Shawn, as one of the individuals you were likely referring to whom you "read
 in amazement" as we told of our blood sugar woes here some weeks back, I
 would urge you to take Bob Avery's thoughts on the matter seriously. Bob
 and I have had our disagreements and we don't agree on a whole lot but this
 one thing we do. If two people like us with different food philosophies
 have come to the same conclusion based on the school of hard knocks, it's
 something you might want to think about seriously.

Two years ago I was making a few of the same pleas to Bob he is now making
 to you, and Bob also shrugged them off with a similar rationale. Now look
 who has moved into the role of elder-speaking-from-experience. I'm not
 generally one to push my ideas on people I know personally after having
 stated my opinions loudly and clearly once or twice, and so when Bob was
 telling back-when about downing those bunches of bananas he writes of here,
 I mostly just kept my trap shut.

Bob is right--the problem creeps up on you insidiously, lots of exercise or
 not, whether the sugar is natural or not. I call it the frog-in-slowly-boiling-water
 syndrome. Of course, this syndrome doesn't apply just to sugar
 problems, but whatever the problem, the pattern is for the progression to
 happen so slowly the usual outcome is your self-perceptions of what is
 "normal" for you become slowly twisted until you just can't see yourself
 straight any more. You think you are superman and then one day you wake up
 and the damage has been done.

It's like smoking and cancer. You may have a hardy enough constitition you
 can do it till the day you die at an advanced age with very few ill
 effects. But you take a big risk of eventually succumbing. People on
 all-fruit or almost-all-fruit diets (so-called fruitarians) seem to have a
 limit of about 1.5-2 years before they hit the wall, and may still be
 bragging to everyone at the one-year mark about how remarkably they are
 doing. One year later, they are shells of their former selves. Or if you
 are on lower quantities of fruit or sugar, but still high, it may be 5, 8
 10, 12 years or more before your adrenals or pancreas give out (not to
 mention your teeth).

I was able to guzzle a quart of Dr. Pepper a day for 6-8 years and then a
 half-gallon a day for another 6-8 before my adrenals croaked. The man Bob
 writes of went 10 years on high quantities of fruit as a runner before he
 was brought down. It is true exercise helps, but it won't keep the problem
 at bay forever.

One signal the problem is getting into the danger zone is when you start to
 crave the sugar items to function "normally" or if you are wanting them all
 the time. (I.e., you are "addicted.") While you are in the slowly boiling
 water, of course, you can't see this, and it may seem it is just a "normal"
 appetite for the stuff, and of course sugars ARE needed in our diet, but
 there are limits. But with a more normal level of sugar or fruit
 consumption, my experience has been one is satisfied with more reasonable
 amounts, and some number of hours will elapse before you feel the desire
 for more. If you are starting to desire significant amounts of sugars or
 fruits at almost every meal or find you miss them terribly if you don't get
 them, that is the time to reevaluate one's consumption of them.

All I can say is just be careful.

--Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]> Wichita, KS