Risk Factors for Heart Disease

How Bitter Can Sugar Get ?

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have  revealed some shocking truths. Almost 50 years ago, the sugar industry is reported to have paid Harvard University nutrition scientists to  make a  case against fat and fatty acids/lipids  as primary causes of  heart disease while downplaying the negative health effects of sugary foods and beverages. The Harvard scientists received the equivalent of $50,000 in today's dollars, the investigators said.

As a result, for decades consumers may have been under the wrong notion that only saturated fat harmed the heart, and not sweets.  Not surprisingly, during that time, obesity and associated ills like diabetes reached alarming levels in the United States. The research review by the Harvard scientists was commissioned by a trade group for the sugar industry when the media began highlighting the health risks of sugar. This report appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967 !

Sugar is an  ingredient adding to a culinary delight, but have you seen the poisonous side of it? Too much of those tablespoons can slowly and gradually result in a heart attack, and that’s a ‘not-so-sweet’ truth

Sakshi Anand  had an innate love for everything sweet since her school days. She was drawn to the taste of sweetness just like a bee to honey. Her mother, an ever-indulgent parent, often gave in to her need for an ice-cream in the market, a cherry muffin on a shopping trip, or candy floss after school. It became the family joke that Sakshi always needed sweets as fuel. Unfortunately, her parents did not realize that it was far from a joke.

After she graduated, Sakshi started working in a BPO. Due to the sedentary nature of  her work, she would eat out of  boredom, to fill the time, or even as fuel during the night hours. Bars of chocolate and packets of cookies were her companions. She did not  gain much weight at all, but when she had palpitations one day, her parents took her to the doctor. She was told that her lifestyle needed a change. While many people worked at night, her poor diet, and lack of exercise were causing this. The truth is that sugar causes inflammation, and Sakshi’s arterial walls were beginning to show this.

Dr. Amar Singhal  Senior Interventional Cardiologist and Head, sheds light on the ‘not-so-sweet’ truths:

The  sugar  overload

Sugar can be found naturally in carbohydrate-rich food such as fresh fruits and milk. These provide essential nutrients to our body, and do not have any adverse effects on the body, if they are consumed in the quantities they are meant to be eaten in. However, additional sugar found in processed foods is ‘additionally’ harmful. This type of sugar can be found in candies, cookies, cakes, pies, soft drinks, fruit drinks, waffles, dairy products including ice cream, yogurt, sweetened milk, and practically anything else you pick off the shelf.

Be it soup or ketchup, sugar makes food more palatable. Even when it comes to fruit drinks, some of these have even more additives and sugar (more than 90 per cent) than soda. Finally, many of us have this habit of adding an extra teaspoon of sugar to our tea or coffee. Also, you may find hidden sugar in certain foods that you buy from the supermarket; it is masked by other names such as high fructose corn syrup, dextrose and so on.

Now, the crucial question here is, do we know how much sugar our body needs? Actually, the body does not need added sugar at all. It can do very well with just natural sugars. The occasional honey or jaggery does have some nutrient value, but even these are the same as table sugar (white sugar we use commonly) in terms of the number of calories and the way the body reacts to it with insulin production.

How is it a menace?

Sugar that is not  bound to fiber, commonly known as free sugar, can lead to instability of  blood sugar. This is because it directly enters the blood, causing insulin to get secreted.

Insulin helps blood sugar levels stay even in the body. So this quick entry of sugar in the blood stream is what lay people call the ‘sugar rush’. Constant sugar rushes can cause an imbalance in the metabolism, because the body may find it hard to keep secreting insulin. Eventually, this may lead to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. These are risk factors for heart disease. When we consume too much sugar, and our body releases more and more insulin, it may also force our kidneys to hold on to sodium—bad for the heart.

A regular overdose of sugar can alter internal pH levels. This means that you will have a more acidic body which can be breeding ground for many diseases. Certain forms of sugar can also cause further damage to the liver and to structural proteins of our body. Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup can result in production of artery-clogging fats—another heart disease risk factor.

Over a period of time, excess sugar can contribute to hypertension and high blood pressure, especially in those who have a genetic predisposition. These two, combined with your daily stress and anxiety, as well as obesity, can increase the risk of blood pressure variability, heart rate, and contribute to inflammation of arteries and broader metabolic dysfunction.

The Way Out

A guideline report published by the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that children and adults should limit daily intake of free sugars to 10 per cent of total energy intake, and further says that reduction to below 5 per cent per day can reap additional health benefits, besides preventing tooth decay.  Love it or hate it, you cannot  ignore sugar, because it is something that creates a ’high’ for your salivary glands. But one thing is for sure, your ‘sweet tooth’ can create a menace for your vital body organs.

But will power and voluntary resistance may not always work. You will find yourself craving it and finally give  in to your urges. To ensure you do not  eat too much sugar, identify what your weak points are and target those. For instance, if you know you do not consume sweets, but put 2 teaspoons of sugar in your tea, and you have 4 cups of tea through the day, the maths is simple—8 teaspoons is obviously way too much sugar. Rather than going off sugar completely, try the gentle method of easing it out of your life.

If you have children, avoid treating with sweets, thereby associating happy memories with sweets alone. Give them other treats—a family outing to an amusement park, or a game of  badminton together, for instance.

Do read labels. When buying any food, look at the grammage and sugar content. Remember—it shouldn’t be over 10 per cent !. Also know your measures—1 teaspoon is 5 grams of sugar, and each gram has 4 calories. So ideally, in a 1,500 calorie diet (for a woman of 55 kg weight), a person should not be eating more than 7 teaspoons of sugar at the most.

“ In my opinion  though, a person should ideally not be eating over 3 teaspoons, because sugar is addictive and has worse repercussions for the body than even tobacco,”warns Dr.  Singhal.