Five reasons to say no
It’s hard to kick the craving for these empty calories once you’ve got a taste for them, but their role in these five common conditions might motivate you to try:
1. Acne. When over-the-counter and oral treatments fail to leave your skin flawless, it’s time to look at your diet. For years, the medical field pooh-poohed the idea that diet could be a culprit in acne, but research tells a different tale. A review of several studies even prompted the American Academy of Dermatology to write an article in 2013 about the growing evidence of a link between diet and acne. In the article, the AAD wrote that high-glycemic-index foods — those that spike blood sugar levels, like sugar — could worsen acne.
2. Alzheimer’s. A Tulane University study published in 2013 found that high blood-sugar levels make beta amyloid protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease much more toxic to cells lining blood vessels in the brain. “The study supports growing evidence pointing to glucose levels and vascular damage as contributors to dementia,” wrote the researchers.
3. Diabetes. While Type 1 diabetes results from genetic and other still unknown factors, sugar does play a role in Type 2 diabetes. A high-calorie diet contributes to obesity and being overweight, boosting the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Also, research is mounting on the link between sugary drinks and Type 2 diabetes. In a study published in Diabetes Care in 2010, people with the highest consumption of sugary drinks — one to two servings a day — had a 26-per-cent greater risk of developing metabolic disease and Type 2 diabetes compared to those who didn’t drink those beverages or had less than one serving each month.
4. Heart disease. A high-sugar diet also plays a role in this condition, which ranks as the secondleading cause of death in Canada. In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, over a 15-year period, people who consumed 25 per cent or more of their daily calories from sugar were more than twice as likely to die from heart disease compared to participants whose diets included less than 10-per-cent-added sugar. In case you’re thinking high-sugar eaters were probably likely to have a poor diet in general, not so. Even for those who had an otherwise healthy diet, consuming too much sugar increased the likelihood of dying from heart disease.
The good news is more Canadians are surviving stroke. The bad? It’s still the thirdleading cause of death, and sugar consumption may be a factor.
For a study published in 2002, researchers analyzed the medical records of 656 adults admitted to hospital because of a stroke. More than 40 per cent of the patients had abnormally high blood-sugar levels at the time they were admitted, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.