How Sugar Deteriorates Your Skin & Body
The inflammation that happens when you eat foods with a high-glycemic index can worsen certain skin conditions. High-glycemic foods such as white bread, soda, salad dressings, candy, and other baked goods contain refined and processed sugars and starches that cause your insulin to spike.
Photography by Evi Abeler
Insulin resistance doesn’t happen overnight. When most of your diet includes empty calories and an abundance of quickly absorbed sugars, liquid calories, and carbohydrates like bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes, your cells slowly become resistant to the effects of insulin. Your body increasingly demands more insulin to do the same job of keeping your blood sugar even. Eventually, your cells become resistant to insulin’s call, resulting in insulin resistance. The higher your insulin levels are, the worse your insulin resistance. Your body starts to age and deteriorate. In fact, insulin resistance is the single most important phenomenon that leads to rapid, premature aging and all its resultant diseases, including heart disease, stroke, and dementia. You can also be feeding the nasty gut bug populations that THRIVE on refined and added sugars, which can lead to a leaky gut, digestive issues like bloating and IBS, mood dysfunction, and weight gain with more inflammation. Ditch the sugar for beautiful healthy skin. You’re sweet enough!
1. Triggers Acne
Inflammation and having too much sugar can also aggravate skin conditions such as rosacea, eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis, and acne. When you eat sugar, insulin levels rise, which subsequently increases the inflammation in the skin. And since inflammation is a key component in the formation of acne, you end up seeing flare-ups and an increase in the amount of acne on your face. Along with skin issues, too much sugar and insulin resistance in women can turn estrogen into testosterone. This can lead to something misleadingly called polycystic ovarian syndrome. It is not an ovarian problem. It is a dietary problem. The extra testosterone in women can also cause hair loss and facial hair. It can also increase PMS symptoms.
2. Skin Sagging
Processed Sugar damages your skin through a natural process called glycation. The sugar in your bloodstream attaches to proteins and produces harmful free radicals called advanced glycation end products (AGEs). As AGEs accumulate (the more sugar you eat, the more they develop), they damage the proteins around them. The proteins that are most vulnerable to damage are those that serve as the building blocks for your skin: Collagen and elastin. These proteins keep skin firm and elastic and are responsible for the plump and bouncy characteristics of a healthy and youthful complexion. AGEs make your collagen and elastin stiff, dry, and brittle, zapping them of strength. The effects are seen on your complexion in the form of severe dehydration with fine lines, sagging, and or deeper wrinkles. In addition to damaging your skin’s essential proteins, AGEs deactivate your body’s natural antioxidant enzymes. Without protection from antioxidants, your skin is more vulnerable to the free radical damage caused by environmental assailants like pollution, blue light, and UV rays. Left to roam (and bind to your skin’s structural proteins), free radicals trigger oxidative stress that contributes to premature aging of your skin.
Before/After Fascia Reset by Claudia Colombo
3. Increased Belly Fat
Insulin is a hormone produced by your pancreas that moves sugar from your blood into cells, where it can be used for energy. Insulin is also involved in energy storage, telling your cells when to store energy as either fat or glycogen, the storage form of glucose. Insulin resistance is when your cells stop responding properly to insulin, which leads to elevated sugar and insulin levels. All of this consumption of sugar over time leads to a domino effect and drives excess calories into fat cells that then produce messengers to increase hunger, slow metabolism, prevent fat burning, and cause inflammation to spike.
Cells can remain responsive to the hormone’s role in fat storage. This is why insulin resistance and high blood sugar are associated with increased body fat — specifically in the belly area. Additionally, high blood sugar levels and insulin resistance interfere with leptin, a hormone that plays a major role in energy regulation — including calorie intake and burning — and fat storage. Leptin decreases hunger and helps reduce food intake.
