Sugar is not the direct cause of these problems such as hypertension and other chronic diseases. Sugar releases glucose on digestion, which if massive causes a large insulin response. Regular intake of large amount sugar may cause hyperinsulinemia .

Exogenous administration of Insulin and endogenous hyper-insulinemia elevate blood pressure in several ways. They cause sodium retention by directly increasing the activity of the epithelial sodium channel (ENaC), the sodium phosphate co-transporter, sodium hydrogen exchanger type III and Na-K-ATPase. (Tiwari et al., 2007). Insulin also induces oxidative stress, which causes impairment of the vascular endothelium, decreased availability of nitric oxide, and therefore atherosclerosis and hypertension (Virdis et al., 2013)

Insulin causes excitation of the sympathetic nervous system via a central action on the hypothalamus, where it is believed to act on the anteroventral third ventricle hypothalamic region (Muntzel et al., 1995) Other researchers have found that hyperinsulinemia in normotensive humans increases sympathetic nerve activity but not arterial pressure since it also causes skeletal muscle vasodilatation. However, in the presence of insulin resistance and/or hypertension, insulin may cause exaggerated sympathetic activation or impaired vasodilatation and thus elevate arterial pressure. (Anderson et al., 1992)

Hyperinsulinemia also causes obesity by converting glucose into fat in the dispose tissue. However, whether glucose is converted into fat or glycogen depends on timing of food intake. When sugar is consumed soon after exercise, glucose is converted to glycogen but when sugar is ingested by a sedentary person, the glucose is converted into fat.

It has also suggested that a large insulin response following a large glucose intake tends to block the action of leptin on the feeding center in the hypothalamus thereby preventing satiety.(Lustig, 2010) This leads to demand for more glucose producing food and eventually a state of obesity and its sequelae of metabolic syndrome, hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and other chronic diseases.

Dear Hashem

The exaggeration in the consumption of sugar should be controlled in the same way as alcohol and tobacco , according to research from the University of California ( USA ) . The average annual consumption of Brazil in the late 19th century was 02 pounds and are now 37 pounds! Much of this is due to the growing number of wealthy industrialized products offer this ingredient, as it is widely used as a preservative

And not infrequently added even more substance to everyday preparations. According to the World Health Organization ( WHO ) , the ideal limit for adults is 50 grams / day , equivalent to ten teaspoon fuls . It is estimated that in Brazil the consumption is 22 tablespoons - more than double the recommended! Not only : breads and pasta , though salty , are also carbohydrates that are converted into blood sugar during digestion . While we have more access to food , technological advancement has brought facilities that dramatically decreased caloric expenditure . Computers and cars , for example , help to increase the rates of obesity

The World Health Organization , in 2012 , ran an article confirming the relationship between obesity and sugar consumption . Obesity facilitates the incidence of diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol

The sugar stays in the bloodstream , promoting cardiovascular problems, " According to a study by Yeshiva University ( USA ) , high levels of sugar in the blood are linked to increased risk of colorectal cancer in women, it is not clear why.

Much is said about the effects of salt on blood pressure, but researchers from Imperial College London ( England ) found that drinking sweet drinks to excess also increases the risk for hypertension, and one hypothesis is that sugar upsets the tone of blood vessels , causing the symptom . Excessive use may be responsible by premature aging

Currently there are many educational campaigns , especially in schools , guiding a child about the dangers of overeating so that it becomes aware and reach adulthood with greater health and the importance of physical activity

Dear Hashem and Nelson,

Cane juice undergoes crystalization to form cane sugar and the non-crystalline syrup (mother liquor, molasses) takes the route to molasses based alcohol distillery.

Cane sugar thus is not a complete diet ingredient rather it is chemical-sugar.

However, cane juice when undergoes as its entire substance into jaggery or home-made sweetener has a complete diet value. In Naturopathy jaggery is given for consumption to rejuvinate pancreas and to decrease the acid nature of the blood (that acidic nature below the detemination level of any instruments) for Diabetics along with a stipulated protocol of daily diet that includes vegetable juices (raw).

ALL WHITES OF CONSUMPTION THAT ARE PROCESSED ARE DANGEROUS; like white flour, table salt, egg, sugar, cattle milk.

We must enter into the old/conventional practices of diet and remedies and must get the AWARENESS OF KNOWING THE CHANGEABLE MOMENTS IN OUR BODY; so much so that awareness protocols needs to be formed to create DOCTOR FOR THE SELF a strict knowing regimes for the youngsters of 18 years on wards.

