What Sugar ACTUALLY Does to the Body

have you ever been told that sugar is bad and that you should stop eating it probably but then you may have wondered why is it bad and if it is how bad are we talking here like a little bad and i can still eat my cookies or a lot of bad and i should stop eating it immediately well in today's video we're going to answer these questions as well as talk about how the body processes sugar what sugar actually is and even talk about how exercise can change how we utilize and process the sugar this

is going to be full of all sorts of sugary anatomical awesomeness so let's do this so first what do we even mean when we use the word sugar most of us are referring to table sugar and this can sometimes be associated with some negative connotations maybe you've heard things like sugar is bad for you it causes weight gain it's associated with diabetes it can cause inflammation and the list goes on and on but are these accurate or even fair assessments of sugar and could there ever be potential situations where sugar might be beneficial because in

biology the term sugar is used to refer to certain types of carbohydrates and what you might find interesting is that as we talk about sugar we're going to find that the same types of carbohydrates that are found in table sugar are the same carbohydrates that are found in fruits vegetables and other whole food sources that we typically consider as good for us so we definitely need to go a little bit deeper into this sugar discussion and let's start with the term carbohydrate carbohydrates are compounds that are made of carbon hydrogen and oxygen and they include

things like sugars starches and even cellulose now cellulose we're not going to talk a lot about because this is something our body can't break down and absorb and it is one of the contributors to the fiber in your diet so it helps push things along in your large intestine so that you can have epically amazing bowel movements but sugars and starches we can definitely break down and absorb into the bloodstream through the small intestine and we typically use these as energy sources and so again sugars and starches fall under this umbrella of carbohydrates but what

are some of the differences now the term sugar is referring to simple carbohydrates you may have heard of the phrase simple sugars before now these are smaller carbohydrate molecules which includes things that are called disaccharides and monosaccharides saccharide just means sugar dye means two mono means one and so a disaccharide is made up of two monosaccharides now even though we're using some of these jargony biology terms you have likely heard of disaccharides and monosaccharides that are found in the foods you eat for example lactose is the disaccharide found in milk products and of course sucrose

is the disaccharide that makes up table sugar and since we're really kind of focusing in on this table sugar this table sugar aka sucrose is made up of one monosaccharide called glucose bonded to another monosaccharide called fructose so glucose plus fructose equals sucrose which is table sugar so if we kind of take a step back imagine yourself holding a spoonful of sugar and that spoonful of sugar is made up of multiple multiple molecules of sucrose and therefore the building blocks of glucose and fructose and you're about to eat it but of course you're an inquisitive

mind about biology anatomy and physiology and you're thinking to yourself what is it about this table sugar therefore the fructose and glucose that's found in this that makes it worse than the glucose or fructose that i find just in the fruits and vegetables and other food sources well to answer that i think we need to talk a little bit about the starches starches are complex carbohydrates which are polysaccharides and the starches that humans ingest the most are amylose and amylopectin and these are multiple glucose molecules strung together or bonded together or you could think of

them as these long chains of glucose hence they are referred to as polysaccharides now we can definitely compare and contrast these to the disaccharides or the table sugar as we can see yes they both do contain glucose but there's a huge difference in the size of say table sugar versus the size of the molecules that make up the starches and this is where you start to see some discuss a negative potential effect of the table sugar and that has to do with how it's broken down and absorbed into the body when you compare it to

the starches so we need to talk about what happens when you put the table sugar in your mouth versus what happens when you put the starch in your mouth now since we are talking about putting things in our mouth we should probably talk about ingesting an amazing substance from the sponsor of today's video athletic greens athletic greens is a nutrition company that makes an amazing nutritional drink called ag-1 ag-1 is made from 75 different ingredients and includes vitamins minerals probiotics superfoods and adaptogens i've been taking ag-1 for almost a year now and one of the

