9 reasons why you must say no to excess sugar

There is absolutely no doubt about the fact that we are all eating way too much sugar. Besides the heaps added to coffee/tea/milk/lassi… Sugar is also there in almost everything we eat these days - in packaged juices, flavoured yoghurts, canned fruits, cereal bars, aerated drinks (a regular can of cola of about 350 ml has about 40 grams - or ten teaspoons - of sugar), processed foods, granola, sports drinks, even ketchup and salad dressings… "So what's the harm?" you ask, "after all a visit to the gym will burn off the extra calories in a jiffy. Won't it!"

It isn't that simple! Sugar is not just about empty calories, it is a bigger devil than you give it credit for. Here are my top nine reasons to go easy on this sweet poison:

1. Weight gain: Added sugar in our diets shows up as extra flab as excess gets converted into fatty acids in the liver and gets stored as fat. Too much sugar also leads to insulin production in large amounts and leptin (appetite controlling hormone) resistance. Result: The body hoards up fat instead of using it up. Deadly dual action!

2. Diabetes risk: The connect is indirect but it is there. Agreed diabetes is genetically linked but excess sugar equals excess calories, which results in weight gain, leading thus to an increase in insulin resistance - and that raises the risk for diabetes tremendously.

3. Liver toxicity: Similar to alcohol toxicity, sugar toxicity also leads to liver damage. In fact excess sugar consumption could even cause non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The liver toxicity, in turn, can fuel other health red flags like abnormal cholesterol, insulin resistance and inflammation. Now you know why when liver counts come abnormal, sugar is axed from the diet right away.

4. Heart damage: It's official: Sugar is a heart slayer too. A new study shows that participants who took in 25 per cent or more of their daily calories as sugar were more than twice as likely to die from heart disease as compared to those whose diets included less than ten per cent added sugar. And in a surprising revelation now scientists also say that sugar is even more dangerous for our blood pressure than excess salt in the diet.

5. Immune buster: Eating or drinking too much sugar weakens the im-mune system by inhibiting phagocytosis, the process by which the imposter viruses and bacteria are killed by the white blood cells in our body. Simply put, sugar reduces the body's ability to defend against infections.

6. Bone thief: Sugar increases magnesium and calcium excretion in the urine and decreases overall magnesium, calcium and phosphorus absorption from food - all essential bone health minerals.

7. Skin bothers: Too many chocolates or rasgullas may show up on your skin as wrinkles, acne or maybe even cellulite. That's because sugar seriously stresses the digestive tract leading to more toxins in the blood which show up unflatteringly on the skin. Sugar also forms advanced glycation end products (AGEs), which damage the protein fibers saddling us thus with alargesse of dull, drab skin, and other early ageing signs.

8. Tooth trouble: Bacteria thrive on sugar and an acid environment. So more sugar = more acid formation = more bacteria thrive and multiply = more acid production… It is a vicious circle which results in: Plaque + Sugar = Acid + Tooth = dental caries. And yes, adults suffer from dental caries too.

9. It's addictive: Sugar causes a release of dopamine in the reward center of the brain and can make susceptible people get totally addicted to it - and any addiction is terrible health news.