Cavities, Fat and Wrinkles
Monday, August 9th, 2010
We are all more than familiar with the addictive power of sugar. Despite the fact that increased sugar consumption has been associated with increased blood sugar levels, which can result in the storage of excess fat, studies have shown that the average American consumes about 150 pounds of sugar, per year. Talk about sweet nothings!
This may be attributed to the fact that sugar is found everywhere. From the obvious sweet-tooth junkie foods – desserts, candy, packaged goodies like pies, cookies, cakes – you name it. However, sugar can also be found, unsuspectingly, in everyday foods – flavoured water, fruit yogurt, whole grain and otherwise ‘healthy’ cereals e.g. the sugar coated raisins in Raisin Bran, meat stews… you name it. Just look at the labels.
Also, it is not uncommon for food manufacturers to up the sugar (and sodium) levels in foods that are labelled ‘low’ or ‘none’ fat. Why? Because most of the ‘flavour’ is stored in the fat in foods, so if the fat is removed, the ‘flavour’ needs to be added somehow. Surprised? Do the check yourself. Compare the amount of sugar/ salt in an ‘original’ recipe to that of the ‘non-fat’ one. Scary isn’t it?
In addition to totally wrecking your health, new research suggests that sugar plays a role in the accelerated aging of yourskin. Like we need another reason to kick the processed sugar habit.
12g Sugar | Unhealthy Much?
How does this work?
Excess sugar in your diet is converted to glucose in your body. This excess glucose that the body cannot ‘burn off’, because we are too busy eating chips rather than being active, has been found to react negatively with the skin’s proteins, such as collagen, to create toxic by products that are referred to as AGEs – (Advanced Glycation End-products) as well as free radicals. Collagen is one of the strongest natural proteins and a key factor in skin’s elasticity and tone.
AGEs are known body terrorists. They increase with age (the one associated with amount of years lived on this earth) as well as diseases such as diabetes, and are involved in many other diseases such as heart failure, rheumatoid arthritis, alzheimers, cataracts and kidney disease.
As it specifically concerns the skin, simply put, this chemical attachment of excess glucose and certain proteins (e.g. collagen) has been shown to lead to inflammation in the body, which ultimately results in the breakdown of collagen. This ‘breakdown’ damages the natural 3-dimensional structure of the collagen protein hereby making it – and by extension your skin – stiff and less elastic. We’re talking wrinkles, loss of skin tone (saggy skin)… you know the drill.
Considering that the body’s collagen content decreases naturally by 1% after the age of 30, this is not good news. Boooo you sugar. Boooo!
Labels, Labels, Labels.
So how do we combat this? Well one way is to
1. Decrease the level of refined sugars in your diet.
By refined sugars we are referring to any of the following ingredients:
- Sugar
- Corn syrup
- High fructose corn syrup
- Dextrose
- Molasses
- Cane juice for example.
This I write as I munch on a slice of Devil’s chocolate cake that I baked yesterday. No judgements please; I had one slice, instead of my usual three. Yes, this my definition of progress. Maybe next time I’ll just have a cup of delicious herbal licorice tea after lunch. Maybe. Working on it.
2. Strive to maintain a healthy, balanced diet full of:
- Whole grains
- Fruits
- Vegetables
See link here for ideas of the best foods for good health.
3. Keep active.
Strive to maintain a healthy lifestyle and, at the very least, ‘burn off’ as many (sugar) calories as you ingest. The less sugar calories you ingest, the less you have to burn. There’s no rocket science here folks, just elementary school math.
1-1 = 0
After you’ve tried all of the above,
4. Look for products that inhibit the formation of these toxic AGEs.
No, you cannot just slather on products that contain collagen on your skin and fix your mess. Science doesn’t work like that – the collagen molecules in these products are too large to penetrate the skin. Your body has to be stimulated to produce more collagen. Some ingredients that assist the body in forming more collagen are:
- Soy
- Glucosamine
- Genestein
- Vitamin A
- Licorice
- Peptides – e.g. Argine/ Lysine Polypeptide
Finding products with these ingredients may prove to be helpful. Otherwise you can opt for medical (both surgical and non surgical ones) which I will cover in a subsequent post.
Freakin’Fabulous
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Photo: “Smile” | Wesley Williams | My 365