How I started Looking Way Younger Than My Real Age Because I Quit Sugar Many Years Ago

"You are 53 years old? You don’t look at day over 40."

I hear this all the time.

After my daughter was born, 23 years ago, I developed an allergy to sugar. Eating even a small amount of sugar made me sick for days. When I ate sugar, it was like I had ingested poison and had the worst hangover ever. As a result, 23 years ago, I quit sugar and also stopped eating many starches.

Today, I walk down the NYC streets and guys of all ages check me out. I am 5’9" and 130lbs — a very healthy weight, I believe, because I don’t eat sugar. I eat whatever else I want — in moderation — and I do yoga every day.

And while I know that guys check me out because I look good in my jeans, I also started wondering if avoiding sugar was one of the reasons my face is still relatively unlined and that it usually has a bit of a glow to it, even though I never wear make-up.

When I start to wonder about something, I start doing my research. How did not eating sugar affect the slower aging of my skin?

What I learned was amazing.

To start, sugar comes in many forms. The forms most familiar to women are the added sugars that are found in our wine, our chocolate, our ice cream, our soda and our coffee.

What many people don’t know is that sugar is also hidden in starchy foods like bread, potatoes, and pasta. It is also found in packaged foods like condiments and crackers. 

Consuming any of these types of sugars can affect the health of our skin. So how does that sugar in your morning coffee, the bag of chips you ate at midday, or the bowl of ice cream you consumed before bed affect your skin?

When one has a lot of sugar in their diet, there occurs something called glycation, a process that can result in a significant amount of aging in the skin.

During glycation, digested sugars attach permanently to proteins in the skin to form different, more dangerous, proteins called AGEs (advanced glycation end products). The more sugar you eat, the more AGEs are formed.

Collagen and elastin, proteins in the skin that influence firmness and elasticity, are greatly affected by AGEs. The more sugar you eat, the more AGEs are produced and as a result, your skin becomes dry and brittle which can cause wrinkles and sagging.

To make matters worse, sugar in your diet can affect how strong your collagen is and can cause hair growth and dark patches on your face and neck. Furthermore, AGEs can leave your skin more vulnerable to sun damage, an issue that is becoming more of an issue daily.

So there you go. That piece of cheesecake that you had after lunch — while it was delicious going down — will literally show up on your face sometime soon.

Luckily, there are ways to counter affect the damage caused by sugar in our diets. The first place to start is from the inside.

Watch for hidden sugar in your food. Sugar is everywhere! It’s in that sweetened yogurt you have for breakfast, the chili sauce that you put on your Pad Thai at lunch, and there is a TON of it in that glass of wine you have with dinner. 

Watch out for those sugars and save any sugar ingestion you must have for something yummy like that piece of Chocolate Decadence Cake you love. A tiny piece.

Also, eat as much fresh fruits and vegetables as you can because they contain powerful antioxidants that help destroy AGEs. One mg. of Vitamin B1 and Vitamin B6 daily will help prevent AGE’s from being created in the first place. Vitamin C is also important. You can take it both in supplement form or apply it topically.

There are also many skin products that can help you deal with the effects the sugar in your diet has on your skin.

Look for products that contain retinol, a substance that helps build new collagen. Products containing aminoquanidine and allistin are also important because they help block the formation of AGEs. Alpha Lipoic Acid has an anti-glycating effect and anti-inflammatory properties. All of these products are available at your pharmacy, over the counter.

So, I know what your next question is: "Can I continue to eat the way that I do, take a few supplements, and buy some expensive face cream and maintain my youthful appearance?"

I am sorry to say it but, alas, no.

I am not saying that you need to say goodbye to ice cream and chocolate cake forever but I am saying that modifying your diet is important to prevent the damage that sugar can cause to your skin.

Making an effort to look out for hidden sugars in your diet will make a huge difference. If you can eliminate those pesky sugars it will go along way towards reducing your overall sugar intake.

Stay away from processed foods that are often high in sugar and avoid high fructose corn syrup found in sweetened drinks and packaged baked goods. Educate yourself on the food you put in your body so that you can control the effect that it has on your face.

