Harmful AGEs: How sugar affects the aging process

It has been known for many years that sugar is not healthy. It damages the teeth, can too caries lead and various diseases, such as heart disease, overweight and Diabetes favor. But sugar is also directly related to aging.

Because: Whenever you eat something that quickly raises your blood sugar level, the body forms so-called Advanced Glycation End Products, or AGEs for short. These represent the real problem in the aging process.

In addition to sugar, highly heated or heavily processed foods and fried foods also contain a large number of these end products.

What exactly are harmful AGEs?

Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs) are formed when sugars from food combine with proteins in your body. They saccharify your protein molecules and make them useless.

In addition to proteins, fats in the bloodstream are also attacked and bound by sugar. In biochemistry, this process is called the Maillard reaction, which you may recognize from your chemistry class at school. In this reaction, high heat causes substances to bond together and turn brown. You can observe this when toasting white bread or deep-frying French fries and pastries.

And just like the Maillard reaction, the formation of AGEs in your body is irreversible. Once the AGEs have been created, they can no longer be restored. AGEs are therefore waste products that build up in your body and combine into clumps.

Why AGEs make us look old and promote wrinkling

Not only do AGEs build up in your body as lumps or plaque, but the saccharified protein compounds also affect your skin’s elasticity. And elastic skin is important if you want it to look youthful.

The elasticity of your skin decreases because the AGEs attach to the collagen fibers in your skin bind and harden them. This is one of the Skin causes of wrinkling.

The AGEs also become problematic when the sugar binds to the protein building blocks of the red blood cells. Because these should distribute the oxygen in your body and supply the cells with it. If the red blood cells become saccharified, not enough oxygen can be distributed in your body and you feel weak and tired and get out of breath more quickly. Your performance and fitness are left behind.

This is what the AGEs do in your body

However, AGEs can do much more damage to your body than “just” hardening your collagen fibers and reducing the oxygen supply, thereby promoting wrinkling, fatigue and lack of energy.

• AGEs make your blood vessels inflexible and can cause them to high blood pressure to lead.
• They also cover the eyes like a veil and can promote the development of cataracts.
• Furthermore, the saccharified proteins and fats disrupt the neuronal connections in your brain and are therefore considered a co-trigger for dementia and can cause kidney damage.
• AGEs make your joints stiff and are involved in the breakdown of articular cartilage. That favors arthrosis. In addition, they can promote impotence.
• These harmful sugar compounds accumulate in your body over the course of your life and lead to the damage mentioned and the symptoms typical of old age.

This is how you can reduce the formation of AGEs

If you are now thinking that the best thing to do is to simply stop eating sugar and carbohydrates to avoid the formation of AGEs, that is not a good decision either. Pay much more attention to yourself eat a balanced diet and put on complex carbohydrates. These cause your blood sugar to rise much more slowly than white flour products and simple sugars.

Also avoid the combination of many carbohydrates in connection with fat. Because this combination also causes your blood sugar to skyrocket.

Eat a lot instead fiber, so that carbohydrates are absorbed more slowly and less sugar builds up in your blood. This can then be better transported by your body into the cells and utilized before it can cause more damage.

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