The consumption of sugar has sky rocketed in the recent decades. Today, the average American consumes about 150 pounds of added sugar each year. This is not including sugar that’s naturally occurring in food. Sugar has many deleterious effects on the body. Today, we will cover obesity, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s.

Obesity

How does sugar make you fat? It’s all about the hormonal impact that food has on our body. Insulin is our bodies major fat storing hormone. Fat does not raise insulin, protein does a little, but carbs do a lot. When you consume sugar, your insulin spikes, causing fat storage. There are certain foods that have more of an impact on blood glucose than others, this is known as glycemic index, and glycemic load. For example, strawberries have a GI of 40, while the average white bagel has one of 69. Here is a great website for more information: https://www.glycemic-index.org/glycemic-load.htmlThis is a general thing because as I said in the article I wrote about epicaloric control, we all respond differently to food.

Diabetes

How does access sugar cause type 2 diabetes? Our bodies infinite wisdom has many ways of protecting us. When we consume too much sugar over a period of time, we will develop something called insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is when our insulin is constantly spiked through access sugar to the point where our insulin receptors become resistant. So, we have all of this insulin floating around in our system, but our bodies can’t use it because the cells won’t take it in. The glucose is not going where it needs to go in the body, like the liver and muscles, so it starts tearing things up in the blood steam, or store it as fat with diabetes. This is where we start seeing the horrible side effects of the disease.

Alzheimer’s

Experts are now referring to Alzheimer’s as type 3 diabetes. Alzheimer’s is classified as insulin resistance in the brain. So, the exact process I explained above, but for the brain. Glucose is critical for various parts of the brain, and when it doesn’t get it, terrible things can happen. The brain accounts for about 2% of our weight, but takes in about 20% of nutrients, including oxygen. Our brain will gladly sop up half of the glucose we take in for any given meal. Another factor in Alzheimer’s is a build of of amyloid beta plaque in the brain over the years. This is caused by ither factors, but sugar contributes. Take a look at this research: Kandimalla R, Thirumala V, Reddy PH. Is Alzheimer’s disease a Type 3 Diabetes? A critical appraisal. Biochim Biophys Acta Mol Basis Dis. 2017 May;1863(5):1078-1089. doi: 10.1016/j.bbadis.2016.08.018. Epub 2016 Aug 25. PMID: 27567931; PMCID: PMC5344773.