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our mouths what we refer to as the oral cavity in anatomy this is where the process of digestion begins through chewing and through the secretion of saliva which contains certain enzymes to help start this digestive process we then move this down the esophagus and into the stomach where the sugars and starches will mix with the acid through the smooth muscle contractions of the stomach and this mixture will eventually make it to the first part of the small intestine called the duodenum now the duodenum contains specific enzymes that can break down specific types of carbohydrates for

example sucrase will break down sucrose the table sugar into the individual glucose and fructose molecules that we talked about earlier amylase is a specific enzyme to breaking down amylose and what's important to understand is that our bodies can only absorb the monosaccharides meaning the individual glucose and fructose molecules so you can see that this breakdown and digestive process is important for the absorption and as those glucose and fructose molecules move further down the small intestine as they've been freed through the digestive process they'll move into the jejunum and the ilium second and third part of

the small intestine and then be absorbed through the wall and into the bloodstream and once those glucose and fructose molecules are in the bloodstream the first place that they will go is to the liver now the liver does a lot of different things but one of the first things it will do is convert those fructose molecules into glucose molecules so we don't have all this fructose circulating throughout the body and when you think about that from a clinical setting when we measure say like blood sugar levels we're measuring blood glucose levels as glucose is this

primary monosaccharide that's circulating throughout our body but i did graze over something kind of quickly there and that was the breakdown and the absorption rate of say like a sugar versus the breakdown and absorption rate of a starch and remember we mentioned that sugars are relatively small carbohydrate molecules the disaccharides especially when we compare them to the complex carbohydrates polysaccharides and because of this difference the sugars the disaccharides tend to be broken down and absorbed much more quickly so blood sugar levels will rise more rapidly but they'll also taper off or go down more rapidly

as compared to say like a complex carbohydrate where that breakdown or that digestion is more slow so the blood sugar levels tend to rise more slowly but they also tend to be sustained for a longer period of time and this is one of the negative things you can think of or that's sometimes mentioned about sugar is that the blood sugar levels could spike but then also kind of crash down now you can combat that in some situations if you only ate a simple sugar you'd kind of deal with that spike and crash but if you

paired that simple sugar say with complex sugar or complex carbohydrate yes the blood sugar levels would increase relatively rapidly but then you'd get that sustained blood sugar level because you'd have that complex carbohydrate following behind now there are certain situations where i want a simple sugar or a sugar to get in there and raise the blood sugar levels quickly for example say like in a clinical setting i had a patient that was hypoglycemic i don't want to wait for a complex carbohydrate i want to get a simple sugar in there to raise the blood sugar

levels up to get them out of that hypoglycemic state maybe i'm a marathon runner and i'm halfway through the marathon my glucose levels are getting low and i need to get an energy boost of glucose into my bloodstream as quickly as possible yes the ideal situation is to have a balanced intake of carbohydrates or blood glucose levels but as you can see there are certain situations where it can be appropriate to get that glucose into the bloodstream as quickly as possible and one thing i do want to mention is that in the clinical setting if

we have to get somebody's blood sugar levels up or during a marathon it's not like we're giving people like spoonfuls of table sugar there are certain mixtures or products that are made up of simple sugars or simple carbohydrates to get this done but if you are in a pinch a sugary drink or a sugary juice often will have the same effect and we have to go back to this idea that i mentioned or alluded to earlier the glucose molecule in table sugar is the exact same structure in form as the glucose molecule that came from

some fruit vegetable or other whole foods source it's not like the glucose molecule from the sugar is labeled as poison it's not like your body has this glucose segregating police force that says you glucose molecule that came from the sugar you are banished to the fat cell but you glucose molecule that came from the whole grain food you can go into the muscle cell and you the glucose molecule that came from the kale you can go into the nerve cell no your body doesn't care or know the difference between where the glucose came from glucose

is glucose now even though i said glucose is glucose and that our body doesn't differentiate between the sources from where the glucose comes from there are still some important considerations we have to have when it comes to sugar for example sugar is often referred to as empty calories meaning that glucose and fructose is essentially all we get in the form of calories and energy from that sugar as opposed to getting that glucose and fructose from whole food sources in that case that glucose and fructose is often going to be associated with other benefits with things

like vitamins fiber and other nutrients that can help bolster health and wellness and building further off of this idea of empty calories if we had to pick the most negative thing when it comes to sugar it's probably this we can eat a ton of it without actually feeling that full and when you think about it from the perspective of say like early human ancestors or hunter-gatherers did they get carbohydrates in some simple sugars through ingesting fruits and vegetables yes of course but were they also creating these factories where they were developing refined table sugar to