As per the studies, our body growth arrests/completes by the age of 24/25; later our consumption part is to take care of our WEAR AND TEAR OF OUR BODY AND REJUVINATION ACTIVITIES AT THE LEVEL OF CELL/TISSUE/ORGAN/ORGAN SYSTMES. In India we tend to eat lavishly after 25years as we reach to our earning capacities with marriage and children and recreational activities goes to maximum with excess food consumption which is of over nutritious; the expenditure as fuel is rather slow due to sedentary life, not exposure to olden days agricultural activities that sustained lavish food and lavish energy transformation with nature.

Interesting 2 comments

I am in agreement all the comments. But tell me age has any bearing to this? I am 77 and till date nothing much so far.I due to sugar.. Sweet dish are normal after each meal.

Individual cases cant be generalized Dear Anil.

Thank you, Kilani.

Dr. (Prof.) A K Prasad.

Dear Dr Professor Prassad,

I admire your age and health. keep up your lifestyle and enjoy the life

@ Dr (Prof) Prasad,

You have an excellent life-style with mind-body-soul understandings and co-ordinations at the level of PHILOSOPHY; again at the level of physical body/biological body you have an excellent co-ordinate homeostasis and biochemical pathways hence normal meals + sweet has PERFECT DIET OF YOUR OWN PLANNED ACCORD.

Persons' of your kind of PERFECT HEALTH @77 are needed to WRITE DOWN EACH OF YOUR LIFE-STYLE SINCE 18years onwards; which shall become a live documentations suitable for our country (and neighboring).

Dear Kilani,

Individual cases needs to be considered and are of paramount importance.

Whether disease/ailment/disorder of one person; and on the other hand, perfect health of one person needs to be STUDIED AND RECORDED CAREFULLY. Because every person is UNIQUE. Uniqueness needs to be understood by the SELF itself in order to understand and to keep up of one' own body.

In India, our level of health is known, only after one falls sick (especially when entered into acute and/or chronic types). Again our sicknesses are DEPENDENT on the medical practitioners and their medical instruments. Most of Indian sickly persons fall prey for the doctors and instruments and sick person never been educated (especially of the ignorant non educative category and of the poor category).

Dr (Prof) Prasad, HEALTH@77 shall be the GUIDELINES FOR OUR INDIAN-LIFE-STYLE.

dear doctors, are very interesting cases raised and seeing the case brought by Sunitha N Seenappa in Latin America is now unproblema prevention, this because the systems of health are more curative than preventive and this is reflected in the high levels metabolic syndrome. I think it's important to look at both indivudual and collective cases and work more on side effects in the metabolism of excess sugar consumption day after day.me parece muy interesante mirar el efecto del azucar en la hipertención con mirar a prevenir esta enfermedad y ver su implicación en el sistema renina angiotensina aldoesterona SRAA

You will be fit without any doubt if you avoid excess intake or even nil intake of sugar,the best thing is to put this habit in place from the childhood.

Sugar is not the direct cause of these problems such as hypertension and other chronic diseases. Sugar releases glucose on digestion, which if massive causes a large insulin response. Regular intake of large amount sugar may cause hyperinsulinemia .

Exogenous administration of Insulin and endogenous hyper-insulinemia elevate blood pressure in several ways. They cause sodium retention by directly increasing the activity of the epithelial sodium channel (ENaC), the sodium phosphate co-transporter, sodium hydrogen exchanger type III and Na-K-ATPase. (Tiwari et al., 2007). Insulin also induces oxidative stress, which causes impairment of the vascular endothelium, decreased availability of nitric oxide, and therefore atherosclerosis and hypertension (Virdis et al., 2013)

Insulin causes excitation of the sympathetic nervous system via a central action on the hypothalamus, where it is believed to act on the anteroventral third ventricle hypothalamic region (Muntzel et al., 1995) Other researchers have found that hyperinsulinemia in normotensive humans increases sympathetic nerve activity but not arterial pressure since it also causes skeletal muscle vasodilatation. However, in the presence of insulin resistance and/or hypertension, insulin may cause exaggerated sympathetic activation or impaired vasodilatation and thus elevate arterial pressure. (Anderson et al., 1992)

Hyperinsulinemia also causes obesity by converting glucose into fat in the dispose tissue. However, whether glucose is converted into fat or glycogen depends on timing of food intake. When sugar is consumed soon after exercise, glucose is converted to glycogen but when sugar is ingested by a sedentary person, the glucose is converted into fat.

