Sugar is one of life’s natural delights but too much of this good thing is bad for your health and your looks. When you eat sugar, the body breaks it down into glucose, which is then absorbed into the bloodstream. When your blood shows high levels of glucose, you are more likely to look older than people whose glucose levels are lower, so if your diet is heavy on white bread, pasta, chocolate and sweet products, you could be adding years to your looks, according to a study by Leiden University Medical Centre and Unilever.
While the body uses glucose for energy, too much can definitely be a bad thing. When you do have too much sugar over a long period of time, your body stops processing the glucose as effectively and with higher levels of glucose in the blood stream, you are more at risk of contracting conditions such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Now premature ageing can now be added to some of the other risks posed by too much sugar intake, say the Leiden and Unilever team. They say that you can look five months older if you have even an extra millimole of blood glucose per litre above average.
When you consider that the study took other factors of ageing into account and still reached the same conclusion, you can imagine the potential damage an excess of sweet sugary food can do to your face. Too much sugar affects the collagen that keeps your skin elastic and flexible, making you more inclined to have lines and sagging skin.
To slow down the ageing process, you should consider cutting back on how much sugar you consume. Instead eat more foods containing vitamins A and C, and essential fatty acids – these contain the antioxidants that will help keep the skin supple and include the likes of salmon, broccoli and berries.
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