Medication you do not need Blog

Bad Medicines one should avoid (eg Sugar)

    

A spoonful of sugar might make the medicine go down. But it also makes blood pressure and cholesterol go up, along with your risk for liver failure, obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

Sugar and other sweeteners are, in fact, so toxic to the human body that they should be regulated as strictly as alcohol by governments worldwide, according to a commentary in the current issue of the journal Nature by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

While a spoonful of sugar might make the medicine go down, 21 spoonfuls will significantly lower your "good" cholesterol and spike your triglycerides, the fat associated with heart disease and stroke, according to a study published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Those 21 teaspoons constitute the average amount of added sugars consumed by Americans, according to the study. Make that 22 teaspoons, should you need an extra one for your heart medication.

Added sugar, such as corn syrup and other sweeteners added to everything from canned soup to, well, nuts, have long been associated with obesity, diabetes and dental cavities. This new study, led by researchers from Emory University in Atlanta, is the first to connect these sweeteners to blood lipids.

     

The researchers propose regulations such as taxing all foods and drinks that include added sugar, banning sales in or near schools and placing age limits on purchases.

Although the commentary might seem straight out of the Journal of Ideas That Will Never Fly, the researchers cite numerous studies and statistics to make their case that added sugar — or, more specifically, sucrose, an even mix of glucose and fructose found in high-fructose corn syrup and in table sugar made from sugar cane and sugar beets — has been as detrimental to society as alcohol and tobacco.

The amount of sugar we're allowed to eat every day according to new U.S. government guidelines is too high and could pose health risks, a new study suggests.

The study showed that getting one-fourth of your daily calories from high fructose corn syrup — the equivalent of drinking about three glasses of juice per day — increased participants' risk of heart disease.

Participants in the study who drank three glasses a day of a beverage sweetened with either fructose or high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) had, within two weeks, significant increases in their blood fat and cholesterol levels, both risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend people consume no more than 25 percent of their daily calories from added sugar. The new study suggests the 25 percent upper limit should be re-evaluated, the researchers said.

"Our results suggest that consuming 25 percent of daily energy as sugar is too much sugar," said study researcher Kimber Stanhope, of the University of California, Davis.

"Parents should not feel safe feeding their children 25 percent of energy as sugar or consuming that much themselves," Stanhope said.

Stanhope said the study only lasted two weeks, so it's not certain whether the metabolic changes observed during the study will last over the long term. More research needs to be done to verify this and determine just how much added sugar is safe to consume, Stanhope said.

Glucose versus fructose

In contrast to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines, the American Heart Association recommends people consume just 5 percent of their daily calories from sugar.

Stanhope and colleagues examined 48 adults ages 18 to 40 years whose body mass index, or BMI, ranged from 18 to 35 (a BMI above 30 is considered overweight). The participants were divided into three groups. One group consumed 25 percent of their daily calories from glucose, one from fructose and one from HFCS.

Glucose and fructose are both sugars found in nature, but are rarely consumed in their pure form. HFCS is a syrup derived from corn in which about 50 to 55 percent of the glucose has been converted to fructose.

The women in the study drank the equivalent of 3.7 12-once sodas per day and the men drank the equivalent of 4.4 12-once sodas per day, Stanhope said.

After two weeks, those in the fructose and HFCS group had increases in their LDL ("bad") cholesterol, triglycerides and apolipoprotein-B — a protein that can lead to plaque buildup in arteries, which in turn, can cause vascular disease.

Participants who drank the beverage sweetened with glucose did not see the same increases. Stanhope said this is because the body responds differently to fructose than it does to glucose. The body has a mechanism to keep the liver from absorbing too much glucose — the organ puts up a "stop sign," and glucose is instead sent to the blood stream where it can be used by the muscles, brain and other tissues, Stanhope said.

But no such stop sign exists for fructose, so the liver continues to absorb fructose, even when it does not need the energy, Stanhope said, and excess sugar is converted into fat, she said.

More long term studies are needed to determine whether a high glucose diet may eventually have detrimental effects on heart disease risk factors as well, Stanhope said.

