Is the sand of sugar? Some leading researchers believe that this natural sweetener might not just accelerate, but even causeaging. Poor sugar, It’s been blamed for most everything from surplus poundage to diabetes. To this long list, we might finally have to add yet another cause for concern. A sudden rush of sugar in the blood stream may accelerate aging process.
Let’s start
The first suspicions surfaced about 15 years back, when work on sugar aging connection start in a health bio- chemistry laboratory at Rockefeller University in New York City, where Anthony Cerami, Ph, D., and his colleagues continue pursuing sugar’s role in aging process. It was Cerami who noticed the identical chemical process that creates a streak toughen and flip down through cooling – a spontaneous reaction between glucose and protein known as the “browning reaction” – occurs in human cells, especially as they age. Indeed, approval to advertise a drug designed to stop this response is possibly two to three decades away.
In time, it might help resolve many age related issues, from wrinkles to cataracts to particular kinds of cancer. In accordance with Cerami, sugar is among the offenders that set the process in motion. Glucose is the basic energy source for human beings, the chemical in which our cells are constantly bathed throughout our life.
Nutrition
Most of the food we eat is broken down into sugar and sugars. To understand how sugar might help trigger the issue of aging Cerami looked at how an extra quantity of the sugar acts in diabetes, because diabetics have a tendency to endure age related complications – such as atherosclerosis, cataracts and joint stiffness – much sooner than many people. When glucose enters the blood flow from the gut, same is taken up by cells and used as fuel; the remainder is stored as glycogen in the liver and the muscles, or is converted into fat and stored in fat cells until the body needs it.
Under normal conditions, the amount of sugar in the blood stored remarkably secure by the hormone insulin. Diabetes results from lack of (or inability to sue) insulin, which allows too much sugar to build up in the blood flow, left unattended, this could be a death sentence, but of course it may be treated that insulin treatment and a carefully controlled diet. Even with such therapy, however, problems of aging happen earlier.
Good to know
Cerami then colleague Ronald J. Koenig, discovered that protein molecules, which constitute part of the construction of cells, can be profoundly affected by the elevated glucose level in diabetics’ blood. Over a period of week , a few sugar molecules combine with some of the protein molecules to form “advanced glycosylation end products,” or ages. The AGE particles in turn behave like glue, sticking some of the other protein molecules together in a rigid lattice work routine known as cross-linking.
When protein clumps together this manner, they can clog arteries; blur vision, damage lungs and kidneys – conditions frequently associated with aging. It happened to Cerami that sugar may have destructive potential in the bodies of non diabetics, also. Since glucose influenced proteins play a role in the age associated ailments for which the parasitic is in danger early in life, they may play a role in precisely the identical disease when they occur later. Cerami started examining non diabetics’ longer lived proteins for signs of the procedure. Among such proteins are those making up the lens of the eye.
Let’s understand it
When Cerami soaked these crystalline proteins at a sugar solution, the mixture turned opaque (resembling a lens with a cataract) and the proteins clumped together. It was the browning reaction all over again, and it directed Cerami to feel that cataracts are formed with the support of glucose. Preliminary research of many centres in america and Britain seems to confirm the link between contracts and sugar, and aging skin.
Epidemiologist Paul F. Jacques, in the USDA’s Human Nutrition Research Centre on Again at Boston, has shown in preliminary studies which galactose, derived from the sugar in milk, may play a role in the progression of cataracts, By itself, galactose is harmful to the lens of the eye, but it is normally metabolized quickly by the enzyme. In people that are deficient in this enzyme, Jacques found, this conversion process is slowed, eventually causing cataracts.
Further sugar aging links come from Cerami’s study on hydration. Collagen is the most abundant protein the body. It’s found in the epidermis and in most of the connective tissues, and it serves to”glue” cells together. As collagen grows older, it will become stiff – as we all do. Cerami started, incubating the tendon fibers of rats in various sugar solutions to find out whether glucose may cause cross linking in collagen. It did and the tendon fibers stiffened and broke more easily when stretched.
Sugar effects
Due to the sugar, the tendon fibers of rats became similar to those of elderly rat. Once more, the glucose protein response had accelerate the aging procedure. Cerami’s results were reinforced by those of Vincent M. Monnier, associate professor of pathology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Monnier found that centenarians have up to ten times more sugar children suggesting that glucose does indeed play an integral role in aging. Other possible aging link: Ceremi considers sugar hardened collagen may trap cholesterol on the walls of blood clots, causing atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. And he and laboratory co-worker Richard Bucala, have recently begun to explore the possibility that glucose, reacting with DNA cause genetic mutations that can result in cancer.
Cerami says. It was plausible that AGEs might collect on DNA, resulting in alteration of genetic material. Thus, damaged cells may be not able to repair properly or themselves replicate. The immune system might also be affected by sugar induced mutations undermining its capacity to maintain cancerous cells in check. Cerami and other researchers have found tat AGEs can indeed cause mutations in bacterial DNA. Next on the research agenda is analyzing mammalian cells in culture to find out whether the exact sorts of changes in genetic material happen.
Prevention
What could be done to protect against the destruction wrought by the browning reaction in the body? One tentative suggestion is to restrict dietary intake of sugar. But since nearly all food is finally converted by the body into sugar, can this really be effective? The study is hardly conclusive; nevertheless, some scientists say, could be. British researches Anna Furth, a biologist at Open University, and John Harding, of the department of ophthalmology at Oxford University, suggest that heavy sugar levels can negatively impact even non diabetic folks. When we take in a candy bar’s worth of sugar, the amount of sugar in the blood rises sharply and as insulin struggles to deal with this.
A sudden rush of sugar in the blood (whether from that candy bar or a glass or orange juice – recall, fruits include fructose, which is, of course, sugar!) Begins the browning reaction that cause the protein to cross link. On the basis of preliminary research, the researchers believe aspirin and aspirin can help shield protein molecules from marauding sugar – though it is clearly too soon to translate that concept into action. Perhaps among the very best ways to protect you, they say, would be to take carbohydrates as part of a mixed meal with protein, fiber and fat and no crab snacking on a young stomach.
Final note
If you are trying to prevent that “abrupt rush of sugar” that study Furth and Harding think may hamper the protein cross linking involved with aging, a good food, like a banana, will be absorbed into the blood stream more slowly then a liquid, like a glass of orange juice. Moreover, she notes that sugars consumed by these (e.g. hard candies) are absorbed more quickly than starches taken independently, because the chemical structure of starch is a lot more complex. Your best anti aging bet could be to make a habit of consuming sugars and starches as part of a complete meal which also has fat, protein and especially fiber. A glass of orange juice on an empty stomach becomes sugar in the blood flow in as little as a minute; whereas nutrient balanced meal requires a few hours to digest, there by prolonging the absorption of sugar.