What sugar does to your body?

We're going to address these questions as well as discuss how the body processes sugar, what sugar actually is, and even how exercise can alter how we utilize and process the sugar that we consume. Have you ever been told that sugar is bad and that you should stop eating it? If so, you may have wondered why it is bad and if it is how bad — like a little bad so that I can still eat my cookies or a lot bad and i should stop eating it immediately.

First off, what do we even mean when we say "sugar"? The majority of us refer to table sugar, which can occasionally have some negative implications. You may have heard that sugar is unhealthy, contributes to weight gain, is linked to diabetes, can promote inflammation, and so on, but are these statements true? In biology, the term "sugar" is used to refer to specific types of carbohydrates. What you might find interesting is that as we talk about sugar, we'll find that the same types of carbohydrates that are found in table sugar are the same carbohydrates that are found in fruits, vegetables, and other whole food sources that we typically consider to be healthy. Could there ever be potential situations where sugar might be beneficial? we may explain sugar in more detail, but first, what is a carbohydrate?. Sugars, starches, and even cellulose are examples of compounds known as carbohydrates that are composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Cellulose is one of the contributors to the fiber in your diet and helps move things along in your large intestine so that you can have epically amazing bowel movements, but sugars and starches are substances that our bodies can definitely break down and absorb carbonhydrates, but what are some of the distinctions now that simple carbohydrates are referred to as "sugar"? Simple sugars are smaller carbohydrate molecules that include things like disaccharides and monosaccharides. You may have heard the term before. Saccharide simply means "sugar" and "dye" means "two" and "mono" means "one," so a disaccharide is made up of two monosaccharides. Despite our use of some jargon-filled biological terms, you have probably heard of the disaccharides and monosaccharides that are present in the foods you consume. For instance, lactose is the disaccharide present in milk products, and sucrose is the disaccharide.

If we take a step back, imagine yourself holding a spoonful of sugar, and that spoonful of sugar is made up of multiple multiple molecules of sucrose and therefore the building blocks of sugar. This table sugar, aka sucrose, is made up of one monosaccharide called glucose bonded to another monosaccharide called fructose.

You're about to eat something that contains glucose and fructose, but because you have an inquisitive mind about biology, anatomy, and physiology, you're wondering what it is about this table sugar that makes the glucose and fructose in it worse than the glucose or fructose I find just in the fruits and vegetables and other food sources. Well, in order to answer that, I believe we should briefly discuss starches. Starches are polysaccharides, which are complex carbohydrates. We can definitely compare and contrast these to the disaccharides or the table sugar as we can see yes they both contain glucose but there's a huge difference in the size of say table sugar versus the size of the molecules that make up amylose and amylopectin. These are multiple glucose molecules strung together or bonded together, or you could think of them as these long chains of glucose hence they are referred to as polysaccharides. Compared to carbs, table sugar has a different effect on the body because of how it is digested and absorbed. Therefore, we need to discuss the differences in what happens when you put table sugar versus starch in your mouth.

We should probably talk about consuming an awesome stuff since we are talking about placing things in our mouths.

So, returning to the consumption of sugars and starches and this discussion about how harmful sugar is, once we put the sugar and starches into our mouths—what is known as the oral cavity in anatomy—the process of digestion starts there through chewing and the release of saliva, which contains specific enzymes to aid in the process. We then move this down the esophagus and into the stomach, where the sugars and starches will combine with the acid. Because our bodies can only absorb monosaccharides, which are the individual glucose and fructose molecules, this breakdown and digestive process is crucial for absorption. As those glucose and fructose molecules move through the body, they are absorbed. For instance, sucrase will break down sucrose, table sugar, into the individual glucose and fructose molecules that we discussed earlier. Amylase is a specific enzyme to break down amylose. Once those glucose and fructose molecules are in the bloodstream, they will first travel to the liver. The liver does a lot of different things, but one of the first things it will do is convert those fructose molecules into glucose molecules so we don't have all this blood sugar spike. they will then move into the jejunum and the ilium, the second and third parts of the small intestine, and then be absorbed through the wall and into the bloodstream. Fructose is a primary monosaccharide that circulates throughout the body, and when you consider that from a clinical perspective, when we measure blood sugar levels, we're actually measuring blood glucose levels. However, i did graze over something there kind of quickly, and that was the rate of breakdown and absorption of, say, a sugar versus the rate of a starch, and remember we mentioned that sugars are more easily absorbed. The blood sugar levels tend to rise more slowly but also tend to be sustained for a longer period of time, so one drawback you can think of or that's occasionally mentioned about sugar is that the blood sugar levels could spike but then also kind of crash down now. However, they'll also taper off or go down more rapidly as opposed to say, like a complex carbohydrate, where that breakdown or that digestion is more slowly, You can manage that in some circumstances if you only consume simple sugars, but if you combine simple sugars with, say, complex sugars or complex carbohydrates, you'd get sustained blood sugar levels because the complex carbohydrate follows behind. However, there are some circumstances where I want a simple sugar or sugar to enter and raise the blood sugar level. If I'm a marathon runner and I'm halfway through the marathon my glucose levels are getting low and I need to get an energy boost of glucose into my bloodstream as soon as possible yes the ideal situation is to have a balanced intake of carbohydrates or blood glucose levels, but I don't want to wait for a complex carbohydrate I want to get a simple sugar in there to raise the blood sugar levels up to get them out of that hypoglycemic state. However, as you can see, there are some circumstances in which it can be appropriate to get that glucose into the bloodstream as quickly as possible. One thing I do want to point out is that in the clinical setting, if we need to raise someone's blood sugar levels or during a marathon, we don't just give them spoonfuls of table sugar; instead, there are specific mixtures or products made up of simple sugars or simple carbohydrates to achieve this. However, if you are in this situation, you should exercise caution and it's important to remember that the glucose molecule in table sugar has the exact same form and structure as the glucose molecule that originated from a fruit, vegetable, or other whole food source. This means that it is not poisonous in any way. It's not as if your body has a glucose segregation police force that orders glucose molecules from sugar to be sent to fat cells while allowing glucose molecules from whole grain foods to enter muscle cells. Even though I said that glucose is glucose and that our bodies don't distinguish between the sources from where the glucose comes from, there are still some very important factors we must take into account when it comes to sugar. For instance, sugar is frequently referred to as "empty calories," which simply means that it doesn't provide any nutritional value. In that case, glucose and fructose are frequently going to be linked to other advantages, such as vitamins, fiber, and other nutrients that can support health and wellness. Building further on the notion of empty calories, the most detrimental aspect of sugar is probably the fact that you can consume a lot of it without feeling particularly satisfied, which makes sense when you consider how it would have been for early human ancestors or hunters. Of course, but did they build the factories where they produced refined table sugar to supplement the foods they already consumed? No, but we do.

