Eating too much sugar will cause your skin to age and damages your health.

Eating too much sugar will cause your skin to age and damages your health.

Eating sugar causes inflammation in the body, increasing the breakdown of collagen and accelerating ageing skin as a result. It is also a commonly found ingredient in processed foods and considered addictive by many health experts. A 2011 study found that the brains of people with “food addiction” reacted to junk food the same way that the brains of people with drug addictions react to drugs. Even condiments such as ketchup and mustard have sugar in them. Why? To make them “taste better” of course. Read the ingredient list of the foods you have. It’s usually disguised as corn syrup or some other type of sweetener. Sugar can wreck your skin and be ageing to you. So don’t just look for it on the obvious foods. In a study in April 5, 2011 -- it was found that -The brains of people with food addiction appear to behave like those of people with dependence on alcohol or drugs.

''People who report symptoms of addictive-like eating behaviour also appear to show the same pattern of brain activity as we would see in other addictions," says researcher Ashley N. Gearhardt, a clinical psychology doctoral student at Yale University.

 Her study is published online in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The researchers believe the study is the first to link addictive eating with a specific brain activity pattern.

The study results suggest that some obese people may be better served with addiction treatment than with traditional obesity treatments, says Mark Gold, MD, an addiction expert at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

Food Addiction and Brain Activity

With one-third of American adults obese, Gearhardt and her colleagues wanted to explore the theory that addictive processes may be involved in the development of obesity. For the study, the researchers did a complete evaluation on 39 women, average age about 21. Their average body mass index (BMI) was 28 (25 and above is termed overweight). They ranged, however, from lean to obese. All had enrolled in a program to help people get to and maintain a healthy body weight.

The researchers used the Yale Food Addiction Scale to measure addictive eating and gave each woman a score. The scale has 25 items and asks about eating behaviours such as loss of control.

Next, the researchers used functional MRIs (fMRI), which are capable of measuring tiny metabolic changes that take place in the active parts of the brain.

The fMRIs were done when the women drank a tasty chocolate milkshake and a tasteless drink. They were also done when the women were shown pictures of the milkshake and a glass of water.

When the women looked at the picture of the milkshake, the food addiction scores correlated with greater activation in areas of the brain that help encode the motivational value of certain stimuli in response to food cues. Activation in these areas has been linked to food cravings, for instance, from a little sweetness in our coffee to the occasional candy store or ice cream binge, we understand that deep, undying love affair most of us have with all things sweet. The issue is that sugar doesn’t love us back the way we’d like, and it wreaks havoc on the body, especially your face. When we talked to our top experts (and we’re about to share the love) on what sugar does to your skin, we were so shocked at just what it causes that we realised that we had to break up with the sweet stuff.

 Let’s talk about what sugar does to your skin and how to cut it out, once and for all: First of all, what does sugar do to the body, and what specifically does it do to the skin? “Sugar – and all carbohydrates in general, doesn’t matter if it’s from a potato or a cupcake – increase your insulin levels and they increase inflammation in the body,” says Dr. Tanzi. “That inflammation over time leads to trouble with multiple systems in the body, your skin being one of them. There’s recent research that points to sugar accelerating the breakdown of collagen in the skin, which can lead to the acceleration of aging. Also, excessive insulin also leads to excessive redness (including rosacea) and acne in the skin. So, for some people it’s true that too much chocolate and pizza can increase your acne
 First of all, it’s really important to distinguish added sugar (sugar added to foods to make them sweet) from naturally-occurring sugars in healthy foods like fruit and dairy, You want to avoid the added stuff – which can creep in to almost any packaged food, even if it seems healthy and doesn’t taste particularly sweet. Sugar causes inflammation, particularly in the digestive system, which has a direct effect on the way your skin looks and feels. If you’re eating things that are hard to digest or irritating to the body, your skin reacts immediately: you’ll get more breakouts, experience puffiness around the eyes, and the lymphatic system can’t function properly, which slows the delivery of nutrients to the skin and the ability to remove waste. You’ll have breakouts, clogged pores and more breakouts. So, what are the long-term effects of a sugary diet on the skin? It puts a lot of stress on the skin, ageing it faster than it would otherwise. The skin is always in a push-pull between collagen creation and breakdown. As we age and the skin gets damaged from sun exposure, environmental factors or issues with things like a bad diet, it accelerates the rate at which the collagen breaks down. Sugar causes dryness and stimulates excess sebum production which is an enemy to already sensitive skin. The dryness is caused by the fact that there aren’t enough nutrients getting delivered to the face, the sebum is from irritation. Inflammation is bad, especially for prolonged periods. When someone has too much sugar and the skin has reacted with inflammation which makes skin super sensitive. First and foremost, cut out all the ‘white:’ white flour and white sugar. Cut out pasta, bread and sweets. Follow a low GI diet filled with lean proteins and vegetables. You can satisfy your sweet tooth with healthy and skin-loving whole or dried fruit like mango, berries, raisins and dates. Another evil and sneaky source of sugar? Flavoured yogurt. Start your day for example with an egg white omelette with spinach and tomato. It stabilises your blood sugar levels and will help you feel fuller longer without spiking your blood sugar. You’ll avoid that late morning sugar crash we all know so well. If you really actively remove sugar, you can see improvement with redness, acne and rosacea within a week.

The glycation process

It is already known that excess sugar can lead to a variety of health concerns, but what most forget is that too much sugar can also affect the skin. Sugar can be digested in many forms, including the consumption of carbohydrates and can even be formed via meal preparation. If there is too much sugar in the body, protein molecules can cross-link with sugar molecules. Once this cross-linking process has occurred, the new sugar proteins are called advanced glycation end products (AGEs). The human body does not recognize AGEs as normal, and will produce antibodies that cause inflammation in the skin. Once formed, AGEs tend to gravitate toward dermal collagen and elastin.

As people age, proteins in the body can become damaged through the introduction of AGEs—one of the key factors in aging of the skin. The more sugar you eat, whether processed or natural, the more AGEs are produced. When the body is overwhelmed with AGEs, collagen becomes compromised. Effects of the glycation include elasticity, stiffness, accelerated aging and compromised barrier function. Other conditions that appear when microcirculation is damaged and cell turnover slows are a loss of volume in the face due to redistribution of fat. Although the development of lines and wrinkles is normal as client’s age, it is difficult to see clients in their 20s resemble a person in their 40s, which is more frequently being witnessed in treatment rooms.

AGEs have been connected to several different health challenges. The oxidative conditions that arise from the formation of AGEs can lead to Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease and renal failure. The amount of AGEs present increases in certain situations involving hyperglycemia and oxidative stress, such as diabetes. Diabetics—whose ability to process glucose is at the root of the disease—have an especially difficult time with glycated sensitive skin issues, including neuropathy and scleroderma. The number of people being diagnosed with diabetes and or pre-diabetes is increasing year by year. Intake forms are extremely valuable when dealing with health-challenged skin. Questions about other health challenges can be added in order to potentially determine why glycation issues can vary, especially if diabetes or other conditions are in the picture.