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Sugar has been all over the news lately, in mostly bad ways—take, for example, the most recent study that found that overweight children saw an improvement after just ten days after reducing sugar.
The average American eats 130 pounds of added sugars every year. Filling your body with sugars can have some weird effects on your body, in ways you’d never really expect.
- It tenses your blood vessels. Overdoing it on the added sugars makes your body produce excess insulin in your bloodstream. This means your artery walls get tense, which is a sure path to high blood pressure.
- It leads to “type 3” diabetes. This is the term for when you get Alzheimer’s. caused by insulin resistance and high-fat diets. Alzheimer’s may even turn out to be a metabolic disease, much like diabetes for your brain.
- It makes you behave like an addict. Sugar releases opioids and dopamine, and your body gets resistant to that over time and requires more to feel the same rush. Eventually, you can get addicted. If you’re looking to cut back on sugar, do it a bit at a time, because if you cut it all at once you could get actual withdrawal symptoms.
- It saps you of your energy. Sugar rushes are just that—rushes. The crash is what slows you down. It also triggers serotonin, which actually makes you sleepier. That’s not in your imagination!
- It makes your skin dull. This is because sugar in the bloodstream can attach itself to proteins, making powerful molecules that can attack collagen and elastin fibers in your skin. This can damage and age your skin, leaving it dry and saggy.
