In 28 days it's time for the celebration of the annual Sugar Free Day, an event originally created to honor Bitten Jonsson, Sweden's sugar free queen since 28 years. Bitten is the addiction specialist and nurse who brought the knowledge of sugar addiction to Sweden many years ago and she is now an international authority on sugar addiction and the triune brain.
The 12th of October is the date for our annual tradition and gala, with international and Swedish speakers who share knowledge and inspiration within their specific professional fields, and how sugar, food and lifestyle affect our metabolic health as well as our physical, mental and spiritual well-being – from the inside and out.
This is also an opportunity to mingle with, ask questions and purchase books and health products from health companies and professionals joining in the sugar free day market area on site.
You can come and celebrate with us, mingle and listen to the lectures on site at Epicenter, close to T-Centralen in Stockholm, or tune in from the comfort of your own home or from abroad, via Zoom.
Also! For those purchasing a Terrace- or VIP-ticket, a metabolic test measuring your body's composition of muscle, fat and fluid is included. Get your tickets here.
The gala keeps growing with each year, and this is the fantastic line up of speakers anno 2022:
Johannes Cullberg & Ewa Meurk
Moderators are Johannes Cullberg, founder of the renowned health food chain Paradiset Food Market, entrepreneur and driving spirit within the area of health and real food, accompanied with Ewa Meurk, the initiator of the Sugar Free Day (together with Babben Larsson). Ewa is a Functional Medicine Therapist like myself (in fact, we first met when studying together at the Swedish evolutionary and science-based Paleo Institute and Institute of Functional Medicine in Stockholm, many years ago), a business woman and specialist on insulin and blood sugar.
Babben Larsson
Babben is a cherished and famous Swedish standup comedian, and also has personal experience from sugar addiction. She will talk about the correlation between sugar addiction, workaholism and burnout.
Ann Fernholm
Ann is Sweden's no.1 Science journalist, a fighter for uncovering the truths of the hidden sugar in modern foods and has a PhD in molecular biotechnology at renowned Uppsala University She has written several great books, for example the gem Fejkmaten (Fake Food) and my personal favorite, Barn och Mat (Children and Food), a parental guide on the baby’s taste bud journey from birth to the age of becoming a young child. Ann is also co-founder of the Swedish non-profit organization Kostfonden (Dietary Science Foundation). She will talk about the differences between fake and real food. Dr. Peter Martin Peter Martin is the Gothenburg-based doctor and functional medicine specialist who founded Europe's no.1 medical and functional medicine clinics, FunMed. He is one of my personal favorites on the list of speakers and a great inspiration as he possesses great knowledge yet has a very humble approach, is a driving spirit within health and also done a very inspiring health journey himself – from burnout to recovery to dedicating his life to helping others find the root causes to their health issues and by doing so, helping others find their solution. Peter will talk about why precision health is the future for health care, and why sugary foods and drinks are a threat to your health and to the public health. Dr. Joan Ifland (PhD)
Joan is the queen of food science and the author or book Processed Food Addiction. She is an innovator and global leader in food addiction recovery programs, and teaches health practitioners how to use food addiction recovery to put diet-related diseases into remission. Joan will talk about her scientific research and the relationship between food, science and addiction. Joan's lecture will be held in English.
Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt (The Diet Doctor)
Andreas is the doctor who created and founded DietDoctor.com, the largest low-carb site in the world and available in English, Spanish and Swedish, with the mission to empower people everywhere to dramatically improve their health. Through food as medicine, and perhaps especially by making type 2-diabetes-reversing food recipes simple and available for all. He is also the author of game changing book Low Carb, High Fat Food Revolution.
Andreas will talk about which foods to choose when you want to improve your metabolic health and activate weight loss.
Göran Adlén Göran is a Swedish trend reader, lecturer and author. He will talk about his health journey and his thoughts on the connection between muscle mass, masculinity and metabolic syndrome.
Professor Tim Noakes
Tim Noakes is a scientist and emeritus professor in the division of exercise science and sports medicine at the University of Cape Town. Not only is this professor into low-carb-high-fat with its many healing and diabetes-reversing effects. As mentioned in my book KETO-licous in 2019, he also share my personal belief that the carnivore diet is a fantastic elimination protocol and way of eating with such powerful effects that it has great potential to completely revolutionize healthcare. As a way to press the reset button. Without prescriptions. Without pills. Tim's lecture will be held in English.