And I am going to say it again. You have probably heard it 3,359,009 times — increase the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables in your diet. More than anything, the antioxidant content and nutritional value of fresh food will help offset the effects of those pesky AGEs.

Personally, because I am not a huge fan of vegetables, I have one fresh veggie shake a day, sweetened only with a little fresh fruit, and/or applesauce. I know that by doing so I am feeding my skin the food it needs to keep people talking about how young I look.

And I have to admit, although I act as if I don’t, I love being told how young I look. It’s probably one reason why I strut my stuff so proudly on the streets of NYC.

Do You Know Sugar and Cancer Have A Deadly Connection?

Cancer cells are nasty little anarchists. They go where they shouldn’t, subvert authority, co-opt law-abiding cells around them, and break a ton of biological rules in their mindless quest for destruction.

They’re also weird. And one of the most bizarre examples of their rule breaking is how they metabolize sugar. When oxygen is readily available, as it is in the human body, normal cells break down and extract energy from glucose through a process called oxidation. By way of this biochemical machination, cells can extract 36 molecules of ATP, which is like cash money in the body. (Think of it like Bitcoin: Cells do some complex equation-solving and, as a reward, they get something they can spend.) 






But cancer cells (mostly) do lots of biochemical work to get less coin. They break down glucose through an ancient 10-step process called glycolysis—which yields them a mere two molecules of ATP for every one of glucose.

With glycolysis, cells can produce energy even in the absence of oxygen, which is what our primordial slime ancestors had to do. It’s also what anaerobic bacteria and yeasts do. They derive energy from sugar by way of fermentation. But in the presence of oxygen, extracting energy from sugar by glycolysis is the equivalent of ironing your socks: It would seem to involve expending a lot of effort for little benefit.

What’s more, cancer cells need gobs of energy to fuel their mad rebellion; rapid cell division, after all, requires plenty of biochemical fuel. And cancer cells gobble up sugar like nobody’s business. (That’s why we’re often able to see tumors on a PET scan, which highlights tissues that rapidly take up an injected sugar called FDG.)

A German biochemist named Otto Warburg, back in the 1920s, was the first to observe these oddball, counterintuitive facts about cancer cells, which he blamed on a defect in their mitochondria, the cell’s energy factories (and my all-time favorite organelles). Indeed, the biochemist believed this aberrant aerobic glycolysis—which later became known as the “Warburg effect”—actually caused cancer, though it wasn’t clear how or why.

The notion was somewhat forgotten for decades, as researchers focused on other theoretical frameworks for cancer and tried to tease out the genetic mutations that transformed cells and drove the disease. But in recent years, the Warburg effect—and the broader metabolic theory of cancer—has had a reawakening. (For those wanting to learn more about it, my friend Travis Christofferson has written an excellent book on the subject.)

Still, as much as the cancer research community has rekindled interest in the metabolic aspects of the disease, there are two big questions that have kept some from embracing it whole hog. The first is why? Why would cancer cells, which require so much energy, evolve to adapt such an inefficient process? And the second is how? By what mechanism would aerobic glycolysis drive the cancer process (or is it, rather, a side effect of the malignant transformation of a cell)?

The first question remains a mystery. But as to the second, a new study published by three Dutch research groups has revealed the possible missing molecular link—or at least a candidate for one of them. Working in the model system of yeast, the teams, after a nine-year effort, identified a connection between a key sugar molecule in the glycolytic pathway(fructose-1,6-bisphosphate) and a critical gene called ras, that’s central to a cell’s ability to proliferate and survive. Ras, importantly, is a so-called oncogene—a gene that, when mutated, can help turn a cell malignant. Mutated forms of ras are found in as many as half of all cancers.

In the paper, published online Friday in the journal Nature Communications, the authors report that a “reciprocal” interaction between ras and the identified sugar molecule “may lock cancer cells in a vicious cycle causing both persistent stimulation of cell proliferation and continued maintenance of overactive glycolysis. This would explain the close correlation between the proliferation rate and aggressive character of cancer cells and their fermentation hyperactivity.”

