Five reasons for those over 50 to give up sugar (middle-aged spread and premature ageing aren’t healthy – or sexy!)
Many signs of ageing that appear in our fifties may not be because we are getting older, and they could be more to do with a lifetime of too much sugar.
Among the many dietary and lifestyle reasons that can trigger wrinkles, high cholesterol, joint pain, stress, and other health issues, sugar consumption is a big one.
Sugar (more specifically, fructose) is at the heart of why we begin to see signs of ageing in our 50s.
If you think giving up sugar is just about losing a bit of weight, you may want to look at what’s happening to your body when you eat too much of the sweet stuff.
When we think of sugar, we usually associate it with the white sticky stuff, commonly known as table sugar (sucrose). But that’s only half of the story, as sucrose, after consumed, is metabolised as 50 per cent glucose and 50 per cent fructose.
Glucose is absolutely essential to every cell in your body for good health. It is fructose (fruit sugar) that is the real problem.
The body uses both, and, in fact, glucose is essential to every cell in your body for good health.
It is fructose (fruit sugar) that is the real problem, it makes up 50 per cent of table sugar, and every piece of fruit you consume consists of fructose.
So when you declare to the world that you are thinking about giving up sugar, it is actually fructose that you need to cut back on. It can be quite a conundrum. Could fruit be bad for us?
Whereas every cell of your body metabolises glucose, fructose can only be metabolised by your liver. It’s released back into the bloodstream when needed, where it can be problematic or converted by your liver to fat. Here are my five good reasons to cut down on fructose.
#1 Middle-aged spread
If it were ever possible to have good and bad fat, now is the time to recognise where your fat is located is a big deal and can indicate future health issues.
Fat on your tummy may not consist only of the subcutaneous fat that you can see – which you may have come to think of as ‘just middle-aged spread’ – but of visceral fat.
Visceral fat differs from the fat elsewhere in your body as it is internal and dangerously surrounds primary organs such as the liver, heart, pancreas and abdominal organs.
It increases your risk of increased blood pressure, high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, stroke and insulin resistance.
It is linked to the over-consumption of fructose.
It’s not pretty, and it’s certainly not healthy.
#2 Premature skin ageing
When consumed in excess, fructose can attach itself to your skin’s collagen, setting off a cascade of damage and destruction.
A process called glycation takes place and can have devastating effects on your skin.
If left unchecked, glycation destroys collagen proteins. Or in other words, it causes the formation of wrinkles.
#3 Signs of ageing in the body
If you’ve ever suffered from joint pain, high blood pressure or trouble with your kidneys, you may be tempted to accept it as part of the inevitable decline of ageing.
But something else could be at play. There may be something in your diet playing havoc with the internal harmony of your body.
Yep, you guessed it: fructose.
The ingestion of too much fructose, if it doesn’t end up stored as fat, circulates in your bloodstream and raises uric acid levels (a waste product of urine). Excessive uric acid leads to health conditions, including hypertension, gout and kidney disease.
#4 Stressed out, burnt out, tired.
Now more than ever is the time to enjoy the spoils of all the years that have gone before. But we live in a crazy, busy stressed-out world, and we’re living longer and working longer.
When we’re under stress, a hormone called cortisol spikes. It’s a normal stress reaction and part of our ancestral survival mechanism, putting us in fight or flight mode to respond when we are under attack or feel threatened.
It is not meant to be constantly raised. But these days, many of us feel under a consistent level of ‘threat’ (workload, boss, family, juggling too many balls…), and our cortisol is constantly raised when it is not meant to be.
The body isn’t designed for this, leaving us with chronic anxiety, depression and suppressed immune function.
All this stress often stimulates our desire to load up on fructose-laden sugar. Snacking on sugar might seem like the solution to stressful situations.
Still, it’s short-lived and further elevates our stress hormones. A cycle of stress develops, leading to health below par.
#5 Fatty lipids or bad cholesterol in your blood
High cholesterol management is controversial, and for many, the jury is still out.
Nevertheless, we can all take a little control over our own health and cut back on fructose, and there are some compelling reasons why.
Your low-density lipoproteins or LDL (bad cholesterol) are particularly susceptible to the damaging process of glycation.
Once glycated, your LDL becomes poorly recognised by the lipoprotein receptors that scavenge and remove these troubling lipids from your bloodstream. Further, the path of debris from all this damage accumulates, putting you at greater risk of heart disease and stroke.
How to cut down on fructose?
The constant overload we put on our bodies from too much fructose is unnecessary. With a few minor adjustments to your consumption, you can significantly impact your health.
Cut back on the following, as they all contain far too much fructose for your body to deal with:
White and brown sugar, honey, agave syrup, golden syrup. High-fructose fruits, dried fruit, concentrated fruit juice.
Sugar in packaged foods
Read the labels of all packaged foods, such as ready meals, soups, sauces, yoghurts with fruit in (not so healthy as you might think, as they have sugar added), biscuits and the like, and even tinned fruits and vegetables.
Sugar, fructose, corn syrup and agave syrup all have a way of flying under the radar and creeping into many packaged foods. It’s pretty shocking once you start to read the labels!
Or course, you could stop eating packaged foods and instead eat freshly cooked food made from fresh, natural ingredients, which the human body requires to be adequately nourished.
In conclusion, managing the amount of sugar we eat will improve our overall health and while getting older is inevitable; whether it’s a sprint or a pleasant stroll is up to us and can be a healthy process with some action on your part.