There’s no arguing that most of us prefer to sweeten practically everything we eat and drink. While the sweet stuff taste great, it may also harm your skin and your body in a variety of ways. Let’s take a look at how.
Candy is sweet, cookies are yummy, but the effects they may have on your skin? Not so good.
At certain times of the year, sweets are seemingly inescapable. If you’re after clear, healthy skin, what can you expect if you indulge?
Believe it or not, eating too much sugar may wreak havoc on the health of your skin. It could play a role in the development or worsening of skin conditions such as psoriasis and acne. Going overboard on sugar could even cause signs of premature aging, such as wrinkles and sagging. You may have heard the term, “sugar face.” On top of that, there’s a potential increase for diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The CDC recommends limiting added sugar to about 12 teaspoons per day. The average adult consumes between 17 and 22 teaspoons per day, which comes mostly from sugary drinks, followed by sweets and desserts, fruit juices, and dairy products.
To keep this in perspective, it’s helpful to remember the American Heart Association’s recommendations for intake:
- Men should consume no more than 9 teaspoons (36 grams or 150 calories) of added sugar per day.
- For Women, the number is lower: 6 teaspoons (25 grams or 100 calories) per day. Consider that one 12-ounce can of soda contains 8 teaspoons (32 grams) of added sugar! There goes your whole day’s allotment in one gulp.
I find the recommendations of both the CDC and the AMA to be too high, especially if you are already dealing with metabolic issues such as diabetes, obesity, or other health problems. Cutting sugar out all together would do wonders for your health (but where’s the fun in that.) However, keeping your sugar intake as low as possible will go a long way towards positive health outcomes.
So when it comes to added sugar, read on to learn more about how a sugar rush affects your skin — and what you can do about it. And don’t worry: You can still enjoy yourself a bit.
Your Skin Reflects What You Eat
Your skin is the largest organ in your body, so it’s no surprise that what you eat can be reflected outward. Diet definitely plays a role in the health of the skin. Other factors, including smoking, processed foods, and sleep, also affect skin health and premature ageing.
Here are three ways that sugar effects your skin.
1. May Accelerate Signs of Aging
When it comes to aging, sugar has a distinct effect on skin through a natural process called glycation. Glycation occurs when there’s too much sugar (glucose) in our skin fibers and our body fires up an internal reaction.
What happens next? Sugar molecules adhere to our skin’s collagen and elastin proteins. And these are the specialized proteins that are responsible for keeping our skin firm and supple. When these important proteins get weighed down by sugar molecules, your body triggers more responses that can result in inflammation and signs of premature ageing.
2. May Promote Acne
If you’ve noticed more breakouts during the holiday season (which kicks off with Halloween), check the sugar in your diet. “A high-sugar diet has been definitively linked to acne,” according to Hollmig. A JAMA Dermatology study that looked at nearly 25,000 adults found that consumption of fatty and sugary foods was associated with a 54 percent increased risk of acne, while sugary drinks increased that risk by 18 percent. The authors point out that the high-fat and -sugar pattern falls in line with the modern Western diet. It may be that sugar triggers a rise in insulin, which increases inflammation, one factor that promotes the development of acne. Sugar may also increase certain growth factors that raise androgen levels, which are hormones that are associated with a greater amount of pore-clogging oil production.
3. May Worsen Psoriasis
Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease in which skin cells grow especially fast, leading to plaques and scaling. It affects more than 7.5 million adults in the United States, according to the National Psoriasis Foundation.
Animal research is beginning to illuminate the role that diet, including sugar, may play in the development of psoriasis. When mice were fed a diet high in sugar and fat, which is similar to a Western diet, they developed psoriasis-like inflammation in only four weeks, explains study co-author Samuel Hwang, MD, PhD, professor and chair of dermatology at UC Davis Health in Sacramento, California. Yes, this research is on mice, but Dr. Hwang believes that the results likely apply to humans, too. More studies are needed to prove that’s the case.
The mice study suggests that increased inflammation may boost one’s susceptibility to psoriasis and, in some, trigger visible changes in the skin in line with psoriasis symptoms, such as redness and plaque, Hwang says. People may also develop what’s called subclinical inflammation, for which there’s no visible skin redness or scaling, but there is itching.
I would like to also point out that we rarely eat a high-sugar diet in isolation — it’s often accompanied by unhealthy fats, particularly trans-fats. Together, sugar and trans-fats may negatively affect the gut microbiome by altering the population of healthy bacteria to cause the inflammation seen in psoriasis. But again, additional research is needed.
Clearly, what you can do about it is to adopt healthy lifestyle changes by moving away from the SAD (standard western diet) toward a diet consisting of whole, unprocessed foods, healthy fats and proteins, and low sugar, which may help reduce inflammation to improve your health.
How to Reduce Sugar for Healthy Skin
As it stands, there’s a lot more to understand about the connection between diet and skin health. And changing your diet doesn’t necessarily bring immediate results. Improvement in skin health through diet cannot be rushed. A poor diet takes a long time to effect the health of your skin — and dietary changes will also take a long time to produce an improvement. You’re playing the long game here.
Still, it’s hard to go wrong recommending a healthy, relatively low-sugar diet. That doesn’t mean eliminating sugar entirely. You can enjoy yourself by having sweet treats occasionally.
Also, some perspective is good. A reasonably healthy diet is necessary but not totally sufficient for healthy skin. In other words, along with curtailing your sugar consumption, don’t forget to sleep well, apply skin-protection oils for prolonged sun exposure, and develop a healthy skin-care plan tailored to the needs of your complexion.
