Refined sugar can accelerate ageing

Nowadays, people are much more conscious about their skin's beauty. But refined sugar, which we use vastly in our daily life, can damage the skin's smoothness before the action of age. Though ageing is an age and life-style dependent natural process because of hormonal imbalance. But recent study has confirmed that refined sugar accelerates the ageing process by adding inches to our waistlines and wrinkles to our face.

Natural sugars are found in fruit as fructose and in dairy products, such as milk and cheese, as lactose. Foods with natural sugar have an important role in the diet of cancer patients and anyone trying to prevent cancer because they provide essential nutrients that keep the body healthy and help prevent disease.

Generally refined sugar comes from sugar cane or sugar beets, which are processed to extract the sugar. It is typically found as sucrose, which is the combination of glucose and fructose. We use white and brown sugars to sweeten cakes and cookies, coffee and even fruit. Food manufacturers add chemically produced sugar, typically high-fructose corn syrup, to foods and beverages, including crackers, flavored yoghurt, tomato sauce and salad dressing. Low-fat foods are the worst offenders, as manufacturers use sugar to add flavor.

While sugar in its natural form can be rich in vitamins and minerals but refined sugar contains zero nutrients. In sugar digestion process chromium is an important trace element which we get naturally from various food as a tiny amount which helps in blood sugar regulation. But by getting so much refined sugar and other refined carbohydrates, body faces chromium deficiency and refined sugar easily enters the bloodstream rapidly, causing and contributing to a host of health problems.

We know that collagen (considered as 'fountain of youth') and elastin are two vital proteins of the skins structure. When refined or artificial sugar enters our bloodstream it attaches to proteins and forms harmful new molecules through a process called glycation. This glycation process damages the vital skin proteins. When these two proteins are damaged the result is the signs of ageing, including lines of and wrinkles, begin to show.

Young body contains plenty of collagen so skin retains moisture and maintains elasticity but as we become older, our bodies produce less collagen and the same time if we consume high sugar it will rob the remaining collagen of its ability to maintain a smooth skin texture.

According to researchers, all the fancy wrinkle creams and potion in the world cannot protect us from the damage that sugar causes to our skin. So its urgently needed to avoid refined sugar laden food. Though it's too hard for us to avoid sugar totally but we can minimise the use of refined sugar by substituting natural sweetener such as honey, maple syrup, date sugar, coconut sugar, blackstrap-molasses etc., (these sugar also considered as added sugar) or  sweeten from fruits.

 Researchers also suggested to take not more than six teaspoons (or about 25 grams) per day for women, and nine teaspoons (or about 37.5 grams) for men in general condition.

The writer is a student of Pharmacy at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Science and Technology University (BSMRSTU). E-mail: tawhidislam2021@yahoo.com