Hey there, welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition's Ask a Nutritionist.

I'm Brittany Vincent, a registered and licensed dietitian with Nutrition on Weight

and Wellness.

Today, we are going to be talking about something that's sneaky

and causing trouble for so many of us as we age. It is sugar. I often get asked by clients,

how does sugar affect aging? So I'm going to dive into all of that today. Now, when we think about aging,

we often think about wrinkles or maybe moving a little bit slower than we used to. Here's the thing.

Sugar might be making that aging process speed up. But here's the good news. There are some changes you can make to take

control of that aging process. So I want to first talk about how sugar affects aging. Did you know that

sugar doesn't just impact your waistline or your energy, but it plays a big role in how we age, not just wrinkles or skin, but when we eat sugar, even food like breads and pasta that are going to break down to sugar, those foods trigger something

called glycation. That's basically a fancy word for sugar attaching itself to proteins like

collagen and elastin, which are what keep your skin firm and smooth. Over time, that glycation process makes those

protein stiff and weak. And that's when we're going to start to see sagging skin and wrinkles,

but it's really not just about aging. Sugar also increases inflammation in the body. All health conditions are linked

to inflammation. And that inflammation may manifest as joint pain, fatigue, maybe brain fog. It may even

affect memory. But let's talk about what is actually happening in your

body when we're eating sugar. So you eat something sugary or even something with processed

carbohydrates. So maybe a muffin, maybe some crackers. In an ideal metabolism, your blood sugar is going to spike.

Your pancreas then releases insulin, grabs onto that glucose in the bloodstream, carries

it to our cells, and we have insulin receptors.

So that insulin is going to help act as a key to unlock that

receptor, carry that glucose in the cell, and then that turns to energy. So that's what should

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