Every occasion calls for a celebration, and every celebration involves sweets. Sugar has an essential part of our lives with some detrimental effects. Also, many diseases occur due to a high intake of sugar. We consume different sugar sources like beets, sugarcane, corn, palm, grapes, dates, etc. Further, it acts as a preserving substance to preserve ready-to-eat foods and other cooking items.
To Understand the impact of sugar on your health, you must know how sugar functions in your body. The sugar that we consume consists of 2 parts, fructose and glucose. The glucose gets consumed by cells of the body to produce energy for organs to function. However, fructose remains unused, impacting the metabolism.
Later, the excessive building of fructose sugar in the body causes fatty liver and insulin resistance causing the body to become unhealthy. The pancreas keeps producing insulin to digest stored sugar, but the liver and the muscles fail to respond to the produced insulin. The uncertainty in the sugar level over a long time causes many health problems.
5 Health Problems Caused by Sugar
- Overweight: Eating food and beverages containing a high amount of sugar can cause a high rate of calories in your body. Moreover, even when you try to cut down sugar intake by performing exercises, you still gain 15 pounds over the next three years.
- Heart Disease: Consuming too much sugar causes high sugar levels in the blood. It can result in thickening of the blood, causing blood pressure and improper heart functioning.
- Diabetes: As discussed above, when the fructose part of the sugar gets stored in the body, it triggers the pancreas to produce more insulin. However, the liver and muscles cannot respond to the insulin produced, causing type 2 diabetes over a period.
- Liver Disease: The packed food and beverages we consume consist of fructose sugar for preservation. Again as we know, fructose is harmful. Thus, it builds up in your muscles and liver, causing fatty liver.
- Cavities: We have heard this from our elders a lot that do not consume too many sweets and sugar. It causes cavities. Food that gets stuck in our teeth feeds the bacteria present in our mouths. These bacterias form acids that cause the tooth enamel.
Ways to reduce the impact of added sugar
Here are some ways you can start opting in your daily lives to reduce the harmful effects of added sugar.
- Eat a balanced diet consisting of fibrous vegetables, good fat, proteins such as dals, meat, eggs, etc.
- Eating fruits with less fructose sugar levels like berries lowers the amount of fructose stored in the body.
- Avoid sweet drinks made of artificial flavours and fruits containing high sugar content. You can drink coconut water instead.
- Reducing the intake of packaged food can help take the first step towards a healthy lifestyle.
- Avoid consuming any form of sugar. Even brown sugar and honey contain a high amount of fructose.
At Naturoville, we have the best dieticians to help you maintain a balanced and healthy diet. Moreover, we are the best wellness centre in Rishikesh, providing our guests with healthy dietary options.
