The Fountain of Youth is the legendary spring that promises to restore youth to anyone who drinks its water. The history of this special fountain has been told for thousands of years. Unfortunately, there is actually no Fountain of Youth … but there is a way to grow old more easily.
The main cause of faster aging is sugar. Why? Sugar causes inflammation and inflammation is your first-class ticket to faster aging and age-related diseases. Inflammation is usually associated with heat, swelling, redness, and pain in the body. Sugar is insidious because it creates another type of inflammation called “Silent Inflammation” and this just means that it is wreaking havoc on your body 24 hours a day and you don’t even know it because you can’t necessarily feel it. Once you feel the symptoms … you are well on your way to faster aging, chronic disease, and more.
Ingesting sugar may seem like a benign action to you because the effects are not felt right away. Sugar’s anger is cumulative. I promise you, if you felt pain every time you ingested it … you wouldn’t touch the substance. So, the goal is to place you in the future and imagine what your physical health, your skin, your body will be like in 5 years if you continue consuming sugar. Ask yourself, “Am I willing to live with unhealthy, aging body defying, and even outward signs of faster aging, such as sagging and wrinkled skin that sugar ingestion can cause?”
Do you know that the average American eats more than 141 pounds? of sugar a year or nearly 12 pounds a month? This non-nutrient called “sugar” is doing harm without most people knowing it. There is a process that occurs when sugar is ingested called “glycation”. Glycated tissue is tough and inflexible, causing wrinkles not only on the skin, but also on important internal organs. This process occurs because we all have proteins and sugars circulating in our bodies. When sugar and proteins combine, a chemical reaction occurs that creates the production of a class of molecules called “advanced glycation end products” (AGEs). If aging is to be minimized, glycation must be drastically reduced.
The formation of AGE’s advanced glycation end products (partially named for their contribution to the aging process) takes place in your body in a process called caramelization. Caramelization is what goes into creating those crispy stovetop browned potatoes, crispy fried chicken, or that crispy browned steak on the grill. That same process is happening in our bodies due to the ingestion of sugar. By the way, sugar is often added to products like French fries and baked goods to enhance the browning. Like those crisp, golden potatoes, our body tissues are affected in the same way, leaving us with faster aging, disease, and symptoms.
And it’s not just white table sugar. There are many different types of sugar to look for such as: brown sugar, fructose, honey, maple syrup, high fructose corn syrup, and any ingredient that ends in ‘ose’ like glucose, lactose, dextrose, etc.
The good news is that by being smart about sugar, you can dramatically slow down the aging process and prevent most chronic diseases.
