As mouth-watering as a sugar-laden sundae or icing-topped cupcake is, we should all know by now that sugar isn’t exactly healthy. In fact, it may be one of the worst things you can eat (that is if you’re trying to live a long, healthy life).
One study from UC San FranciscoSugary drinks such as soda can actually age your body as fast as cigarettes. Sugary drinks can cause weight gain, but there are other ways that sweets can affect your body.
In fact, when you eat a ton of sugar, almost every part of your body feels the strain—and that’s bad news for your health in both the short term and especially the long term.
You can expect an insulin spike and possibly kidney failure if you consume too much sugar.
Sugar is the same as cocaine in that your brain responds to it
Sugar intake can cause a rush of the feel-good brain chemicals serotonin and dopamine. So does use certain drugsLike cocaine.
Just like a drug. Your body craves more.
“You then become addicted to that feeling, so every time you eat it you want to eat more,” explains Gina Sam, M.D., M.P.H.Director, Gastrointestinal Motility Center at The Mount Sinai Hospital.
To regulate blood sugar, your insulin levels will spike.
“Once you eat glucose, your body releases insulin, a hormone from your pancreas,” Dr. Sam explains. The insulin’s job is to absorb the excess glucose in the blood and stabilize sugar levels.
A little later, you will experience that sugar crash.
When insulin is working, your blood sugar levels drop again. This means you’ve just experienced a sugar rush, and then a drastic drop, leaving you feeling drained.
“That’s the feeling you get when you’ve gone to the buffet and you’ve overdone it, and all you can do is lie on the couch,” explains Kristen F. Gradney, R.D., Director of Nutrition and Metabolic Services Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Sugar intake can actually make you tired. All. The. Time.
Feeling sluggish all the time, or always being hungry or thirsty can all be signs you’ve been binging on a little too much sugar.
“Your body’s physiologic response is to send out enough insulin to deal with all the sugar and that can have a sluggish effect,” Gradney explains.
“Additionally, if you are only eating simple sugars, you will feel hungry and tired because you are not getting enough of the other nutrients to sustain your energy,” like protein and fiber.
You may start to notice you’re putting on some extra weight
It’s simple: Excess sugar equals excessive calories equals extra weight in the form fat.
Not only do high sugar foods pack a ton of calories into a small amount, but they contain almost no fiber or protein—so you often end up eating much more before you feel full. It’s a dangerous cycle.
“If you’re just eating sugar, you may be gaining weight but still feeling hungry,” Gradney says. She adds that you could easily gain a pound over the course of a week from eating one candy bar and one 20-ounce soda (that’s 500 extra calories) each day.
Overeating too much sugar can lead long term to obesity
High-sugar diets account for more than a third of Americans being clinically obese.
Insulin resistance can result from obesity, which increases blood sugar levels, leading to diabetes.
When you’re overweight or obese, your cells can become resistant to the normal effects of insulin (for reasons that aren’t 100 percent understood), and struggle to absorb glucose from the blood to use for energy.
The pancreas kicks into high gear to produce more insulin. But despite the excess insulin trying to do its job, the cells still do not respond and accept the glucose—which ends in excess sugar floating around in your bloodstream, with nowhere else to go.
Prediabetes are those with blood glucose levels that exceed the normal range. When blood sugar levels reach even higher, that’s type 2 diabetes.
Your liver plays an important role when you are trying to metabolize carbohydrates. It takes excess glucose out of your bloodstream and stores it for later.
One of the liver’s functions is regulating blood sugar levels. Your cells use glucose from your blood to generate energy. The excess glucose is taken by your liver and stored in glycogen. The liver releases glucose into your bloodstream when you cells require it later, such as between meals.
Your liver can only store certain amounts of glucose. The rest can build up in the liver as fat.
“If you exceed this amount, it turns into fatty acids and that’s when you get fat deposits in the liver,” Sam explains.
Nonalcoholic fatty liver diseases can result. This is when your liver cells accumulate fatter than you can metabolize.
(Sugar isn’t the sole cause, but glycogen storage is a big contributor, as is any sugar-induced weight gain.) “Fatty liver can develop within a five-year period,”
Gradney explains. It can also happen faster depending on your diet and genetic predispositions to insulin resistance.
If the condition continues, it could eventually lead to liver damage. Your love of soda isn’t really worth that, is it?
Blood sugar-saturated can cause damage to almost every other organ as well as the arteries.
Pumping blood full of sugar through blood vessels can be compared to pumping sludge through tiny pipes. “The pipes will finally get tired. That’s what happens with your vessels,” Gradney explains. So any area relying on small blood vessels can become affected—kidneys, brain, eyes, heart. “It can lead to chronic kidney disease or kidney failure, high blood pressure, and you have an increased risk of stroke if you have high blood pressure.”
It also damages your skin, causing collagen to be broken down and leading to premature aging.
You can make your skin look more youthful by cutting down on sugar, in addition to applying anti-aging serums or SPF.
“The collagen and elastin fibers in the skin are affected by a lot of sugar in the bloodstream,” explains dermatologist Debra Jaliman, M.D.
Glycation refers to the process by which glucose attaches protein in the body. This includes collagen as well as elastin which are proteins found in connective tissues and responsible for maintaining skin’s smoothness and teaching.
Studies have shownGlycation makes it more difficult for these proteins to heal themselves, leading to wrinkles and other signs that you are getting older.
Your dentist probably said that sugary foods can cause tooth decay.
“The sugar itself doesn’t do any damage, but it sets off a chain of events that can,” explains Jessica Emery, D.M.D., owner of Sugar Fix Dental LoftChicago
“We have bacteria in our mouths that feed on the sugars that we eat; when this takes place it creates acids that can destroy tooth enamel. Once the tooth enamel is weakened, you’re more susceptible to tooth decay.”
If you’re ready to eat less sugar, simply reading nutrition labels is a good way to start. But the basic fact is there’s no “right” amount of sugar you should be consuming.
Added sugar is packed into so many foods that you’d never really think about (case and point: ketchup). “We encourage people to read labels and count grams of sugar,” Gradney says.
According to the Academy, there’s no hard and fast recommendation for daily intake, she adds. A good rule of thumb: “Always choose the option that has the least amount of sugar in it.
If you have juice or soda, choose water.” Choose whole fruits instead of drinking the juice—the sugar content is less concentrated and the fiber helps your body break it down more effectively.
To naturally reduce the sugar content of your meals, choose whole foods. “The more you stay away from processed foods, the better off you’ll be.”
