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Sugar is the general name for short-chain, soluble carbohydrates found in food. These sweet tasting carbohydrates are made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

Sugar farmers grow and harvest sugar cane and sugar beet plants. In the harvesting process, farmers extract the sugar juice from each plant then refine it by running it through a series of wash and dry cycles that turn the juice into fine sugar crystals.

These sugar crystals are either sold as unbleached, not heavily refined, higher molasses content crystals, commonly known as raw sugar, or as bleached, further refined, lower molasses content crystals, commonly known as table sugar.

Glucose, a simple sugar, is the body’s key source of energy. It is also the primary source of energy for the brain. If glucose is lacking, psychological processes that require mental effort are impaired. The central nervous system runs on glucose throughout the day and our muscles require glucose in order to function at their best during strenuous workouts

Red blood cells use glucose for energy. During pregnancy, glucose can help form cells and produce milk.

To conserve fuel, the body stores extra glucose that is not required for energy as a compound called glycogen. Through a process called glycogenesis the liver makes glycogen chains up to thousands of glucose molecules long.

The body then breaks down glycogen into units of glucose that it can use for energy when primary sources are not available. This occurs during sleep, meals, and throughout workouts to prevent dangerous drops in blood sugar.

The human body can’t function without sugar. Why is it then that sugar receives such harsh criticism? It’s not because of the good that sugar does, rather it’s because of the lack of nutritional value that simple sugars contain.

All carbohydrates are composed of units of sugar. Carbohydrates exist in all foods except fats (like oils) and animal protein. What makes various carbohydrates different from each other is the amount of sugar units that they contain. Carbohydrates can be divided into three subcategories:

1. Simple carbohydrates (otherwise known as simple sugars)

2. Complex carbohydrates (commonly known as starches)

Bad carbohydrates are simple carbohydrates that are made up of only one or two units of sugar . Their simple structure enables the body to break them down and digest them too quickly to offer the proper nutrients and energy to the body that it needs. The rapid digestion of simple carbohydrates causes them to be released into the blood stream quickly therefore causing a spike in the body’s energy level followed by a crash in energy.

White bread, white rice, alcohol, soft drinks, cakes, cookies and chips are examples of bad carbohydrates that are full of empty calories.

Lactose, fructose and sucrose are also simple sugars . These should be avoided as they offer no nutritional value.

Good carbohydrates are complex carbohydrates that contain more than two units of sugar linked together. Complex carbohydrates can have three to millions of units of sugar linked together. Their complexity causes the body to take longer to digest them therefore releasing glucose into the blood stream more slowly and evenly than simple carbohydrates.

Dietary fiber is another kind of complex carbohydrate. Though it does not act as a source of energy for the body it provides many other positive benefits.

Fiber is classified by nutritionists as either insoluble fiber or soluble fiber. This is based on whether it dissolves in water. Both insoluble and soluble fibers are incapable of being broken down by the body’s digestive enzymes. For this reason, fiber adds no additional calories to your diet and it cannot be converted to glucose.

Fiber is valuable to the human body because you can’t digest it. Insoluble fiber is a natural laxative. It can be found in whole wheat, whole grains, bran, beans, carrots, beets, cabbage, plant stems and leaves. It absorbs water, helps you feel full longer and it helps move solid materials through your intestines quickly preventing digestive disorders such as constipation and diverticulitis.

Soluble fiber found in fruits, barley, beans, oats, rice, seeds and seaweed helps to lower the amount of cholesterol circulating in the blood. This makes it a natural aid in preventing heart disease.

All bad sugars are simple , but here’s where it gets tricky. Not all simple sugars are considered bad because it depends where the sugar comes from. For example, beans, nuts, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables all contain simple sugars, but these sugars are part of what is considered ‘whole foods’. This means that they don’t just contain sugar ; they also contain minerals, proteins, and vitamins making them more than just empty calories.

All of these sugars are ‘good sugars’, and occur naturally in the foods that most of us eat every day. This is why they are commonly called natural sugars .

It’s the teaspoon of refined table sugar added to your coffee, or the little bit added to your cooking that is considered bad . This added sugar (the health industry calls it) contains no minerals or fiber, just empty calories.

