Alchemy of health and beauty: Our daily sugar-coated cake

Image courtesy of Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sugar has definitely very bed press in recent years. It's not without reason. Most of recent research reveal that it is sugar that is the main culprit behind the obesity epidemic, not fat. Overuse of sugar – and more generally – all carbohydrates is responsible for excessive insulin production, which in turn, if prolonged, can have disastrous consequences on human body. To adverse side effects of hyperinsulinism belong among others:

diabetes Type 2
obesity
pancreatic cancer (insulinoma)
metabolic syndrome

Although complex carbohydrates carry part of the blame for the poor health of those who follow western diet, the simple sugars like glucose, fructose and sucrose (compound made of the first two, aka table sugar) are the real menace.

All the carbohydrates are eventually broken down to simple sugars – monosaccharides. There are several different forms of monosaccharides, chief among them is glucose which enters blood stream incredibly fast triggering insulin response. Excessive consumption of glucose causes so called insulin spikes – secretion of the hormone, which in turn initiates rapid glucose uptake by tissues either accumulating it as glycogen (reservoir of quickly available fuel for muscles) or utilizing it for energy production.

Those of you who have a sweet tooth (join the club!) have no doubt experienced so called sugar high usually followed by sugar crash. The former is an energetic state characterized by very good mood and relaxation, the latter can be compared (and by some even felt) like a hangover. This comparison is not a coincident – glucose is one of the nutrients that is essential to proper functioning of our bodies, but in excess is a poison. While for a short time it gives you happy feeling, it also wreaks damage to your blood vessels and provokes body to secret insulin which helps remove glucose from blood stream and helps transform it into glycogen or in case there's too much glucose is present, into fat, stored for future usage in – surprise, surprise – fat cells.

Raising insulin levels in response to sugar can be measured for each saccharide. This property is called glycemic index. The higher the index, the more potent insulin response of our bodies to a given substance.

Other monosaccharides are not to be taken lightly either. Take fructose of instance. It has comparatively low glycemic index, but it's processed almost entirely by liver and can contribute to fatty liver disease.

As far as complex carbohydrates are concerned, they all end up as simple sugars when digested. Fortunately, it takes more time for the body to convert a complex carbohydrate molecule to simple ones. This evens out the destructive swing of sugar high and crash – the insulin levels do not need to be raised so high and generally the inflow of glucose into the blood stream is much more steady. This doesn't unfortunately mean that one can consume any arbitrary amount of starches, pasta or bread. Carbs are carbs. Slow digestion will help the body balance the insulin levels, but all the carbs will end up as either energy used up by muscles or as fat. The good thing is that if you do some sports (especially cardio workouts or weight lifting) or take physical effort on a daily basis, you can indulge more complex carbs with little to none adverse consequences.

But going back to the sugar, it's very addictive and is thought to be the main reason why people form habit of overeating. Sugar is at least partially responsible for some behavioral problems as well.

Remember this the next time you eat a sugar coated muffin from your favorite bakery next door.

OK, enough with this scaring. We humans are the only species intelligent enough to be able to eat a cake and have it (pun indented). While sugar is definitely the bad boy that should be shunned by us most of the time, there's no reason to avoid sweets altogether. This blog is dedicated to help you gain necessary information about how to indulge in the world of desserts but keep the damage to minimum (or even to avoid it at all).

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