No sugar.

No Special-K Red Berry cereal. No ketchup. No chocolate! (No holiday weight gain, either, though.)

My chiropractor strongly suggested that sugar was causing my daily headaches. So I stopped eating it. And my headaches are gone. (Like it was that simple–not!)

Placebo?

Is sugar really nasty? Or is this all in my head, the proverbial “placebo effect?” I keep wondering why I haven’t heard sugar intake is positively correlated with inflammation before. Was there some kind of secret corn syrup/sugar beet conspiracy that squashed scientific reports on the inflammatory nature of sugar?

Nasty or not, I don’t really care. I’m just happy to wake up pain-free.

Jinx!

If I were a scientist, I suppose I’d develop a hypothesis and test it. Perhaps my experiment would be to eat one of the thousands of cookies that seem to have proliferated throughout my home and see how I felt.

Nah.

I’m not jinxing my headaches free mornings just to find out why I feel better. I think I’ll give these sugar bombs away and observe my neighbors’ body language. If they clutch their heads, is that adequate proof?

Reliable and Valid

For the record, WebMD.com does say,

Sugar causes the body to release inflammatory messengers called cytokines. Soda and other sweet drinks are main culprits. Anti-inflammatory diet experts often say you should cut out all added sugars, including agave and honey.