“If only a small fraction of what is already known about the effects of sugar were to be revealed in relation to any other material used as a food additive, that material would be promptly banned”
– John Yudkin

Is Sugar addiction increasing your risk for disease?

What do you know about your sugar consumption? How much are you really getting every day? How is excess sugar consumption affecting your, or your children’s risk for disease?

The safe sugar “dose” is between 6 tsp (females) and 9 tsp (males) daily. However, current estimates project that the American daily average is approximately four times that amount at 23 tsp or approximately 90 grams daily, which equates to roughly 66 pounds per person a year (1)!

High sugar consumption is related to health concerns, including but not limited to:

-Metabolic syndrome and weight regulation disturbances (obesity, insulin resistance, and cholesterol abnormalities).
-Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease – Growing at an alarming rate and is the leading reason for liver transplants! The latest research suggests that 40% of “normal” adults have fatty liver (2).
-Epigenetic changes, that increases risk for metabolic disease in offspring of mothers with high blood sugar levels during changes (3). -Essential hypertension, and coronary artery disease (4).
-Causative, and/or supportive of cancer development and growth (5) and increased mortality for those who have cancer (6).

Getting to know your individual sugar tolerance

Bringing awareness to your sugar intake is important, but what’s even more prudent is to understand your individual tolerance for sugar or more specifically carbohydrates. All carbohydrates consumed are broken down to glucose – a sugar molecule, which ultimately raises your blood sugar levels and insulin demand.

Although the 6-9 tsp is a good rule of thumb for upper limits, these amounts could still be problematic for many. In the United States, the latest research suggests that 88% of Americans have disturbed metabolic health, which means they have a lower tolerance specifically to sugar and carbohydrates, due to reduced insulin sensitivity. This results in both higher levels of blood sugar and insulin, which lead to the downstream effects of disease and dysfunction noted above.

How Benehealth can Help

A functional medicine practitioner will assess metabolic risk differently than conventional medical review:
We consider the risk of sugar consumption in most individuals, given the knowledge of high rates of metabolic dysfunction at a population level.

Therefore, screening is not age or family risk dependent. We know that these factors certainly increased risk – however, with the rates of sugar consumed with the standard American diet, it is important not to overlook younger individuals, as early assessment and detection are best for disease prevention.

Labs: In assessing blood labs, your functional medicine provider will likely do two things a bit nuanced.

First, we don’t just rely on the standard lab ranges to determine “normal results”. Meaning that you could have a result that is “normal” based on the lab, but your provider set a different goal for you. This is because these markers do not always adequately represent optimal functioning.
Second, you can expect more tests to assess lab values not conventionally looked at, like fasting insulin, oral glucose challenge tests, or uric acid- as these markers can be more sensitive to detecting early dysfunction, even when blood sugar levels or hgb a1c (markers for longer-term blood sugar balance) may be “normal”.

Interested in a functional medicine assessment? Get started with the Benehealth IQ today!

References

1.Johnson, R. K., Appel, L. J., Brands, M., Howard, B. V., Lefevre, M., Lustig, R. H., … & Wylie-Rosett, J. (2009). Dietary sugars intake and cardiovascular health: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association. Circulation, 120(11), 1011-1020.

2 Dongiovanni, P., Stender, S., Pietrelli, A., Mancina, R. M., Cespiati, A., Petta, S., Pelusi, S., Pingitore, P., Badiali, S., Maggioni, M., Mannisto, V., Grimaudo, S., Pipitone, R. M., Pihlajamaki, J., Craxi, A., Taube, M., Carlsson, L., Fargion, S., Romeo, S., Kozlitina, J., … Valenti, L. (2018). Causal relationship of hepatic fat with liver damage and insulin resistance in nonalcoholic fatty liver. Journal of internal medicine, 283(4), 356–370. https://doi.org/10.1111/joim.12719

3. Haertle, L., El Hajj, N., Dittrich, M., Müller, T., Nanda, I., Lehnen, H., & Haaf, T. (2017). Epigenetic signatures of gestational diabetes mellitus on cord blood methylation. Clinical epigenetics, 9(1), 1-11.
4. Welsh, J. A., Sharma, A., Cunningham, S. A., & Vos, M. B. (2011). Consumption of added sugars and indicators of cardiovascular disease risk among US adolescents. Circulation, 123(3), 249-257.

5. Seyfried, T. N., Flores, R. E., Poff, A. M., & D’Agostino, D. P. (2014). Cancer as a metabolic disease: implications for novel therapeutics. Carcinogenesis, 35(3), 515–527. https://doi.org/10.1093/carcin/bgt480

6. Farvid, M. S., Spence, N. D., Rosner, B. A., Chen, W. Y., Eliassen, A. H., Willett, W. C., & Holmes, M. D. (2021). Consumption of sugar‐sweetened and artificially sweetened beverages and breast cancer survival. Cancer.

7. Araújo, J., Cai, J., & Stevens, J. (2019). Prevalence of optimal metabolic health in American adults: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2009–2016. Metabolic syndrome and related disorders, 17(1), 46-52.