Science has made it clear that eating sugar leads to poor health. But sugar tastes good, is in seemingly everything, and is pretty cheap. On top of that, poor health is a future thing, making it hard to come up with a reason to put down the cookie or avoid grabbing the candy bar. Here are six less-scientific, but highly motivating reasons you don’t want to ruin your day by eating sugar.
Drinks and multiple sclerosis
For people with multiple sclerosis (MS), drinking around 290 calories per day of soda or other sugar-sweetened beverages, or the equivalent of about two cans of non-diet soda, may be tied to more severe symptoms and a higher level of disability compared to people with MS who seldom consume sugar-sweetened beverages, according to a preliminary study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 71st Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, May 4 to 10, 2019. People who seldom drank sugar-sweetened beverages consumed an average of seven calories in sugar-sweetened beverages per day, or the equivalent of one-and-a-half cans of non-diet soda per month. Soda and other sweet beverages were the only type of food that was related to MS symptoms in the study.
“MS patients often want to know how diet and specific foods can affect the progression of their disease,” said study author Elisa Meier-Gerdingh, MD, of St. Josef Hospital in Bochum, Germany, and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “While we did not find a link with overall diet, interestingly, we did find a link with those who drank sodas, flavored juices and sweetened teas and coffees.”
The study involved 135 people with MS. Participants completed a questionnaire about their diet. Researchers then looked at how close each participants’ diet was to the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet. The DASH diet recommends whole grains, fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy products, lean meats, poultry and fish, and nuts and legumes and limits foods that are high in saturated fat and sugar.
“We chose to study the DASH diet because adherence to the DASH diet is associated with lower risk of other chronic diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases,” said Meier-Gerdingh.
Researchers also measured the participants’ level of disability using the Expanded Disability Status Scale, a common method to quantify disability ranging from 0, no symptoms, to 10 points, death due to MS. A total of 30 participants had severe disability.
Overall, researchers did not find a link between what participants ate and their level of disability.
For soda and sugar-sweetened beverages, the participants were divided into five groups based on how much they drank. The people in the top group drank an average of 290 calories of sugar-sweetened beverages per day, while the lowest group seldom drank sugar-sweetened beverages.
The study found that participants who consumed the largest amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages were five times more likely to have severe disability than people who seldom drank sugar-sweetened beverages. Of the 34 people in the top group, 12 had severe disability, compared to 4 of the 34 people in the bottom group. The top group had on average a disability score of 4.1 points, while the bottom group had an average of 3.4 points.
“While these results need to be confirmed by larger studies that follow people over a long period of time, and the results do not show that soda and sugar-sweetened beverages cause more severe disability, we do know that sodas have no nutritional value and people with MS may want to consider reducing or eliminating them from their diet,” Meier-Gerdingh said.
Limitations of the study include the relatively small number of participants. The study also assessed participants’ diets and sugar-sweetened beverages at the same time as disability, so it is not possible to distinguish whether it is actually an aspect of diet, like sugar-sweetened beverages, that contributes to higher disability or whether more severe disease impacts a person’s ability to have a healthy diet.
Additional studies are needed to evaluate whether sugar-sweetened beverages affect the course of the disease.
Learn more about multiple sclerosis at BrainandLife.org, home of the American Academy of Neurology’s free patient and caregiver magazine focused on the intersection of neurologic disease and brain health. Follow Brain & Life® on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
The American Academy of Neurology is the world’s largest association of neurologists and neuroscience professionals, with 36,000 members. The AAN is dedicated to promoting the highest quality patient-centered neurologic care. A neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, migraine, multiple sclerosis, concussion, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.
For more information about the American Academy of Neurology, visit AAN.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.
How much sugar is good for me?
Doctors should consider treating chronic pain patients with sugar pills
Placebo pills relieve pain as effectively as drugs for half of chronic pain patients
Pain reduced by 30 percent
No need to fool patients, brain is primed to respond
Finding can result in vast cost savings for patients, health care system
CHICAGO — Someday doctors may prescribe sugar pills for certain chronic pain patients based on their brain anatomy and psychology. And the pills will reduce their pain as effectively as any powerful drug on the market, according to new research.
Northwestern Medicine scientists have shown they can reliably predict which chronic pain patients will respond to a sugar placebo pill based on the patients’ brain anatomy and psychological characteristics.