Think back to your most recent dining experience, Perhaps you ordered a soda instead of water and received two to three refills. This extra sugar was consumed and probably didn't make you feel any more satisfied than if you had simply drank two to three glasses of water. Similarly, adding sugar to foods we already eat again probably doesn't make us feel any more satisfied but increases the amount of carbohydrates and sugars instead. the total amount of carbohydrates and sugars that we consume has changed as a result, and this idea once again is that we've changed the ratio. Sugar itself is not bad; rather, it's the amount that we're getting so easily included in our daily diet. As a result, another thing that I think will be helpful is for us to understand what happens as the glucose circulates throughout the body. When there is too much glucose, as we already know, it will first go to the liver, where any fructose will simply be converted to glucose without further action. However, the liver will also begin to store the glucose in its storage form, known as glycogen, which it can hold up to 100 grams of. The remaining glucose will then circulate throughout the body, and yes, the pancreas will release insulin.

If we focus on skeletal muscle in particular, the glucose that is pulled into the skeletal muscle tissue will also be stored as glycogen and the skeletal muscles throughout your body could store approximately 400 to 500 grams of glycogen depending on who you are. Kind of think of the liver as the storage location for this glycogen. But what happens when the liver and skeletal muscle tissue are fully utilized, and there is still excess glucose in the bloodstream? At that point, the excess glucose begins to be converted to fat and stored in adipose tissue and that's where we can start to have issues by really increasing our glucose or sugar intake beyond the capacity of things like our liver and skeletal muscle tissue, so hopefully that gives you a different perspective or a better understanding of how sugar can be bad so consistently consuming too much sugar and having increased blood glucose levels and that excess blood glucose getting stored as fat and increasing weight over time and the associations of increasing blood But finally, how does exercise affect or even alter how our bodies handle sugar or glucose? Moderate to vigorous exercise leads the skeletal muscles to switch their preferred energy source from burning lipids to burning carbs. Additionally, as someone gets more active or exercises regularly, their capacity to store glycogen in their skeletal muscles grows. To put it another way, picture your skeletal muscles as a bigger gas tank that can hold more glycogen. If you contrast a sedentary or inactive person with an active person, you'll notice that the latter's resting glycogen stores are 20 to 30 percent lower. Theoretically, someone who engages in regular exercise could consume more carbohydrates since they can store more of them in their skeletal muscles before they start to turn into fat, in addition to burning more calories on a daily basis. Exercise also makes muscles more sensitive to insulin, especially after exercise, which is kind of the opposite of what happens with type 2 diabetes, in which most body cells become insulin-insensitive. Exercise has this insulin-sensitizing effect, especially with the skeletal muscles. And speaking of insulin, here's something really cool. An exercising muscle doesn't actually require insulin to bring in the glucose like a resting muscle does, so if you're running a marathon or exercising and you consume something to replenish your carbohydrate stores, like a simple sugar or carbohydrate, those contracting muscles can bring in the glucose without the need for insulin. As you can see, exercising has some incredible benefits because it improves how we process and use those sugars or carbohydrates. However, most of us don't live on those two extremes, so as long as the majority of your carbohydrates come from whole foods sources and you have this balanced ratio of carbohydrates to lipids to proteins you're likely going to be healthy.

If, however, I had someone who didn't eat any processed sugar and only got their carbohydrates from whole food sources versus someone who ate a ton of sugar, obviously we're going to pick the situation where we get our carbohydrates only from the whole food sources. Remember,that one of the best times to do that is right after exercise, when your skeletal muscles are primed to also bring in those amino acids or those proteins to aid the rebuilding process. It's also a good time to add protein to that because your skeletal muscles are primed to bring in that glucose to replenish the glycogen stores.