If you’ve been keeping up with these newsletters, it may seem as if I’m in a war against sugar lately… and today, I’m going to show you one more reason to avoid sugar that we didn’t talk about in other recent articles…
Sugar actually speeds up AGING due to a biochemical reaction in your body from high blood sugar levels. Not good!
Here’s the deal…
If you eat/drink too much sugar from sweetened drinks, soda, cakes, cookies, candies, ice cream, etc, you consistently shoot your blood sugar levels through the roof and require your body to pump out more insulin to dispose of that blood sugar in the liver, muscle cells, and also as body fat.
As we’ve talked about before, abusing this blood sugar control system (controlled by your pancreas) for years and years eventually can wear out your insulin sensitivity and your pancreas and type 2 diabetes can develop.
No surprise there right… I’m sure you understand that process. But here’s something most people don’t understand…
Consistently raising your blood sugar through all of these daily sugary foods and drinks also causes a reaction in your body that creates molecules called Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs). Having elevated levels of AGEs in your body can cause accelerated aging of your skin, as well as your organs.
If you know somebody that eats/drinks a LOT of sugar daily, you might notice they also are not aging well and have more wrinkles… this can be seen sometimes with type 2 diabetics as well. Of course, this can vary greatly based on skin tone, and other lifestyle factors too.
This is yet another reason why minimizing sugar intake (particularly processed sugars and HFCS) as well as minimizing other foods that spike your blood sugar (such as breads, pasta, cereals, muffins, bagels, etc) can help reduce the amount of AGEs that are produced in your body and slow down the aging process!
Yes, a paleolithic nutrition plan that is moderately low-carb and low-sugar (the type we always talk about in this newsletter) where you focus mostly on healthy meats, veggies, berries, nuts, eggs, etc while minimizing sugar and grains not only makes you leaner, but helps keep you YOUNG!
But remember, staying youthful is not only about the types of food you eat, but also about the types of exercise you do…