Eating A Lot Of Food With Additional Sugar, According To Research Accelerating Aging

Illustration of eating lots of foods with supplementary sugar accelerates aging (Freepic/stockking)

YOGYAKARTA Diet or adjusting healthy diets is very important to maintain health. Not only that, researchers found that eating a lot of foods with additional sugar risks accelerating the body to age biologically. That means, age may be meaningless, but food makes you look older and the body's system no longer balanced.

If it is not controlled, we may lose control in eating sweet foods. Fruits are indeed better, but limiting will be even better. Especially if processed into certain foods. For example, being a candit for a hat cake.

It is generally known that consuming or drinking too much additional sugar, whether it's in supplementary foods or sweet drink dishes, causes health problems. It can also increase the potential for obesity and type 2 diabetes. Research has found that excessive additional sugar can change the way cells function and accelerate biological age.

Gula itself is an inflammatory agent, as well as the cause of oxidative stress in the body," said Dorothy Chiu, Ph.D, a postdoctoral researcher at the Ocean Center for Integrative Health, University of California San Francisco as reported by Health, Tuesday, December 24.

Oxidative stress occurs when free radicals exceed antioxidants in the body. This is what causes cell damage. Inflammation also accelerates biological aging. Chiu and a team of researchers analyzed data from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Growth and Health Study (Nrypt) which took place between 1987 and 1997. The data includes information on cardiovascular health of a group of white girls and blacks aged between 9 and 19 years. The researchers followed up on nearly 350 participants, all of whom live in Northern California, between 2015 and 2019.

Female participants report information about their diet and also provide a sample of Yagn saliva used by the team to analyze their biological age. The diet was observed by researchers, then scored against Mediterranean-style diets and diets related to lower risk for chronic diseases. The scores were made based on sizes to account for anti-inflammatory-related nutrition and DNA repair. The study found participants, who consumed more than 60 grams of additional sugar on an average daily basis, had lower biological age. Based on diet guidelines that consume 2,000 calories a day, should not consume an additional sugar of more than 50 grams.

Even for people who are already on a healthy diet, if they consume more food and drinks with supplementary sugar, the body's cells age faster than the chronological age. In addition to activity factors and stress levels, it appears that the study shows excess sugar plays an important role in epigenetics. This reduces behavior and environment that causes changes and affects gene function.

"Golds at high numbers can affect your metabolism, and anything that affects your metabolism can affect your cell growth," said Julia Zumpano dietist RD at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Human Nutrition.

Zumpano, who did not take part in the study, confirmed the effects of consuming excess sugar on the body. He explained again, excess sugar also accelerates glycacy, which occurs when sugar in the bloodstream attaches to the protein and produces harmful substances called advanced glycacy final products (AGE). This AGE can cause inflammation and oxidative stress that accelerates cell aging.

Through this study, Chiu and other research teams recommend reducing daily sugar intake. If you consume 60 grams every day, it is necessary to reduce 10 grams to follow recommendations. Or you can also replace the additional sugar with natural sugar found in vegetables and fruit. Zumpano suggested, instead of consuming chips or cakes as a dessert, it is better with fresh fruit.