It’s a “vicious cycle of continued stimulation of cancer development and growth,” said one of the study’s senior authors, Johan Thevelein, in a follow-up press statement—an interaction that seems to “explain the correlation between the strength of the Warburg effect and tumor aggressiveness.”

The finding is a provocative one, surely, and one that may have implications for the diets of cancer patients. For the rest of us, this study is one more piece of evidence about the dangers of excessive sugar consumption. And now, there’s a potential mechanism of action to explain it.

Do Know The Chemical in Breakfast Cereal Could Make You Fat?

Refined sugar and infrequent exercise may not be the only factors contributing to obesity. Some breakfast cereals and processed foods, cookware and seafood could also play a role — if they contain certain chemicals.

A first-of-its kind study using human stem cells (previous research focused only on animals) has found that three chemicals in particular may interfere with the digestive system’s ability to tell the brain when the body is full, which can lead to overeating and, in extreme cases, weight gain and obesity.

The first of these “endocrine disruptors,” as scientists are calling them is, butylhydroxytoluene (BHT), an antioxidant commonly found in breakfast cereals and other processed foods to keep fats from going rancid. Popular cereals and snacks with BHT as an ingredient include: Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheats, Kellogg’s Fruit Loops, Post Shredded Wheat, Nabisco Triscuits and Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Popping Corn, to name just a few, according to the Environmental Working Group. Past research in animal studies also suggests a link between BHT and increased cancer risk, and the ingredient has been banned in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and throughout Europe.

The second chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), is a polymer found in certain cookware — especially nonstick cookware — as well as carpeting and even certain cosmetic and anti-aging products. Thanks to a “stewardship program” put in place by the Environmental Protection Agency, the use of PFOA was reduced substantially by 2015, according to the American Cancer Society.

Finally, tributyltin (TBT) is a compound in paints that can make its way into water and accumulate in seafood — particularly shellfish raised near commercial harbors. It was commonly used as a biocide to prevent marine organisms from growing on the hulls of large ships.

“We discovered that each of these chemicals damaged hormones that communicate between the gut and the brain,” said Dhruv Sareen, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical sciences and director of the Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Core Facility at the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, in ScienceDaily. “When we tested the three together, the combined stress was more robust.”

To conduct the study, researchers took blood samples from participants and converted the blood cells into stem cells. Using the stem cells, the researchers grew epithelium tissue — the tissue that lines the gut — and neuronal tissue, which makes up the hypothalamus region of the brain that controls appetite and metabolism.

After exposing the tissues to these three chemicals — one at a time and then in combination with one another — researchers found that the chemicals disrupted the signaling hormones used to communicate between the tissues. This implies that the brain wouldn’t know when the stomach was full, which would allow overeating (and possibly obesity) to occur. Furthermore, the chemicals impaired the mitochondria in cells, which impact the body’s metabolism. If the mitochondria aren’t functioning properly, the body’s ability to burn calories won’t function optimally either.

Even though some companies, including General Mills, have removed BHT from its food products, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to allow BHT as an ingredient, though it acknowledges that further research should be done. “While no evidence in the available information on BHT demonstrates a hazard to the public when it is used at levels that are now current and in the manner now practiced, uncertainties exist requiring that additional studies should be conducted,” it said.

In the meantime, if you would like to avoid these chemicals, get in the habit of reading ingredient labels, researching cookware brands before buying, checking ingredients in your skin care (and avoiding polyperfluoromethylisopropyl ether, polytetrafluoroethylene, DEA-C8-18 perfluoroalkylethyl phosphate and Teflon on the label, according to SafeCosmetics.org) and sticking to shellfish from reputable sources.

The Environmental Working Group’s food score database and skin deep database are also helpful resources in seeing where your favorite foods and personal care products rank based on ingredient safety.

What is your thought on this?

Will this news prompt you to pay extra attention to ingredient labels? Will you steer clear of BHT or trust the FDA’s decision to let it remain? Tell us in the comments!