A spoonful of sugar can look harmless. But it can change a lot in your body
and can even make you have full-blown diabetes.
The average adult has about 5 liters of blood, almost 1.5 gallons. In a healthy state,
you should have roughly a teaspoon of sugar in that 5 liters of blood. That includes fasting
when you get up in the morning or about 90 minutes after your last meal. That's hardly any sugar.
Many believe steaming hot coffee is the cure for many things. Sometimes it's a morning habit.
Drinking coffee can make you feel better, but adding sugar may not be the best action. Assess
your blood glucose levels after adding just a single spoon of sugar to your morning coffee.
Doctors use a fasting blood test to measure your blood glucose content. The average amount
of sugar in 5 liters of blood is 85 to 90 mg per decilitre, which equals around 1 teaspoon.
You would have diabetes if even a teaspoon and a half of sugar were in those 5 liters of blood.
This is how strictly the level of sugar in your
blood is regulated. Both too little and too much blood sugar is harmful.
But how could you eat all the sweets when you were young?
Those treats contained several teaspoons of sugar. And within 90 minutes of eating a cake, you would
be back down to a teaspoon. How could your body do this? The simple answer is hormones! Your hormones
control how much blood sugar is in your body. You are highly sensitive to those hormones when you
are young. However, as we age, our sensitivity to these hormones starts to wane. Years of poor blood
sugar management leads to diseases including heart disease, Alzheimer's, and even cancer.
Did you know that the daily average added sugar consumption in the United States is
17 teaspoons? It adds up to 72 grams which is significantly more than the advised limits.
Fruits, vegetables, grains, and dairy products naturally contain sugar in
the form of carbohydrates. Eating these healthy foods that have natural sugar is
only going to help. Dairy has protein and calcium,
whereas plant-based foods are rich in fiber, vital minerals, antioxidants, and sugars.
Your body uses carbs as the primary source of energy. These sugars from healthy foods
provide your cells with a consistent energy supply since your body digests them slowly.
Consuming a lot of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains lowers the chance of developing
chronic diseases. But the real problem arises when you have too much added sugar.
According to American Heart Association recommendations, men should have no more
than 38 gm, or 9 teaspoons, of sugar per day. On the other hand, women shouldn't consume more
than 25 gm or 6 teaspoons, youngsters aged 2 to 18 should limit theirs to the same.
Sugar has empty calories. Your body breaks down sugar into glucose and
fructose. These sugars don't have any additional advantages, such as vitamins,
fiber, or other nutrients that can improve overall well-being.
If we pick one thing about sugar that is the worst, it would be that we can consume
large quantities without feeling full. Do you always order a soda when you visit a
restaurant? How about water for change? Those couple of refills can make you consume more
calories and sugar. Liquid calories are less filling. Excessive sugar consumption,
especially sugary beverages, also cause weight gain by deceiving your body into turning off
its mechanism for controlling your appetite. This is why having sugary drinks makes it
simpler for people to increase the number of calories in their usual diet. But remember,
two or three glasses of water can make you feel fuller than soda, fruit juice, tea, and coffee.
Do you know what happens when too much sugar is in your bloodstream?
Sugar enters the liver, where it gets converted to glucose. More specifically,
fructose is the primary sugar converted in the liver. But your liver cannot store glucose as it
is and needs to be converted to glycogen. The liver can hold roughly 100 grams of
glycogen at a time. The remaining glucose starts circulating throughout the body. As a result,
blood sugar levels rise. This tells the pancreas to release insulin immediately.
Insulin is one of the most important hormones that deal with controlling sugar. Here's why:
Most of your body's cells, like that of the muscles, are instructed by insulin to take
glucose from the bloodstream. Also, your muscles can pull excess glucose and store it as glycogen
to lower blood sugar levels. The amount of glycogen you can hold in the muscles depends
on your general health. Your muscles and liver serve as little glycogen storage facilities.
The next important question is, what happens when both muscles and the liver
have no more room to take in new glucose? Where does the extra glucose that is now
circulating in the bloodstream go? At that point, the glucose transforms into
fat and gets stored in adipose tissue. This only increases your health risks.
Diabetes is the first thing that pops into the mind while discussing excessive sugar consumption.
