Sugar! It's compelling and everywhere! Your soft drinks, coffee syrups, chocolate, bread, yoghurt, alcohol mixers, breakfast cereals, and yes, your fruit.
Kicking sugar to the curb for good, not only from your diet, but your lifestyle is important to your health outcomes. A lot of what I see day to day in the clinic is people wanting more out of their life and their health. Being it from illness, disease, fertility, and even weight loss.
Keep reading if you would like to know how sugar impacts your weight loss, sleep, immunity, hormones, and fertility, from evidence-based research. Are you ready to kick sugar to the curb from your lifestyle? If not now, when? What is your why?
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Weightloss
Sugar consumption increases your blood sugar levels which can lead to insulin resistance. Insulin is a hormone that moves sugar that is circulating in your blood into your cells, to produce or store energy. With regards to weight loss, insulin also has a role in the storage of fat. Insulin resistance occurs when your cells do not respond to insulin effectively, elevating sugar and insulin. As your blood sugar isn't being taken up by the cells efficiently to use as energy, fat storage can increase, especially around the belly area. Production of the hormone leptin is also compromised, which is responsible for decreasing your appetite to eat less, provide energy and the storage of fat once again.
Sleep
The vicious cycle of not enough sleep and weight gain have been linked. Insufficient sleep can contribute to obesity by diminished activity in parts of the brain that evaluate food selection. A lack of sleep does result in selecting foods with higher calorie intakes. A 2016 study has also found consuming sugary foods does lead to less, lighter, and more restless sleep patterns.
Immunity
Vitamin C is well known as one of our major players in our immune defenses and as a powerful antioxidant. The uptake of Vitamin C from your blood to your cells requires our glucose transporters, that being the same transporters that are responsible for the uptake of sugar from our blood to our cells. As Vitamin C and sugar use the same transporters, regular as well as high doses of sugar each day can compromise our utilisation of Vitamin C.
Hormone Balancing
An excess of oestrogen may be the reason for your sugar cravings. Insulin resistance may decline levels of sex-binding hormone globulin (SBHG) which causes excess oestrogen. Oestrogen excess symptoms may cause bloating, breast tenderness, and headaches. Too much insulin can also impair ovulation and cause your ovaries to make more testosterone over oestrogen which may be signs of excess facial and body hair, reduced breast size, mood swings, and acne.
Fertility
Australia's fertility rate has dropped and 1 in 6 couples experience infertility in Australia and New Zealand. Following on from the hormones unbalancing effects of sugar above, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) is the most common cause of infertility where there is a lack of menstrual cycle. One of the main drivers of PCOS is insulin resistance, lack of ovulation, and increased testosterone levels where sugar does play a part. PCOS sufferers have been reported likely to suffer depression, anxiety, poor self-esteem, disordered eating, and psychosexual dysfunction adding to the complexities of infertility.
When kicking sugar from your lifestyle, what you eat and drink does matter. Using your diet as a foundation of your health is an important place to start when wanting to get more out of your life and health. Being consciously aware of the sugar content in what you eating and drinking daily and limiting added sugars by concentrating on eating a whole food diet and limiting processed foods.
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References
Boyle, J., & Teede, H. (2012). Polycystic ovary synbdrome: An update. Australian Family Physician, 41(10), 752-756. Retrieved from https://www.racgp.org.au/download/documents/AFP/2012/October/201210boyle.pdf
Briden, L. (2018). Period Repair Manual. Australia : Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd.
Fertility Society of Australia. (2021). One in six couples suffer from infertility. Retrieved from Fertility Society of Australia: https://www.fertilitysociety.com.au/
Gokulakrishnan, K., Deepa, M., Monickaraj, F., & Mohan, V. (2011). Relationship of body fat with insulin resistance and cardiometabolic risk factors among normal glucose-tolerant subjects. 57(3), 184-8. doi:10.4103/0022-3859.85200
Greer, S., Goldstein, A., & Walker, M. (2013). The impact of sleep deprivation on food desire in the human brain. Nature Communications, 4(2259). doi:10.1038/ncomms3259
Gropper, S., & Smith, J. (2012). Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism (6th ed.). Australia: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.
Hocking, S., Samocha-Bonet, D., Milner, K., Greenfield, J., & Chisholm, D. (n.d.). Adiposity and insulin resistance in humans: the role of the different tissue and cellular lipid depots. Endocrine Reviews, 34(4), 436-500. doi:10.1210/er.2012-1041
Hollmann, M. e. (2012). Neural correlates of the volitional regulation of the desire for food. International Journal of Obesity, 36, 648-655. doi:10.1038/ijo.2011.125
Marie-Pierre St-Onge, P. A. (2016). Fiber and Saturated Fat Are Associated with Sleep Arousals and Slow Wave Sleep. Journal of Clinical
Medicine, 12(1). doi:doi/10.5664/jcsm.5384
MF. Sowers, M., Beebe, J., McConnell, D., Randolph, J., & Jannausch, M. (2001). Testosterone Concentrations in Women Aged 25–50 Years: Associations with Lifestyle, Body Composition, and Ovarian Status. American Journal of Epidemiology, 153(3), 256–264. doi:10.1093/aje/153.3.256
Zhou, Y., & Rui, L. (2013). Leptin signaling and leptin resistance. Fronteire Medicale, 207-222. doi:10.1007/s11684-013-0263-5
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