It has also suggested that a large insulin response following a large glucose intake tends to block the action of leptin on the feeding center in the hypothalamus thereby preventing satiety.(Lustig, 2010) This leads to demand for more glucose producing food and eventually a state of obesity and its sequelae of metabolic syndrome, hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and other chronic diseases.

when we talk about foods including sugar, dietary pattern related to culture and ethnics have to be considered. Intake of sugar might be a problem to western counties but not to some Asian countries. Our studies on animal protein intake and hypertension in Chinese found increased animal protein might be good for controlling of hypertension among rural women. It implied that relation between diet and disease must be understood under a certain population.

@ Shaonong Dang,

Your studies on animal protein intake and hypertension control is interesting. I understand that animal protein means, of especially sea food (fresh not canned) I suppose. Kindly provide me the further details.

And me being diagnosed with type II diabetic in the year 2012 (february) with sudden shot up of 308 levels were brought to normalcy through NATURE CURE AND YOGA (yogasana and pranayama) in a systematic way in 30-40 days (under normal range within 100). since 2012, Sept, I'm returned to my regular habits of earlier days without any symptoms.

Being a diploma degree holder in DNYS (diploma in naturopathy and yogic sciences) and having confidence in the field I literally treated my body as an experimental documentation. Today I have developed a kind of protocol; and after my healing and reverted back to normalcy I've been treating similar cases after analyzing their mentality, food habits, lifestyle and their ego perceptions.

Similar to your studies I found out that animal protein (sheep/goat/chicken) has helpful role followed by sprouted pulses in giving balanced protein. However vegetable juices in raw forms like Knol-Khol and cucurbitaceae family gourds like ash gourd, snake gourd, ribbed gourd, bitter gourd and lady's finger and yoghurt with Jaggery (conventional method produced from whole of cane juice) in a pattern has been the trick.

Sugar is poison and mores so because it is in almost every food product manufatured

Drs. One thing should be differentiating that “Fructose “that synthesis from corn syrup verse Fructose that is available from fruits. The same goes for glucose. Why dietitian recommend daily intake of portion of fruits and vegetables. Fructose not requires insulin for its uptake by cells and if cause increase uric acid, it is very beneficial because increase level uric acid delays onset of Alzheimer disease.

A meta-analysis of 21 human clinical trials has shown that unless the daily intake is extremely high (>213 g/day), fructose does not elevate uric acid (Wang et al., J Nutr. 2012;142(5):916-923). Virtually no one consumes that much fructose.

I am glad to join this forum about sugar. Most of the responses given tend to denounce sugar.

I was just wondering to know whether it SUGAR or ALCOHOL is causing the greater economic and public health burden on the globe.

Could any one supply me with relevant literature?

Thanks for the information,. But what is the quantative thresold level? 

"Death by sugar" is not an overstatement...

Evidence is mounting that sugar is the primary factor causing not just obesity, but also chronic and lethal disease.

There's really no doubt anymore that excess sugar can be toxic to your body, and it's only a matter of time before it will be commonly accepted as a causative factor of most cancers, in the same way as we accept that smoking and alcohol abuse are direct causes of lung cancer and cirrhosis of the liver.

By Dr. Mercola

Dr. Mercola's sensationalistic claims are not to be trusted.

Dear  Hashem Kilani 

the anwer to Is sugar intake an overstatement for deteriorating your health?

is not my opinion and I don,t think so  that is only a claim by Dr. Mercola it is experessed to see what is the other,s opinions .

They key to to putting Dr. Mercola's claims into perspective is his use of the term "excessive". Having gone over his claims, which are often made without any references, in nearly every instance, he bases them on amounts that few people if anyone normally consumes. This is particularly true for his claims concerning fructose.

Nutrition studies are difficult and expensive to conduct if they are well designed and conducted with sufficient number of people to study outcomes.  Many of the relationships that are mentioned with sugar and disease causation in this Discussion  Session are weak at best and some highly speculative such as causing most cancers.  In developing countries lung cancer is the, or one of the, leading causes of death.  Smoking is the principal villain.  I have never seen any studies indicating a relationship with sugar.. Sugar also has never been show to be a risk factor for breast or uterine cancer. I have never seen any breast cancer prevention program that focused on reducing sugar intake.    Ute Inegbenebor presents a great discussion of the relationship of sugar and the mechanisms that are related to hyperinsulinemai. This is probably the stongest correlation associated with sugar consumption.  There is also ample evidence that excessive carbohydrate consumptions coupled with lack of physical activity are manor contributors to obesity development.  Sugar alone is not the major player that seems to be the "conventional wisdom" of several in this discussion group.  Hypotheses need to be tested and supported with evidence.  While sugar is overly consumed and should be cut back we can not conclude it is the primary factor in non communicable disease.  This statement that started the discussion cannot be supported.  Often what we want to believe does not prove true once investigated by well designed research.  Even then sometimes the conclusions are allusive; ie. in the case of cholesterol and heart disease. Without doubt it would be wise to reduce sugar consumption and for us to all adopt a health diet and lifestyle.. 