And last but certainly not least... Bitten Jonsson
Bitten is our Swedish queen of sugar addiction, the expert who coined the very term sugar addiction when she introduced us Swedes to the knowledge on brain and biochemistry, the science and the treatment of addicts and how to live a life in recovery from sugar and addictive foods.
She brought us the knowledge from the US, after going through treatment many years ago, and after studying and gaining expertise in the field of addiction, with renowned addiction specialist the late Terence T. Gorski as her mentor. Bitten has dedicated her life to helping people recover from addiction. She is the author of Swedish sugar addiction bible Sockerbomben 3.0 (Sugar Bomb 3.0), the founder of the diagnostic tool SUGAR®, and founder of the Swedish education program Holistic Medicine for Addiction® (HMA®) for health practitioners who wish to learn how to provide coaching and treatment for sugar addicts. Read more about Bitten in English here. Read more about Bitten in Swedish here. To hear a Zoom interview with Bitten describing a bit about how the brain and behavior patterns of a sugar addict works, in Swedish, click here.
Deversify and Elitista
The Sugar Free Day is arranged and brought to you by my partners in health, the Swedish health companies Deversify (who share my holistic view on health and provides tech-savvy gadgets for measuring and tracking your ketosis and health markers) and Elitista (the platform where I will soon launch my upcoming digital courses in the name of holistic health, metabolic healing, fitness, biohacking, general KETO-licious-ness, well-being and zen).
Why this day matters to me
Holistic health and spreading knowledge, tips and inspiration on how to find solutions and keys to better health and life quality for all beings, is in my blood. And this day is all about doing so, and about creating change. For individuals, for public health care and for the future (our children).
But the Sugar Free Day is also important to me because I understand and can personally relate to what it's like to suffer from ill health, and addiction. Many years ago, I was depressed with a brain biochemistry that had reached what felt like rock bottom: anxiety and emotional darkness. It was the result of a long time of being stuck in a vicious cycle of exercising too hard combined with a restricted, low-fat and low-calorie diet that re-arranged my brain's reward center, together with workaholistic, performance-based behavior patterns, and emotional grief and exhaustion. But the root cause of the depression, the bullet that pulled the trigger and drew me further away from myself, from others and down into the isolating spiral of ill health, was not outside of me. I was born with a brain biochemistry pre-disposed to addiction, with sugar being my brain's primary drug of choice. And the low-fat-low-calorie-dieting (fake foods), high amounts of stress, over-achieving, over-exercising and over-breathing messed up my biochemistry so bad I had turned into a complete, imbalanced mess. I looked fine on the outside but inside I felt a loss of control in life and a loss of control in regard to sugar and gluten. It was hell.
In 2015, I found Bitten. If it wasn't for her kindness and the fact that she has devoted her life to helping other sugar addicts to rise, heal and live life in recovery, I would probably not be here today. So I owe my life to her, and I have devoted my life to help others live healthy, happy and magically sober lives, too. And if I can help save just one person from the misery and darkness of addiction, then I have served my purpose well.
Not all humans can relate to what addiction feels like or what it means to have your brain hijacking your behavior (it's not a matter of poor character – it's more complex than that) because an addict's brain and the brain of a "normie" who can eat almost anything and not get sick in addiction, are living in two separate worlds – because we have different brain biochemistries. But when it comes to food: we ALL benefit from eating real foods and ditching inflammatory, chronic disease-inducing and depressive processed foods and sugar. It's in everyone's interest to fight for these things, because modern foods are killing us all. Metabolic illness and cardiovascular disease stem from inflammation, as a result of the modern food industry's fake or sugary products. All financial surplus on 12 October goes to the Dietary Science Foundation, so that they can keep doing research aiming to inform, create change and improve public health.
To secure your ticket and read more about the Sugar Free Day in Swedish, click here. Get 25% off with my promo code: HANNA25
See you there!
With love / Hanna P.S. If you want to dig deep into the science of how food affects our health, please see the Index of sources in my book, KETO-licious.. To learn more about differences between normies and sugar addicts, or to test yourself by answering some screening questions for sugar/flour click here.
Me and Bitten at the very first celebration of the Sugar Free Day, on the12th of October 2019.
