Quitting sugar: the most effective anti-wrinkle treatment you’ll never buy!
We caught up with general practitioner and I Quit Sugar: 8-Week Program expert Dr Rachel Wyndham for the scoop on how the white stuff can affect your skin.
How sugar speeds up the ageing process.
The correlation between wrinkles and sugar is all about AGE-ing, literally. Sugar consumption produces advanced glycation end products (AGEs) – free radicals that promote oxidative damage and break down collagen – necessary for skin elasticity and smoothness.
On top of this, study of more than 5,000 people found that sugar consumption is also linked to shorter telomeres. Telomeres protect DNA from deterioration, and shorter telomeres are associated with ageing and mortality.
Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with growing older gracefully, but if you’re continually being asked to provide your pensioner card, despite just graduating from university, you may want to reconsider whether that sugary smoothie is really worth it…
Sugar and acne.
Broke up with boy bands a long time ago, but still battling breakouts as an adult? You might want to consider quitting sugar. That’s because sugar causes inflammation which can lead to acne in the form of blackheads, whiteheads and angry red lumps on your chin.
In fact, according to Dr Rachel, while there are many causes of acne, inflammation is one of the primary ones. “And it seems the direct consumption of high quantities of processed sugar, driving the insulin pathway, leads to higher persistent inflammation,” she says.
Does sugar affect other skin conditions?
Sugar-related inflammation has also been identified as a cause of psoriasis.
This isn’t surprising, given how Dr Rachel describes inflammation. “The process firstly increases blood supply to an area of tissue – the skin in this case – causing redness. Then surrounding chemicals cause vessels to become leaky and allow fluid to escape into the tissue which results in swelling.”
Consequently, many psoriasis sufferers who remove sugar triggers from their diet often report improvements in their red, scaly and even itchy symptoms.
While there is still debate whether skin conditions such as rosacea and certain types of dermatitis like eczema are also affected by sugar, it might be worth cutting it from your diet to see how your skin responds if you suffer from any of these.
We originally published this post in January 2016. We updated it in February 2017.
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