8 Reasons To Quit Sugar That Are Worth Knowing
Although dentists all over the world would warn you that sugar is a major cause of cavities, it poses a threat to your overall health as well.
A diet rich in sugar consumption may also increase the risk of heart disease, obesity, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure, all of which could result in chronic health issues and even early mortality.
Regardless of your health history, learning to live without sugar, or at the very least, learning to live with less of it, is an achievable goal. When we discuss the negative effects of too much sugar, we are referring to normal sugar.
Along with highly processed fast food, other obvious offenders include sweets, pastries, doughnuts, soda, and desserts.
Simple carbohydrates are present in many foods that are advertised as being healthy, including most breakfast cereals, health bars, juices, salad dressings, sauces, and condiments.
Reducing sugar consumption offers obvious health advantages, such as fewer calories consumed, which could aid in weight loss, and better oral health.
In this article, we will be looking at some of the main reasons why you should stop consuming sugar.
Here are some of the main reasons to quit sugar:
Helps To Lose Weight
Overindulging in refined sugar could cause your body to produce more insulin, which could prevent it from using fat as fuel. Instead, your body turns too much sugar into fat, which may lead to weight gain.
One advantage of cutting back on sugar in your diet is that it will help your body maintain optimal insulin levels, which could help lower your blood pressure and cholesterol.
In addition, cutting out sugar also means cutting out a lot of processed items from your diet, which will automatically lead you to eat healthier meals.
These include foods that are abundant in high-quality protein, fiber, lipids, vitamins, and minerals, such as fruits, vegetables, fish, nuts, grains, eggs, and meat. You won’t need as many sweet snacks because these foods will keep you fuller for longer.
Improves Skin Health
A lifetime of consuming too much added sugar could cause your skin to become drab, wrinkled, and prematurely old.
Advanced glycation end products, often known as AGEs, are created when proteins and sugar in your blood bind to one another. The protein fibers that keep skin elastic and firm are damaged by AGEs.
Damage like that causes the sugar sag wrinkles and drooping that some experts refer to. Although sugar doesn’t cause acne, it could make breakout-prone skin worse.
That’s because foods high in sugar and/or processed foods greatly cause inflammation, which aids in causing breakouts. Other skin conditions like psoriasis have also been linked to inflammation brought on by excessive sugar intake.
Lowers Inflammation Levels In Your Body
The soft tissues present in our bodies become more inflamed because of consuming sugar. This might result in discomfort of the joint and a weak immune system.
Inflammation is something that is not seen by the naked eye. Because of that, it could become a serious issue in the long run. Totally quitting sugar or at least trying to reduce sugar intake could do wonders for the body.
It reduces inflammation in the body very vividly which helps us to have a healthier body for a long time.
Improves Brain Health
The cognitive function begins to deteriorate as a result of decreased connections between brain cells caused by insulin resistance. This results in a decline in memory recall and learning capacities.
According to a study, excessive sugar consumption could increase neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia. Even those who don’t have diabetes but consume a lot of sugar fall under this category.
Sugar also has an impact on our mood. We experience a transient high, along with all the positive emotions that go along with it, such as relaxation and happiness.
For a few hours, your mood might get better, but once serotonin levels drop, your body and mind will crash and feel worn out. Lack of concentration and a loss of mental clarity will result.
In order to feel alert and alive, the body will crave more sugar. Because of these factors, sugar has been classified as an addictive substance.
Improves Heart Health
Heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure, triglyceride, and LDL (bad) cholesterol levels have been related to sugar-rich diets.
Additionally, a study shows that ingesting too much-added sugar has an increased risk of developing illnesses related to the heart. Reducing sugar intake could be immensely helpful in mitigating heart risk.
Improves Oral Health
Poor oral health and a diet high in sugar go hand in hand. Poor dental hygiene coupled with a high-sugar diet might have devastating effects.
The mouth contains hundreds of microorganisms, many of which are helpful. But certain bacteria consume the sugars and produce acids.
The tooth’s shiny, protective outer layer, called tooth enamel, could be dissolved by the acids. This could then result in cavities, which if treated promptly could cause excruciating toothaches and even tooth loss.
If you don’t want to experience tooth decay, tooth loss, or other oral health problems, keep your sugar intake to a minimum.
Diabetes Could Be Prevented
Drinking two servings or more per day of sugar-sweetened beverages like soft drinks, fruit juices, energy drinks, and iced tea raises your chance of developing type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
This also applies to other foods with added sugar. You become more insulin resistant, which prevents the sugar from getting to the cells.
Blood pressure increases as a result. Drinks could contain a lot of liquid calories, so try to stay away from them and opt for low-calorie options instead.
Promotes Healthy Sleep Schedule
Reducing sugar intake could assist to manage blood sugar levels and also raise serotonin levels in the brain, which encourages a regular and healthy sleep cycle.
Blood sugar surges brought on by eating sugary meals result in adrenal tiredness. This impacts how well you sleep.
Sugar also inhibits orexin’s action, a neurotransmitter made in the brain that aids in controlling arousal, wakefulness, and appetite.
High sugar levels cause the blood to contain a lot of glucose, which inhibits the activity of orexin neurons in the brain.
To get better sleep, try eliminating sugar from your diet or at least reducing your intake. How much better you are sleeping might surprise you.
Conclusion
Your workout performance would be suffer from sugar crashes. But that’s only one justification for considering sugar abstinence.
Eating too much sugar is bad for your whole body, including your joints, gut, and brain.
We are all aware that including refined sugar in your diet could lead to a number of health problems, including obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular illnesses.
In fact, giving up sugar is good for your body and brain’s short- and long-term health.
But it’s actually not that simple to break, just like with any other unhealthy habit. Eliminating sugar requires a process; it won’t happen quickly. The secret is to gradually reduce your sugar intake while remaining positive.
Believe that you will ultimately adjust to that. Once you start eating low sugar, you will start to notice both minor and major advantages.
Many illnesses, pains, aches, and chronic health irritations are far more closely tied to sugar than we realize, and many of them begin to go away as our dependence on sugar lessens.