Any ideas how I can re-train my taste

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I seem to getting sugar cravings more and more just recently .

After eating a meal I usually WANT something SWEET within minutes of the meal ! !

Pretty sure it's not diabetes as I feel well and have no urges to drink loads of water.


Also I seem to need more salt than other members of the family ! !
Any ideas how I can re-train my taste

A lot of people have a sweet or fruit after a meal. A lot of people eat salty food. you seem pretty average taste wise.

I'm not sure. Only thing I can think of is to eat less salt and sugar, and to try not to add them to things. Also, perhaps, to use herbs to add taste to food instead? Though I don't know, this may be no help.

I have recently had to replace chocolate and sweets with fruit as I was eating far too much of them. I have felt a bit better since doing that as I replacing artificial bad sugars with good sugars found in fruit.

I don't really add much salt to anything anymore as I generally tend to use herbs and spices instead to add flavour. A small pinch of salt generally tends to do in order to enhance and release flavour. There are plenty of herbs and spices you can use instead of lots of salt to give something flavour and to wean you off the salt:

e.g. for tomato based stuff i.e. sauces for chicken or pasta and pizzas: basil, coriander, parsley, oregano, italian seasoning, rosemary and/or cinnamon. Mix and match any of these to siut you or have just one type in the mix. My advice would be if you are to use cinnamon, don't mix with anything else as it's not that nice if you do.

For fish (if you like it), use parsley or dill to add flavour to a baked fish (bake it with the fish covered in foil) or mix it into a white sauce or a cheese sauce.

For curries, add some extra herbs and spices if the flavour isn't sufficient for you such as cardamom pods (remove before you eat the curry otherwise if you eat one it will blow your head off!!), star anise (like with cardamom pods, remove before eating the curry), fennel seeds, caraway seeds, turmeric, chillies or chilli powder, garam masala, bay leaves (remove before eating the curry), galangal (usually for Thai curries), kaffir lime leaves (again usually for Thai curries, however these can deliver a lot of flavour), ginger, cumin, asafoetida etc. This is just to name quite a few. I swear by my herbs and spices and have a cupboard filled with them and you don't have to be the greatest cook in the world either. Again you can mix and match these to find a combination that suits you.

Do a little research on the types of herbs and spices and what you can do with them as you may find something that you really like and forget why you ever needed so much salt in the first place.

Have you recently "quit" something? For example, when I decided to quit drinking (after finding myself at a bottle a day), I found myself craving sugar because my body was accustomed to the sugar intake provided by the alcohol.

Since you've notice that the onset seems a bit sudden, look for something like that. This may be a temporary condition that will pass after a time.

The best to you

This habit stays with me for a while too, and then usually something happens to break the pattern (such as working hard and forgetting to eat all day, and then deciding it's a good day to start a diet).

Apparently a sugar addiction is one of the most difficult addictions to break. Some people who thought they were clever tested rats by giving them cocaine, and another bunch of rats were given sugar, and it was harder to get the sugar-addicted rats to give up their addiction. (IMO it's because that was probably because sugar is food and cocaine is not, but then, it's their test, not mine.)

I drink about 4 large spoons of sugar in a mug of tea (and have several mugs per day), and when I do eat chocolate (sometimes I can go without for weeks), then it's 100 g or more at a time, and the habit can persist for days.

Maybe you could get a tongue transplant.

You seem to be describing an insulin-based response. If you are becoming insulin resistant, which happens to many people as they age, then a meal alone might not provide enough simple carbohydrate, which is converted to glucose and triggers insulin release from the pancreas. Fasting for a day, or working hard enough to burn up liver glycogen stores and release glucagon, will rebalance your system, at least temporarily, and provide relief from the craving.

Sugar and cocaine in rats (or humans) are difficult to compare. Cocaine mainly acts on domapinergic pathways in the brain and has no direct metabolic/endocrine effects. In contrast, sugar in the form of glucose acts on virtually every cell in the body, ups serotonin in the brain, and affects the endocrine system, primarily through insulin.

I struggle with sugar cravings from time to time, and used to struggle with them every day. I'd like to have all forms of sugar eliminated from my diet entirely, but sugar does help calm my brain when it goes into overdrive due to sensory issues or being peopled out. Often I can outwit a sugar craving by simply finding something distracting or engrossing (computer games work well for me, or computer programming, or a good math book) and do that for an hour or so. The craving is often gone at that point.

1 word.

Candida.

Could you please point me to any websites about candida that are not full of quackery? I am willing to consider that candida overgrowth may be responsible for health problems, but some of the other claims on sites that discuss candida are so outlandish as to make the entire sites disreputable. Any reasonable sources would be appreciated; thanks.