Criticism

Experts said the study was quite small and did not precisely control for diet and exercise, so the conclusions that can be drawn are limited.

"I don't think one can draw really large sweeping conclusions from this that would change the way we eat," said Katherine Tallmadge, a registered dietitian and author of "Diet Simple"

Tallmadge said she hopes the work is the impetus for further, more rigorous studies that can inform the dietary guidelines.

But Tallmadge agrees that getting 25 percent of your daily calories from added sugar is too much.

"In my experience 25 percent of your diet as sugar is just way too much, even to maintain a healthy body weight," and would not help you lose weight, Tallmadge said. Tallmadge said people should consume no more than 10 percent of their calories from added sugar.

Pass it on: Getting 25 percent of your daily calories from added sugar may increase your risk of heart disease.

Sour words about sugar

The background is well-known: In the United States, more than two-thirds of the population is overweight, and half of them are obese. About 80 percent of those who are obese will have diabetes or metabolic disorders and will have shortened lives, according to the UCSF authors of the commentary, led by Robert Lustig. And about 75 percent of U.S. health-care dollars are spent on diet-related diseases, the authors said.

Worldwide, the obese now greatly outnumber the undernourished, according to the World Health Organization. Obesity is a public health problem in most countries. And chronic diseases related to diet such as heart diseases, diabetes and some cancers — for the first time in human history — kill more people than infectious diseases, according to the United Nations.

Less known, and still debated, is sugar's role in the obesity and chronic disease pandemic. From an evolutionary perceptive, sugar in the form of fruit was available only a few months of the year, at harvest time, the UCSF researchers said. Similarly, honey was guarded by bees and therefore was a treat, not a dietary staple. [6 Easy Ways to Eat More Fruits & Veggies]

Today, added sugar, as opposed to natural sugars found in fruits, is often added in foods ranging from soup to soda. Americans consume on average more than 600 calories per day from added sugar, equivalent to a whopping 40 teaspoons. "Nature made sugar hard to get; man made it easy," the researchers write.

Many researchers are seeing sugar as not just "empty calories," but rather a chemical that becomes toxic in excess. At issue is the fact that glucose from complex carbohydrates, such as whole grains, is safely metabolized by cells throughout the body, but the fructose element of sugar is metabolized primarily by the liver. This is where the trouble can begin — taxing the liver, causing fatty liver disease, and ultimately leading to insulin resistance, the underlying causes of obesity and diabetes.

Added sugar, more so than the fructose in fiber-rich fruit, hits the liver more directly and can cause more damage — in laboratory rodents, anyway. Some researchers, however, remained unconvinced of the evidence of sugar's toxic effect on the human body at current consumption levels, as high as they are.

Economists to the rescue

Lustig, a medical doctor in UCSF's Department of Pediatrics, compares added sugar to tobacco and alcohol (coincidentally made from sugar) in that it is addictive, toxic and has a negative impact on society, thus meeting established public health criteria for regulation. Lustig advocates a consumer tax on any product with added sugar.

Among Lustig's more radical proposals are to ban the sale of sugary drinks to children under age 17 and to tighten zoning laws for the sale of sugary beverages and snacks around schools and in low-income areas plagued by obesity, analogous to alcoholism and alcohol regulation.

Economists, however, debate as to whether a consumer tax — such as a soda tax proposed in many U.S. states — is the most effective means of curbing sugar consumption. Economists at Iowa State University led by John Beghin suggest taxing the sweetener itself at the manufacturer level, not the end product containing sugar.

This concept, published last year in the journal Contemporary Economic Policy, would give companies an incentive to add less sweetener to their products. After all, high-fructose corn syrup is ubiquitous in food in part because it is so cheap and serves as a convenient substitute for more high-quality ingredients, such as fresher vegetables in processed foods.

Some researchers argue that saturated fat, not sugar, is the root cause of obesity and chronic disease. Others argue that it is highly processed foods with simple carbohydrates. Still others argue that it is a lack of physical exercise. It could, of course, be a matter of all these issues.