Sugar consumption is at an all time high and it is affecting our health in a negative way. In fact, statistics say that the average American consumes more than 156 pounds of added sugar every year. The largest source of Americans sugar calorie intake comes from high fructose corn syrup.

Soft drinks, sports drinks, and fruit juices are all loaded with sugar. There are also many foods that contain hidden sugars. Processed foods like pretzels, bottled pasta sauce, bologna, Worcestershire sauce, barbeque sauce and cheese spread, also contain a lot of sugar.

Nowadays most infant formula contains the sugar equivalent of one can of Coke. Babies therefore are being metabolically programmed to be sugar addicts from day one.

Most people associate high sugar intake with weight gain. They don’t realize however that weight gain is only one negative side effect of sugar.

Sugar can be extremely damaging to the body because it can cause all kinds of life threatening diseases. It can also have outer and inner physical effects that are not life threatening but that do inhibit the quality of one’s life.

An excessive intake of sugar causes extra sugar molecules to remain in the bloodstream. Sugars that are left unused in the bloodstream have to go somewhere, so they latch on to protein molecules throughout the entire body.

These protein-sugar complexes called advanced glycation end products cause massive inflammation in the body as well as tissue damage and premature aging. It is a fact that many of the diseases that we associate with aging are actually caused by this process.

Normally, inflammation is a natural immune response. Pain, swelling, and redness are usually all positive signs that the body is working to repair tissue and heal a wound. This is called acute inflammation.

Chronic inflammation is when your body is no longer capable of turning off the inflammatory response and it begins attacking healthy tissue, mistaking it for something harmful.

In 2004, Time Magazine called inflammation “The Secret Killer” because once it silently starts running out of control it can damage the intestinal lining and cause digestive problems; it can damage arteries in the heart and cause heart disease, and it can damage joints and cause rheumatoid arthritis.

Obviously, things like sleep deprivation, stress, bacteria, viruses, and environmental poisons (to name a few) also contribute to chronic inflammation. Controlling sugar intake is just one of the ways that we can consciously avoid the risk of developing diseases due to chronic inflammation.

Below is a list of things that can be brought on by a high sugar diet .

Today, 32% of Americans suffer from obesity, and another one third is considered over-weight. This number has more than doubled since 1975 when the obesity rate in America was only 15 %. Carrying excess weight increases your risk of heart disease, diabetes and kidney disease.

Consuming sugar that is not in the ‘whole foods’ category means consuming empty calories. Empty calories means….you guessed it, weight gain!

When you eat too much sugar the pancreas releases insulin to handle the rush of sugars entering the body. This is like an alarm to the liver, alerting it to turn the complex and simple sugars into glucose for our bodies to use as energy.

If not all of the glucose produced is used, the liver works again to change the glucose into glycogen. It then sends it out to be stored in the muscles and fat tissue.

Glycogen is eventually used for energy. That’s a good thing, right? There’s just one problem. The body only stores 12 hours worth of glycogen, and the rest is converted by the liver to nothing but fat.

Sugar and high fructose corn syrup contain both glucose and fructose. Fructose is not a natural part of our metabolism and few cells in the body can use it. It is metabolized by the liver and there it gets turned into fat which is then secreted into the blood.

Fructose causes insulin resistance and raises insulin levels in the blood which selectively deposit energy from foods into fat cells. This causes weight gain.

Fructose also causes the brain to resist leptin which means that the brain can’t see all the stored fat in the body. This makes it think that the body is starving. As a result, an urge is triggered to keep eating when we don’t need to eat. This results in weight gain.

Fructose also doesn’t make you feel full after meals like glucose. It only leads to an increase in calorie intake and ultimately weight gain.

Dermatologist Dr. Patricia Ferris, a specialist in aging skin, noticed that many women seeking a cure for their aging skin had one thing in common. Their skin did not have the usual symptoms of sun-damage that she suspected, yet it was very wrinkled and had a significant loss of elasticity.

The one common thread with all of these women was that they had a diet that consisted of poor nutrition and excessive sugar consumption .

“Research shows that a diet laced with sugar and refined carbohydrates can age the skin more than a lifetime of lying in the sun” said Dr. Ferris.