For men with insulin resistance, their testosterone gets converted to estrogen, which is why men have big bellies, with “man boobs” and start to lose hair on their bodies. The same high-sugar and -starch diet also spikes the hormones cortisol and adrenaline. When you eat a sugar- and starch-laden diet, your body literally perceives it as a stressor. Adrenaline and cortisol increase, worsening insulin resistance and increasing cravings for sugar and starch.
Poor diet is responsible for almost 700,000 deaths in the US each year, and 11 million worldwide! And the average American consumes 55 pounds of added sugar each year, a major contributor towards the diabetes and obesity epidemic.
4. Leads to Depression
Sugar may also affect your mental health, leading to depression and anxiety. After you eat a sugary snack, your blood sugar levels spike and you may experience irritability or brain fog. When your blood sugar levels crash, you may feel anxious, tired, and moody. Heavy usage can impact your long-term cognitive health. By creating insulin resistance and altering blood sugar levels, sugar can increase the risk for neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. Sugar works by stimulating serotonin in the brain, and overstimulation can deplete stores of the neurotransmitter, leading to depression. Those who cut out sugar from a sugar-rich diet may experience withdrawal symptoms such as headaches, anxiety, and even chills.
Sugar’s effects on our neuro-chemical pathways create addictive behavior like cravings, bingeing, and even withdrawal, and it has been found to increase dopamine, which mimics the effects of opiates.
5. Worsen Stress and Anxiety
When you eat a sugar-and starch-laden diet, your body literally perceives it as a stressor, so you are constantly in fight or flight. Adrenaline and cortisol increase, worsening insulin resistance and the body’s ability to cope with stress. Sugar can cause difficulty in thinking, and focusing, leaving you depleted and fatigued. The combination can increase worry and fear. A sugar high and subsequent crash can cause uncontrollable jitters or shaking with tension, which can make anxiety worse.
Tips To Reduce Sugar Cravings
Eat a Low-glycemic diet. Try to eat every 3 hours, well-portioned meals.
Eat Whole Foods—Add an array of colorful foods to your plate.
Focus on clean, seasonal, local real food.
Eat Enough Healthy Fats—Include healthy fats in every meal.
Drink Sufficient Water throughout the day.
Add Fiber.
Optimize Protein Intake.
Avoid conventional dairy.
Reduce or cut out processed foods; including cured deli meats, sodas, and breads.
Use products that restore the barrier and help reduce inflammation and sensitivity.
Address lifestyle factors – including nutrition, weight, exercise, psychological stress, as well as environmental and occupational.
Take Multivitamin and Mineral supplements— vitamin D, B vitamins, fish oil L-carnitine, vitamins C and E, N-acetylcysteine, zinc, and coenzyme Q10 and Magnesium.
Take a Probiotic and Eat Fermented Foods to support the gut. A healthy microbiome means effective absorption and utilization of nutrients from our food and drink. Feed the good existing gut bugs the prebiotic goodies. Replenish with probiotic-rich fermented foods to create a healthy ecosystem.
Exercise and sweat regularly.⠀
Each step towards real, wholesome, delicious foods reduces your risk for chronic disease and increases your ability to feel great. A 360 approach for the skin and body means it needs many cohesive parts to function to look + feel your best! Unhealthy food cravings are your body’s way of warning you of vitamin deficiency and asking for what it needs. A lot of times it’s insulin resistance. Possibly your body has trouble maintaining a stable blood sugar to constantly keep the right amount of sugar in your bloodstream. When your blood sugar drops, often you crave the very foods that will increase your blood sugar immediately. While carbohydrates and sugars can be comfort foods - as well as delicious treats - craving them uncontrollably is not normal.
Craving sweets and starches can indicate an underlying problem inside your cells. When you have a real physiological craving for sugar or carbs, you will feel compelled to eat them, and somewhat out of control once you start eating them . What your skin and body really want is a healthy diet, replete with vitamins and essential minerals. It also craves sunshine, laughter, joy, creativity and connection. Your body is so intuitive—TRUST IT!
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XO
Claudia