Is sugar making us age faster?

For many, sug­ar is a kick in every­day life. The cof­fee break at three o’clock is often a sav­iour in dis­tress. A bis­cuit to the cof­fee and… Ting-a-ling! We feel good again. The sug­ar goes quick­ly into the blood­stream, and you can con­cen­trate bet­ter - but not for long. Insulin increas­es and your blood sug­ar is sink­ing. In a short amount of time you are hun­gry again, tired and crav­ing anoth­er biscuit.

But the sug­ar kicks wear on the body, and it ages it both exter­nal­ly and internally.

The skin ages

The skin reveals what is hap­pen­ing inside our bodies.

The nat­ur­al age­ing process is seen on the skin as ear­ly as 25 to 30. The process is high­ly per­son­al - some get the signs soon­er, oth­ers lat­er. But the first vis­i­ble signs of age­ing are small lines around the eyes. The lines run­ning from the nose down to the cor­ners of the mouth, so-called nasolabi­al folds, become deeper.

What hap­pens is that the metab­o­lism of the skin begins to decline. The mito­sis, which before ensured that the skin was soft and smooth, slows down. The sub­stances that give the skin its tight­ness, such as the pro­tein col­la­gen, are not pro­duced at the same rate. The con­nec­tive tis­sue becomes weak­er, and the fat pro­duc­tion decreas­es on the skin sur­face. The skin los­es vol­ume and den­si­ty, and the elas­tic­i­ty changes and changes in pig­men­ta­tion can occur. We get wrin­kles and thin­ner, dri­er skin.

This is why sugar speed up the ageing process

Ageing skin is a nat­ur­al part of life. A large part of the age­ing process is genet­i­cal­ly con­di­tioned; if your par­ents have few wrin­kles, chances are you will age just as sub­tly - and vice ver­sa. This is facts we can­not control.

However, we can influ­ence some exter­nal fac­tors to con­trol the skin’s age­ing process. What we should do, as far as pos­si­ble, accord­ing to more stud­ies, is to avoid so-called advanced gly­ca­tion end-prod­ucts, (AGEs). Simply described, these are chem­i­cal com­pounds, formed between pro­teins and excess sug­ar in the body.

We pri­mar­i­ly get AGEs via food and drink. Often through prod­ucts sweet­ened with sugar.

AGEs cause us to age faster

The prob­lem is that the body can­not metab­o­lize these com­pounds and omit they become harm­ful. Some of these sub­stances are secret­ed via the kid­neys. Still, a high pro­por­tion stays, stored in the body’s tis­sues and accu­mu­late over time.

It is one of the pri­ma­ry caus­es of pre­ma­ture skin age­ing. In the skin, AGEs cause a pre­ma­ture cross-link­ing of col­la­gen, the sub­stance that helps the skin sup­ple. The cross-link­ing makes the skin’s con­nec­tive tis­sue less elastic.

This means: The more sug­ar we eat, the faster our skin ages.

Causes more problems

When AGEs are men­tioned, sug­ar is often point­ed out as the biggest cul­prit. But there are also AGEs in some cooked foods. Grilled, hard-fried and roast­ed foods belong to the bad ones.

The stor­age of AGEs in the body is also linked to the lifestyle. The lev­els are affect­ed by insom­nia, stress, smok­ing, alco­hol intake, seden­tary and too much sun exposure.

All of this is known to affect the skin. But the signs on the skin, our largest organ, gives a sig­nal on what is hap­pen­ing inside the body. An increas­ing num­ber of stud­ies point to the fact that AGEs may be a rea­son behind health prob­lems such as dia­betes and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease. They are also sus­pect­ed to be the cause of mem­o­ry prob­lems, diges­tive, kid­ney and liv­er prob­lems and poor vision.

You can reverse the effect

However, it is pos­si­ble to cut the stor­age of AGEs in the body and take down the risk of dis­ease and pre­ma­ture age­ing. It might also be pos­si­ble to reverse some of the vis­i­ble skin changes asso­ci­at­ed with sug­ar intake.

What we can do is to check what we eat and do the same with our lifestyle in gen­er­al. Researchers in the field empha­size that added sug­ar should be exclud­ed from the diet to cut the risk of chron­ic dis­eases. And it is nev­er too late to start reduc­ing sug­ar in the diet.

Food producers can also turn around

As a food pro­duc­er, it is not too late to reduce sug­ar in your prod­ucts. Candy, cook­ies, pas­tries, choco­late and ice cream are clas­sic sug­ar bombs. And the biggest of them all is soft drinks. Consumers of today are more aware of the effects of added sug­ar - and they are look­ing for new alter­na­tives to sweetening.