at all because the fruit has been changed.”

For optimal health, Dr. Jacoby recommends reading food labels to identify hidden sugar and adopting a fat-based diet. Ideal choices include foods with a high concentration of omega-3 fatty acids such as wild-caught fish, and meat and butter from grass-fed animals.

“Once you go to a fat-based diet, you feel totally satisfied,” he says. “You’re never full, but you’re totally satisfied.”

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