Sugar can age you faster

A higher added sugar intake makes our cells age faster, even if we are eating an otherwise healthy diet, new research suggests. — dpa

You are what you eat, or so the saying goes.

But researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, (UCSF) in the United States, have found that women who eat too much sugar appear older, rather than sweeter.

The effect of too much sugar is felt even when consumed as part of a healthy diet, according to the researchers.

They had examined how various diets affect the so-called “epigenetic clock”, which they describe as “a biochemical test that can approximate both health and lifespan”.

“The better people ate, the younger their cells looked,” the team said, in findings published by the American Medical Association’s JAMA Network Open journal.

“Promotion of healthy diets aligned with chronic disease prevention and decreased added-sugar consumption, may support slower cellular ageing, relative to chronological age,” they concluded.

“The diets we examined align with existing recommendations for preventing disease and promoting health, and they highlight the potency of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory nutrients in particular,” said study first author and UCSF postdoctoral research fellow Dr Dorothy Chiu.

A Mediterranean diet was found to be the healthiest of those covered in the study, which the team said encompassed “a diverse population of Black and white women at midlife”.

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“We knew that high levels of added sugars are linked to worsened metabolic health and early disease – possibly more than any other dietary factor,” said study co-author and UCSF Department of Psychiatry professor Dr Elissa Epel.

“Now we know that accelerated epigenetic ageing is underlying this relationship, and this is likely one of many ways that excessive sugar intake limits healthy longevity,” she added. – dpa