Eliminating sugar from your diet is not the easiest thing to do, but it brings enormous benefits. As soon as you decide to go sugar-free, your body will experience many positive changes, as well as some unpleasant short-term withdrawal symptoms.
Here are 10 changes to your body that occur after you stop consuming sugar.
You will look younger
Sugar = wrinkles, he says Anthony Youn, dr. MD, a cosmetic surgeon from Michigan. In his book The Age Fix, he reveals how you can rejuvenate your appearance by up to ten years. According to him, sugar causes glycation, the process by which sugar molecules in our skin bind and deform collagen and elastin, the two main proteins that give skin its youthfulness and elasticity. When you give up sugar or reduce the amount of sugar you eat, you lower the levels of glucose and insulin in your bloodstream and reduce chronic and acute aging-related inflammation. dr. Youn says that within 14 days of quitting sugar, you'll be glowing again.
Your well-being will improve
Megan Gilmore, a certified nutritionist in Kansas City, Kansas, and author of No Excuses Detox: 100 Recipes to Help You Eat Healthy Every Day, points to the fact that sugar consumption linked to depression. Consuming sugar causes chronic inflammation, which affects brain function. When you give up sugar, you'll feel like a fog has lifted around you and your mood has improved. You'll feel the difference after just one to two weeks, he says. Research in the June 2015 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition confirm this. Women who ate foods with a high glycemic index and lots of added sugar were more likely to be depressed than women who ate less of these foods.
You can reduce your body weight
On average daily we consume 22 teaspoons of sugar, which is about 350 kilocalories, is written in the scientific statement of the American Heart Association, published in the journal Circulation. "Sugar can be addictive, and when we reduce the amount we eat, we also stop the need, so we burn fewer calories and lose weight." says Kaufman. Consuming excess sugar can cause leptin resistance, a hormone that regulates hunger and tells the body when to stop eating. When you eat refined sugar, your body may not get the signal that you're full, causing you to eat too many calories and gain weight, Gilmore says. He also says that when you replace sugar with whole foods, your hormones will begin to naturally balance and send signals to your brain when you've eaten enough. Consequently you can lose weight – often already in the first week.
You will catch less colds
Sugar contributes to chronic inflammation, which reduces our immune system's ability to fight off colds and flu, Gilmore says. If you reduce the amount of sugar in your diet, you will certainly be less snotty throughout the year, and the symptoms of allergies and asthma will also decrease. A study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed that consuming 100 grams of sugar per day (whether it is glucose, fructose, sucrose, honey or orange juice) reduces the ability of white blood cells to destroy bacteria, namely by as much as 50 percent.
You can reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes
Cutting out sugar gives the body's natural detoxification systems a chance to do their job. “During the first few hours without sugar, your pancreas will start producing less insulin and your liver will also begin to process the stored toxins," says Marc Alabanza, Certified Nutrition Consultant and Program Director of GroundSea Fitness. This process will take a little longer if you're already insulin resistant, he adds. Insulin resistance occurs in prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, which means that even though your body produces the hormone insulin, it doesn't respond to it properly. "The time when most of these symptoms completely subside can take up to five weeks, after which your body will no longer be a slave to refined sugar," he says.
You will reduce your risk of heart disease
"When glucose rises after a sweet meal, our insulin increases to compensate, and this activates the part of our nervous system that raises blood pressure and heart rate," says Kaufman. High blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease, as well as type 2 diabetes and obesity, which are linked to excess sugar consumption, according to the American Heart Association. Sugar it also increases the amount of triglycerides (unhealthy fats in the blood), which increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. In one of studies, conducted in 2014, those who consumed the most added sugar were more likely to die from heart disease than their counterparts who consumed the least.
Your breath and smile will improve
Saul Pressner, a dentist from New York, says that sugar is the main factor that causes tooth decay, because in combination with bacteria in the mouth it forms acid that causes tooth decay. Your breath will also improve, as the sugar you eat feeds the bacteria that cause bad breath.
Your sex life will be better
In men, sugar consumption causes insulin levels to rise, which can reduces sexual drive and sexual function, says Mark Hyman, a physician at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine in Ohio and founder of the UltraWellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Sugar also affects women's sex hormones, says Dr. Hyman, author of several books including The Ten Day Detox Diet. The impact can be much larger. "Hormonal imbalance can cause women to they lose scalp hair and get facial hair, they may develop acne and also irregular periods."
You will sleep like babies
You can have your sweet evening snack it spoils restful sleep and even causes night sweats, says dr. Hyman in research published in BMJ Open. Eating sugar before bed can also increases the level of stress hormones, which leads to sleep problems.
Stay fit
According to a New Zealand doctor Paul Sharad, author of The Genetics of Health: Understand Your Genes for Better Health, giving up sugar isn't exactly easy. "Sugar is addictive, and when we stop consuming it, withdrawal symptoms can be triggered," he says. Mood changes such as anxiety and anger, last about two weeks after we stop consuming sugar. However, if you have consumed large amounts of sugar over a long period of time, symptoms may persist even one month. Artificial sweeteners like aspartame also cause withdrawal effects, so it's best to avoid them, he says. Alabanza adds that headaches and flu-like symptoms can also occur, but they can reduce with exercise. Moderate to brisk walking can help, as it slightly speeds up blood circulation and metabolism, strengthens the immune system, and above all, gives the individual something positive to focus on.