Over the past 30 years, its prevalence has more than doubled. And predictions
indicate that it will increase even more.
Consuming too much sugar has historically been linked to obesity too. According to a study,
those who drink sugar-sweetened beverages have a higher risk of developing diabetes.
And that's not all. Researchers linked a high-sugar diet to a higher chance of dying
from heart disease. During a 15-year trial, those who consumed a lot of their calories
through added sugar had a 38% higher chance of dying from cardiovascular disease. In general,
the risk of heart disease increases with additional sugar consumption.
The stored glycogen in the form of fat can eventually result in a more considerable
buildup of fat, which may then develop into fatty liver disease. It further increases
your risk of diabetes and heart disease. Your liver becomes overloaded when you
consume a lot of added sugar in the form of fructose, which causes nonalcoholic fatty
liver disease, a disorder marked by an abnormal accumulation of liver fat. In an animal study,
mice fed a high-fructose diet for extended periods showed symptoms of fatty liver,
intestinal barrier degeneration, liver inflammation, and liver tumors.
A balanced diet might make you feel better, but eating a lot of processed food and added sugar
can also affect your emotions. It might even make you more likely to experience depression.
In addition, it can increase the risk of dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and stroke.
Consuming high amounts of sugar may make you more likely to get cancer.
Diabetes and obesity can both lead closer to this fatal condition. Men who consumed
more sugar from sugar-sweetened beverages over 9 years had a higher prostate cancer
risk. Another study discovered a link between higher consumption of sucrose,
table sugar, sweetened foods and drinks, and esophageal cancer. Now that is scary!
Poor food choices can give you cosmetic disadvantages too. Wrinkles are a part of
healthy aging. Regardless of what you eat, they do ultimately appear. But sugar exacerbates wrinkles
and hastens the aging process of the skin. When the sugar you eat reacts with the protein in your
body, it creates a harmful compound called Advanced glycation end products or AGEs.
They are thought to be crucial in the aging of the skin. It might result in premature aging.
Collagen and elastin, two proteins that help the skin stay plump and bouncy and
maintain its youthful appearance, are damaged by AGEs. Your skin can sag and lose firmness
when collagen and elastin are destroyed. So reconsider that iced coffee, folks!
Lastly, it can have an adverse effect on your dental health.
It's a no-brainer that sugar consumption leads to cavities. Your mouth's bacteria
consume sugar and produce acid byproducts, rapidly leading to tooth demineralization.
Want to break free from the nasty clutches of this sweet poison?
Then stick to reading your food labels. Food makers frequently add sugar to their products,
which can cause a person's blood sugar levels to become excessively high. Be
watchful of names like raw sugar, corn sweetener or syrup, high fructose corn syrup, malt, honey,
molasses, and many more. They are present in processed and packed foods like candies,
chocolates, cereal, and even savory foods.
Water is hands down, the best drink. Switch to water or unsweetened seltzer instead of sodas,
energy drinks, juices, and sweetened tea. A healthy option for caffeine
lovers is to sip your black coffee or use natural substitutes like stevia
or sugar alternatives after consulting with your doctor.
But the key factor is exercise. It may have an impact on the entire procedure.
Muscles preferentially switch their energy source to burning more carbs than fat during
moderate to vigorous exercise. Exercise makes muscles more sensitive to insulin
which is somewhat the opposite of what happens with type 2 diabetes. In general,
type 2 diabetes is characterized by most insulin-insensitive cells throughout the
body. However, exercise has a sensitizing effect, particularly on skeletal muscles.
Your muscle cells are better equipped to use any insulin present to take up glucose during and
after exercise because their insulin sensitivity has risen. Whether or not insulin is present,
when your muscles contract during activity, your cells can absorb glucose
and utilize it as fuel. That is why it is so important to stick to an exercise routine.
People typically work out in the gym to get that
well-toned physique for years. But you can do a lot in a shorter time.
Check out How To Get A Flat Stomach In 1 Month With This Workout or 11 Simple
Exercises That Show Results After Just 1 Workout.
Go ahead. Click one, or better yet, watch both to learn how to lose those pounds quickly. How
many spoons of sugar do you add to your tea or coffee? Let us know in the comments below.