One
of the very worst food substances you can put in your body is sugar. Sugar
suppresses your immune system. When you eat a big dose of sugar, like a bottle
of Coke or a candy bar, you temporarily tamp down your immune system’s ability
to respond to immune challenges. The effect lasts for several hours, so if you
eat sweets several times a day, your immune system may be perpetually operating
at a distinct disadvantage.
Sugar
promotes inflammation. Inflammation, which is part of the immune response, is
not always a bad thing. But eating sugary foods can fuel excessive,
inappropriate inflammation that serves no useful purpose and actually promotes
aging and disease.
Sugar
suppresses the release of human growth hormone. You know those ads in in-flight
magazines that show a super-buff guy, who, thanks to a radical anti-aging
program, looks about 50 even though he’s approaching 70? He’s most likely
injecting himself with human growth hormone. Of course, he’s also watching his
diet, spending a couple of hours a day in the gym, and using lots of
self-tanner, but there’s no doubt that the hormone shots have a lot to do with
his physique. Although the effects can be dramatic, hormone treatments are
expensive and risky, so I don’t personally recommend this course of action. But
if you want to slow down the aging process, you definitely want to do what you
can to naturally enhance your body’s production of human growth hormone.
Avoiding foods that are high in sugar is a good way to do that. Exercising,
healthy eating, and avoiding undue stress also help.
Sugar
promotes glycation. Sugar molecules treat your body like a singles bar. Once
they get into your bloodstream, they start looking around for things to hook up
with, like attractive protein and fat molecules. The hook-up is known as
“glycation” and like most hook-ups, the results aren’t pretty. These glycated
molecules act like drunken sailors, careening around your body, breaking things
and peeing where they shouldn’t. They produce toxic compounds called advanced
glycation end products, or, AGEs. That is perhaps the most poetically-just
acronym in biology, because AGEs essentially throw the aging process into
fast-forward. And much of the damage done by AGEs is irreversible. If that
doesn’t motivate you to walk away from the M&Ms or the candy bar, I don’t
know what would.
Sugar
raises insulin levels. An influx of sugar into your body will have a fairly
predictable result: Your blood sugar levels will zoom up. Shortly after, your
pancreas will release a bunch of insulin to help clear sugar from your blood
into your cells. As blood sugar levels go down, insulin levels return to
normal. But when you eat a lot of sugar, you’re constantly calling for insulin,
and that can backfire in a couple of ways. Over time, it takes more and more
insulin to get the job done. Eventually, your pancreas may just stop responding
to the call. Congratulations, you’re now an insulin-dependent diabetic. And
along the way, exposing your cells and organs to chronically high insulin
levels accelerates the aging process.
Now that I’ve scared the living jelly beans out of you, let me
put all that in perspective. A small serving of sugar or the occasional sweet
treat is not going to instantly translate into a new wrinkle or trigger
multiple organ failure. The little horror show I’ve described above is what
happens when your diet is chronically
high in sugar. What counts as high? The World Health Organization suggests that
you keep your sugar intake to no more than 10% of total calories. For most
people, that’s about 50 grams of sugar, or the amount in one 20 ounce bottle of
soda (or about 28 small Swedish fish). If you’re overweight or have any other
risk factors for heart disease or diabetes, it might be wise to keep it to
something closer to 5%.
There’s also one circumstance in which the
negative effects of sugar are somewhat mitigated: right after a vigorous
workout. Strenuous exercise creates a situation in which sugar is very
efficiently metabolized—assuming that you’re not diabetic, of course. Instead
of hanging around in your blood stream looking for trouble, sugar consumed
after you exercise is taken up very quickly by your just-worked muscles. Plus,
exercise sensitizes your cells to the effects of insulin, the exact opposite of
the desensitizing effect that chronic sugar intake has.
In fact, consuming some simple sugars after a work-out, along
with some protein, is a good way to enhance your recovery. In a perfect world,
of course, you’d choose natural, nutrient-dense sources of sugar like fresh
fruit. But, if you’re looking for a way to enjoy a little treat without feeling
too guilty about it, use it as your reward after a good work-out.
Source:
Nutrition
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