“Their brain is already tuned to respond,” said senior study author A. Vania Apkarian, professor of physiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “They have the appropriate psychology and biology that puts them in a cognitive state that as soon as you say, ‘this may make your pain better,’ their pain gets better.”
There’s no need to fool the patient, Apkarian said.
“You can tell them, ‘I’m giving you a drug that has no physiological effect but your brain will respond to it,'” he said. “You don’t need to hide it. There is a biology behind the placebo response.”
The study was published Sept. 12 in Nature Communications.
The findings have three potential benefits:
Prescribing non-active drugs rather than active drugs. “It’s much better to give someone a non-active drug rather than an active drug and get the same result,” Apkarian said. “Most pharmacological treatments have long-term adverse effects or addictive properties. Placebo becomes as good an option for treatment as any drug we have on the market.”
Eliminating the placebo effect from drug trials. “Drug trials would need to recruit fewer people, and identifying the physiological effects would be much easier,” Apkarian said. “You’ve taken away a big component of noise in the study.”
Reduced health care costs. A sugar pill prescription for chronic pain patients would result in vast cost savings for patients and the health care system, Apkarian said.
How the study worked
About 60 chronic back pain patients were randomized into two arms of the study. In one arm, subjects didn’t know if they got the drug or the placebo. Researchers didn’t study the people who got the real drug. The other study arm included people who came to the clinic but didn’t get a placebo or drug. They were the control group.
The individuals whose pain decreased as a result of the sugar pill had a similar brain anatomy and psychological traits. The right side of their emotional brain was larger than the left, and they had a larger cortical sensory area than people who were not responsive to the placebo. The chronic pain placebo responders also were emotionally self-aware, sensitive to painful situations and mindful of their environment.
“Clinicians who are treating chronic pain patients should seriously consider that some will get as good a response to a sugar pill as any other drug,” Apkarian said. “They should use it and see the outcome. This opens up a whole new field.”
How much sugar is good for me?
As part of a healthy balanced diet, you should eat fewer foods and drinks that are high in sugars. Sugary foods and drinks can cause tooth decay, especially if you have them between meals.
Many foods that contain added sugars also contain lots of calories, but often have few other nutrients. Eating these foods often can contribute to you becoming overweight.
Being overweight can increase your risk of health conditions such as:
All sugars are carbohydrates found naturally in most foods. Their main nutritional value is in providing energy. However, sugar is also added to lots of foods such as sweets, chocolate, cakes, and some fizzy and juice drinks.
In the ingredients list, sugar added to food may be called:
Added sugars shouldn’t make up more than 5% of the energy (calorie intake) you get from food and drink each day. This is about 30g of sugar a day for those aged 11 and over.
Fruit juice and honey can also count as added sugars, as they’re sometimes added to foods to make them sweeter.
Fruit juice is still a healthy choice (one 150ml serving counts towards your 5 A DAY). However, the sugars can damage your teeth, so it’s best to drink it with a meal and no more than one serving a day.
This is because sugars are released during the juicing process. Sugars in whole pieces of fruit are less likely to cause tooth decay because they are contained within the food.
You shouldn’t cut down on fruit as it’s an important part of a healthy, balanced diet.
Read the nutritional information on food labels to see how much sugar the food contains. Remember that sugar has many different names. The nearer the beginning of the ingredient list the sugar is, the more sugar the product contains.
Look for the “Carbohydrates (of which sugars)” figure in the nutrition label to see how much sugar the product contains for every 100g:
If the amount of sugars per 100g is between these figures, that’s a medium level of sugars.
Read more about food labels.
These tips may help you cut down on sugar:
Sugar and diet
Let me confess I’ve never really been a sugar fan per se. Its okay be really cannot compare to say red wine.
But over the last few years it seems to have become common to talk of sugar addiction. (A term I’m honestly nervous of having seen an old friend spiral into full-scale addiction some years ago). On the other had a do appreciate that the rise is Type 2 diabetes is of great concern.
So I’m wondering what my readers think. Do we in modern “Western” society eat too much sugar? I’ve taken the liberty of running a short poll below. It would be great if you could take part.
Feel free to share any thoughts you may have in the comments box below.
Many thanks in advance.