How eating sugar “caramelizes” your body and accelerates aging

Age comes before beauty.

Lately, longevity experts seem to be focusing on advanced glycation end products (abbreviated to AGEs for convenience), which are the result of chemical reactions between proteins and sugars.

Just as a chef caramelizes onions in a frying pan, new science shows that sugar can “caramelize” our bodies, making us age faster and causing a host of health complications, from cognitive decline to cardiovascular deterioration and even increased cancer risk.

As researchers recently noted in the journal Advances in Orthomolecular Research, sugar creates “chemical handcuffs” that “gum proteins, deactivate enzymes, trigger unhealthy biochemical signaling within cells, and damage DNA.”

result? aging. In other words, aging.

Dr. Pankaj Kapahi, a professor at the California-based Buck Institute on Aging, explained in an interview with the Daily Mail that AGEs are a group of toxins formed by all forms of sugar (fructose, sucrose, glucose).

This includes regular sugar, fruit juices, breakfast cereals, soft drinks, carbohydrates, and processed foods. All of these produce AGEs through glycation, which is the reaction of muscle and organ tissue when exposed to sugar in the bloodstream.

Consuming large amounts of sugar can affect a person’s appearance as it erodes the collagen stored in the skin, leading to premature aging of the appearance. The possibility of internal damage is even more ominous.

Glycation has been shown to distort all the proteins in your body, causing problems in your joints, muscles, tendons, and cartilage. Long-term exposure can even damage the lining of the arteries that supply oxygen to the brain, causing it to become soft. This effect has been demonstrated in several studies showing that consuming a sugar-rich diet for just 10 days can produce these results.

Too much sugar has also been linked to an increase in dementia-causing proteins in the brain, which begin to clot and accumulate when glycated.

Certain foods in particular trigger glycation red flags. Fruit juices have a long history as a health ally, from “balanced breakfasts” to wellness cleanses. Fructose, found in fruit juices, has been found to be one of the worst contributors to AGEs.

It’s quickly absorbed into the bloodstream, spiking insulin and accelerating glycation up to seven times faster than glucose, Kapahi said.

Whole fruits are quite different because their rich fiber and nutrients actually slow their absorption into the bloodstream, and the negative effects of AGEs are mostly counteracted by the fruit’s vitamins and minerals.

Sweet foods are not the only threat to AGEs.

Many of our cooking methods actually start the saccharification process in the foods we eat, causing “preformed AGEs” that are particularly common in grilled and seared meats that have been exposed to high heat.

The good news is that cooking foods at low temperatures, slowly, with plenty of water and for long periods of time can go a long way in combating the threat of AGEs.

Soups, stews, and steamed dishes are good examples, but studies have shown that poached meats contain only a quarter of the AGEs found in roasted and grilled meats.

The effects of excess AGEs are enough to make anyone reconsider their diet, but some may be willing to trade some wrinkles for the occasional roast chicken.