The process that links sugar and premature aging is called glycation. As mentioned above, glycation occurs when blood sugar levels are excessively high. Sugar molecules bond with other components in the blood and form protein-sugar complexes known as advanced glycation end-products, or AGE’s. This triggers an inflammatory response causing tissue damage and premature aging.

The molecules in your face that promote a youthful glow are very sensitive to sugar. When collagen and elastin molecules are turned into AGE’s their soft and supple fibers become rigid. This causes saggy, baggy, wrinkled skin.

When you eat sugar and refined carbs you deliberately attack your own collagen and elastin, therefore destroying your own appearance of youth. This also causes defects in your complexion like dryness, vulnerability to infection and acne.

Dr. Ferris recommends that one of the best things you can do for your skin is replace sugar with apples and other foods containing anti-glycating antioxidants which are chemicals that fight the glycation process naturally.

The Center for Disease Control has estimated that by the year 2050 one in three Americans will have diabetes. This can be prevented if we eat better, exercise more and lower our consumption of sugar .

Diabetes, or diabetes mellitus, is a common disease caused by a high sugar and high fat diet. Diabetes occurs when the pancreas fails to produce adequate insulin when the blood sugar rises.

A concentrated amount of sugar sent into the system causes the body to go into shock from the rapid rise in the blood sugar level. Eventually the pancreas wears out from overwork and diabetes sets in.

Being overweight and eating foods high in simple sugars are both factors that contribute to this disease.

Badly controlled diabetes can lead to mental health disorders, hearing loss, stroke, eye complications, and general circulation issues to the extremities of the body.

Hypoglycemia occurs when the pancreas overreacts to a large amount of sugar in the blood and releases an excess of insulin. This leaves an individual feeling tired because the blood sugar level sinks lower than it should.

Studies show that diets high in sugar increase the body’s risk of developing heart disease, especially in women. While the exact amount of sugar needed to cause this change hasn’t been determined by professionals, something as simple as one soft drink a day has been proven to double or even triple the risk for some people.

With sugar contributing to high blood pressure and unhealthy cholesterol levels, it’s only logical that heart disease would be close behind as a result of a high sugar diet .

Another serious problem with sugar is the various levels of mental issues that it can cause. The human brain is very sensitive and reacts to quick chemical changes within the body.

One of the keys to efficient brain function is glutamic acid which is a compound commonly found in many vegetables. When sugar is consumed, the bacteria in the intestines which manufacture vitamin B complexes begin to die. When the B vitamin complex levels decline, the glutamic acid is not processed and this results in sleepiness, as well as a decreased ability for short-term memory function and numerical calculative abilities.

It also leads to a confused mental state and has also been associated with juvenile criminal behavior. In fact, Dr. Alexander Schauss in his Diet, Crime and Delinquency book says that “many mental ward and prison inmates are sugarholics and experience erratic emotional outbreaks following a sugar binge .”

Research also shows that sugar can cause ‘free radicals’ in the brain that make it difficult to focus on both menial and complicated tasks. It can also make it difficult to listen and pay attention properly.

With sugars causing insulin to be produced by the pancreas, and simple sugars causing bursts of insulin to be produced by the pancreas, it can be hard for our bodies to adjust to these significant highs and lows.

One of the functions of the stress hormone, cortisol, is to regulate the body’s glucose levels to ensure that the body’s muscles, heart, and vital organs have enough glucose (energy) to continue doing what they do best: keeping you alive.

Highs and lows of insulin and glucose can increase cortisol in the body, making the body physically stressed out, complete with sweaty palms and a pounding heart. This makes it difficult to sleep because your body feels like it’s running a marathon.

Sugar makes the blood very thick and sticky. This inhibits the blood flow into the tiny capillaries that supply the gums and teeth with vital nutrients. This causes gum disease as well as teeth that are deficient of necessary nutrients.

Chewing gum can also be harmful not only because of the sugar content in gum that damages teeth, but because the teeth and jaws were never designed to put up with more than a few minutes of solid gum chewing per day. People who enjoy chewing gum often chew for an average of two hours daily. This amount of gum chewing results in excessive wear and tear on the jawbone, gum tissue and lower molars. It can also change the alignment of the jaw.

Sugar also plays a major role in Alzeheimer’s disease, atherosclerosis, cataracts, depression and other diseases.