For the purpose of a better looking skin, there are some things we must avoid taking into our system as they are a recipe for disaster for our skins. One of these things is sugar, in all the deceptive forms it may come.
When it comes to the skin, sugar is the biblical double edged sword that is designed to both slice your enemy and slice you when you become the enemy.
When used as a scrub, sugar has amazing benefits on the skin. It exfoliates, gets rid of dead cells, keeps your skin soft and smooth. But that’s when it is applied on the outside.
When it goes into your body, it is a different ball game altogether.
Sugar, when taken into the body, has quite a number of effects that are not in any way pleasing to your skin, and should be avoided or at least, intake should be taken down to a minimal level.
Here are some of the effects that you may not have known about.
It damages collagen:
Every part of our body has a specific use; both the parts that are visible and the parts that are not visible. The collagen is a tissue that has the job of keeping your skin firm and put together.
Your constant intake of sugar is detrimental to the collagen, as too much sugar damages the collagen. When the collagen is damaged, the skin begins to lose strength and firmness and suddenly begins to shrink and wrinkle. You find yourself aging faster than you are supposed to, because the tissue that was supposed to slow down aging is damaged.
It increases inflammation:
When the insulin levels in your body rises, your proneness to inflammation increases as well. Sugar is the one thing that can increase insulin levels in the body.
When you constantly take in sugar, you start having breakouts on all the forms they come. You start fighting acne a lot harder than you had before, because something from inside your system is spurring their appearance.
If you were already having skin issues like eczema or psoriasis, be rest assured that it would get worse if your intake of sugar does not reduce. There is only so much you can do to fight these breakouts from the outside when there is a powerhouse supplying them inside your body.
This whole process where your skin begins to destroy from the inside to the outside is called Glycation. And its symptoms includes wrinkling, discoloration, breakouts and sagging.
All of these can be avoided if you would opt for other natural sweeteners instead of sugar and opt for healthier drinks instead of pop sodas. Sugar in your system can take your skin from 100 down to a minus 0 in a few years, and the changes are so slow and steady that you do not actually notice it happening. You just wake up one day to see that your skin has suffered a great deal of deterioration because you took way too much Soda at some point in your life.
You might think, “Oh, it’s just a few cans of soda, a few chocolate bars, one too many taffies.” But it takes just a few of these in one week, and another few of them in another week to make it way too much in one month.
Sugar is sweet, it’s pleasing to the taste buds, but when you look at the effects this has on your skin and your entire system in the long run, you would agree that it is what you would call an unnecessary evil.
References:
Here are a few important references on the effects of sugar on the skin.
- Fulton J, Plewig G, Kligman A. Effect of chocolate on acne vulgaris. JAMA. 1969;210:2071–2074
- Ismail NH, Manaf ZA, Azizan NZ. High glycemic load diet, milk and ice cream consumption are related to acne vulgaris in Malaysian young adults: a case control study. BMC Dermatol. 2012;12:13
- Corstjens H, Dicanio D, Muizzuddin N, et al. Glycation association skin autofluorescence and skin elasticity are related to chronological age and body mass index of healthy subjects. Exp Gerontol. 2008;43:663–667.