George, what is excessive carbohydrate intake?

Lack of pysical activity..yes

BTW, for the non Brits, SACN looked into these different claims. 300 pages, well worth a read.

I agree with all the observations made but do not agree this is 100% right. I take my own example, I am in late seventies and even today take lot of sugar enriched food with no serious health complain.

Hello Claudia,

In response to your question, a moderate carbohydrate diet has been shown to have significant benefits in weight control and lipid values.  The "moderate" carbohydrate diet is 26% carbohydrates.  A reference worth looking at is:http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/83/5/1025.long.  This is on the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health posting.  Also, some suggest that 150 grams/ day is a good target for moderate carbohydrate intake.  You can find differing suggestions, but I think these two are in the right range.  Of course controlling sugar intake will reduce the carbohydrate intakes. Some of this is actually quite simple and along with the recommendations we promote for healthy diets: more fruit and vegetables and higher fiber.  Probably we all know someone who has cut our wheat and many other carbs and have attained weight loss and perhaps as important weight control. I would be interested in hearing views on the benefits of reducing carbohydrates.  In the US a major problem is consumption of snack foods that are very carbohydrate dense.  It does not appear that the simple solution of reducing calories alone is terribly effective for losing and sustaining weight loss.  Carbohydrate reduction seems from the literature to also help with controlling appetite.    How to achieve the best diet in terms of health however, would probably consume many, many discussions.  The world is getting fatter in countries where food is plentiful and readily available..  Sorry for digressing.

Thanks for answering. However this is not what you claimed first:

that excessive carbohydrate consumptions coupled with lack of physical activity are manor contributors to obesity

The paper you showed is in regards to weight loss.

Weight loss is a different matter to not becoming obese in the first place.

In the US a major problem is consumption of snack foods that are very carbohydrate dense.

Same here. But they are also full of fat. And salt.

Have a look at this paper, especially table 4. The ones who drank diet SSB ate more salty snacks than the ones on normal SSB

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24432876

So what was first..obesity results in switching to diet drinks and not losing weight because they compensate with fatty snacks..or getting obese through the sugar drinks?

Sorry I did not answer what you were after.  You asked what is excessive carbohydrate consumption not for the citations that carbohydrates contribute to obesity.  The paper I sent, you are correct looks, at the impact on weight loss.  The reference you sent from the abstract (I do not have access to the whole publication) indicates that for obese people those who drink diet beverages have a higher caloric intake from solid foods.  For the overweight this difference was marginally statistically significant (p=.03). They conclude to lose weight those who drink diet beverages need to have greater reductions in solid food calories.   Seems a reasonable consumption.  As you point out though, from this study you cannot tell which comes first; diet beverage consumption or weight gain.

You are also right that snack foods have higher fat and salt levels. Fats have higher caloric content than do carbohydrates so you are increasing calories much faster by eating high fat carbo dense snacks.  I just pulled an Oats and honey snack bar from my desk, this discussion has stimulated my appetite, and it hs 6 g fat and 29 g carbohydrates. , of which 12 are sugar. Almost 1/2 of the carbohydrates are sugar.   At 190 Calories this one bar is almost 10% of the total calories I should eat for my weight. The contribution of snacking is clear.

 When I get a chance I will look up some of the papers that show that carbohydrate intake can contribute to obesity.  From a practical point I personally believe that if one restricts carbohydrates and has a meaningful weight loss it implicates carbohydrates in causing the weight gain.  A leap in faith. 

I will attach the paper it will self-destruct after you have read it.

Of course you will lose weight if you restrict your carbohydrate intake. But the same applies to fat. And you will gain weight if you have a positive energy balance. Where that comes from: Each day too much French Artisan cheese and a bottle of wine, a cake or a big Mac... doesn’t matter.

Carbohydrates are, as such, no more the culprit than fat alone.

I have posted above the SACN paper, the group looked into all matters in regards to carbohydrates. It is well worth a read.