That piece is really interesting, Mae - I'm going to c+p a bit of it:
"Sugar promotes inflammation in your tissues, leading to fascial and muscular pain.
All types of tissue, and particularly the fascia, are susceptible to glycation, a pathological process that occurs when there are high levels of sugar in the blood, above what is needed for metabolism. The excess sugar has nowhere to go, so it attaches to a protein molecule, destroying the protein’s normal structure and making it very stiff. The body sees the new, combined molecule as a foreign object and creates an inflammatory response to get rid of it.
This inflammatory response occurs all over the body. You may not notice that your fascia has gotten stiffer. But if you get a massage and it hurts wherever the therapist touches you, you know that your entire body is inflamed.
If you have this kind of overall low-level inflammation under normal circumstances, imagine what happens when you’re injured. Right—the pain is worse. If you eat a lot of sugar, an injured shoulder will be more painful and have less range of motion than if you didn’t.
Let’s make it clear what “sugar” is. It’s not just the white stuff you put in coffee. It’s not even just soft drinks, candy, and cake. Sugar as you don’t know it is any form of carbohydrate. That means bread, pasta, whole grains, potatoes—and especially fruit, which seems to cause about 10 times as much glycation as sugar from other sources.
All the carbohydrates you eat are converted into glucose, which goes into your bloodstream to fuel your body. However, some carbohydrates put more glucose in your blood than others. When that happens, you get a glucose spike, and more of it goes into glycation instead of being used as fuel.
If you have pain right now, try following Ming’s principle: minimize all carbs, and for those you do eat, avoid the simple ones like table sugar and white bread. Stick to carbs that are more slowly absorbed: eat whole grains like brown rice instead of bread, whole grain bread over white bread.
“I always ask my patients about their diet,” says Ming, “and 90 percent eat a high-carb diet—which in my definition means having carbs every time you eat. Based on my experience, it’s safe to say that a hi-carb diet will make your pain worse than it has to be. My patients come in with aches and pains all over. They get off sugar—which is to say, carbs—and the pain goes away. Then they go back to eating sugar, and the pain returns.”