How Sugar Causes Aging
Sugar is one of the major factors that increase production of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) inside your body. AGEs form when sugar reacts with amino acids. Along with oxidation, AGEs is a major contributor to aging and disease. Over time high blood sugar levels dramatically increase age-accelerating AGEs. This is why type 2 diabetics many times appear that they have not aged well and look older than their real age. But this age-accelerating effect is NOT just limited to diabetics.
Limiting or omitting sugar is a well-known key to longevity, because sugar molecules are probably the most damaging of all. Dr. Mercola says, “Fructose in particular is an extremely potent pro-inflammatory agent that creates AGEs and speeds up the aging process. It also promotes the kind of dangerous growth of fat cells around your vital organs that are the hallmark of diabetes and heart disease. In one study on fructose, 16 volunteers on a controlled diet including high levels of fructose produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs in just 10 weeks!”1
Sugar also increases insulin and leptin levels and decreases receptor sensitivity for both of these vital hormones, which is a major factor of premature aging and age-related chronic degenerative diseases such as heart disease.
When you eat a typical American diet, your blood sugar can elevate and stay that way continually. Unfortunately, the average American consumes a whopping 2.5 pounds of sugar a week! When you add other low-quality carb foods such as bread, cereals, doughnuts, bagels, pasta, pastries, cookies, and candy it’s easy to see why so many Americans are in such poor health.
This type of high-sugar and high-carb diet is also what’s driving the obesity epidemic—NOT diets high in fat. Why We Get Fat author Gary Taubes explains that [refined] carbs, like fructose and other sugars, destroy your insulin and leptin sensitivity, which in turn causes your cells to accumulate more fat, and makes it more difficult to get rid of the extra weight. If you want to look and feel younger longer, it’s time to ditch sugar and most grains!
Notes
1 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/22/how-sugar-accelerates-aging.aspx
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Dear Cherie, I am writing this to you with a sad heart. I have a beautiful friend who was vibrant and healthy only a year ago, and not even forty. She was shortly diagnosed with colon and liver C. She was eating live, healthy food and drinking smoothies. She is a Christian, and saved. She is now in palliative care since the end of Jan. We have prayer requests in as many ministries as we can think of. She is very very thin as you could understand. We believe the tumors are gone, but they have her so sedated and will not remove some of the heavy drugs. She doesn’t seem to need them for acute pain. She is so alert and manages to get out of her bed to do a little “dance” while praise and worship music is played, and she has a whole different look and life when we pray in the spirit with her. Her spirit wants to live to love the Lord. She can and does eat a bit, but we believe she needs protein. They give her popsicles all the time! I was going to make her some steamed walleye fish to try. The doctors say to give her what she wants. We have asked the Lord so many times, how much faith does she or any of us need, when He says to have faith and be healed. If you know of anything that we could try, please let me know. Thank you for all your newsletters.
Sincerely,
Maxine McCracken
Saskatoon, Sk. Canada
I need to add that a lot of foods upset her stomach, so we need to be careful with acid and gassy foods. Thank you
Dear Maxine,
I am so sorry to hear about your lovely friend. She needs vegetable juices, not popsicles. Those are loaded with sugar, dyes and additives, which feeds cancer. If she could get juices and smoothies again, it would help her a lot. She also needs protein. You could have them add whey protein to her smoothies. If the dr said she can have what she wants, why doesn’t she request these foods along with salads, steamed veggies, and fish.
I pray for your dear friend and her healing.
I can attest to the fact that if you leave sweets and wheat out of your diet, it isn’t as hard to keep your weight stable. I was in the hospital with double pneumonia a couple years ago, and
changed my whole diet to consume only healthy, organic meats, vegetables, and LOTS of pure water. I am not hungry, but eat 2 very healthy meals per day. I am able to maintain, plus exercise by jumping on my mini-tramp plus walk on nice days, which I’m sure helps too! I can honestly say I actually enjoy it!