also add to the foods they were already eating no but we do think about maybe the last time you went to a restaurant maybe instead of ordering a water you ordered a soda and maybe you got two to three refills and that extra sugar that was in that soda was ingested and probably didn't make you feel any more full than if you just had two to three glasses of water instead also adding that sugar to foods that we already eat again probably doesn't increase how full we feel but increases the amount of carbohydrates and sugars

and therefore calories that we ingest on a day to day basis again depending on how much sugar that you ingest and so this whole idea again is we've changed the ratio and therefore the total amount of carbohydrates and sugars that we ingest the sugar in and of itself is not evil it's the amount that we're getting so easily included in our daily diet so another thing that i think will be helpful is for us to understand what happens as the glucose circulates throughout the body and what happens is there's too much now we already know

that the glucose will first go to the liver and any fructose that's in there will just get converted to glucose anyway but the liver will also start to store the glucose in its storage form which is called glycogen and the liver can store about 100 grams of glycogen and the rest of the glucose that isn't stored in the liver will circulate throughout the body and yes insulin is going to be released by the pancreas in response to these increasing blood sugar levels and we're going to do a whole video series on insulin and diabetes so

for now just know that insulin essentially tells the majority of the cells in your body to take the glucose from the bloodstream and into themselves therefore lowering blood glucose or blood sugar levels and if we take a look at skeletal muscle in particular that glucose that gets pulled into the skeletal muscle tissue will also get stored as glycogen and the skeletal muscles throughout your body could store about 400 to 500 grams of glycogen depending on who you are so kind of think of the liver and the skeletal muscle tissue as little gas tanks for glucose

and glycogen but what happens when we've completely filled up the liver completely filled up the skeletal muscle tissue and there's still more glucose in the bloodstream that's when we start seeing the glucose getting converted to fat and getting stored in the adipose tissue and that's where we can start to run into problems by really increasing our glucose or our sugar intake beyond the capacity of say like our liver and our skeletal muscle tissue so hopefully that gives you a different perspective or a better understanding of how sugar can be bad so consistently ingesting too much

of it and having increased blood glucose levels and that excess blood glucose getting stored as fat and increasing weight over time and the associations of increased adipose with things like diabetes cardiovascular disease and other conditions but finally how does exercise influence or even change how we process sugar or glucose moderate to intense activity causes the skeletal muscles to preferentially shift their source of energy to burning more carbohydrates more so than fats also as someone increases their activity or consistently exercises their ability to store glycogen in their skeletal muscles increases so think of your skeletal muscle

gas tank for glycogen getting bigger so you can store more glycogen and if you compared that to a sedentary or an inactive person with that of an active person those who are inactive you'd see that their resting glycogen stores are about 20 to 30 percent less than the active person so in theory someone who's consistently active could eat more carbohydrates not only because they're just burning more calories on a day-to-day basis but also because they have the ability to store more of it in their skeletal muscles before it'll start getting converted to fat exercise also

sensitizes muscles to insulin especially directly after exercise and this is kind of the opposite of what happens during type 2 diabetes generally we say with type 2 diabetes that the majority of cells throughout the body become insensitive to insulin but exercise has this sensitizing effect especially with the skeletal muscles and speaking of insulin something that's really cool with exercise is that an exercising muscle doesn't actually need insulin to bring in the glucose like a resting muscle does so say you're running a marathon or exercising and you ingest like a simple sugar or a carbohydrate to

replenish your carbohydrate stores those contracting muscles can bring in the glucose without the need for insulin so obviously you can see there are some amazing benefits to exercise through how it helps us to process and utilize those sugars or that glucose and again hopefully all of this helped to just clarify how and when sugar can be bad and of course if you made me pick between the two extremes say i had someone that didn't eat any processed sugar and only got their carbohydrates from whole foods sources versus someone who ate a ton of sugar obviously

we're going to pick the situation where we get our carbohydrates only from the whole food sources but most of us don't live on those two extremes and as long as the majority of your carbohydrates come from whole foods sources and you have this balanced ratio of carbohydrates to lipids to proteins you're likely going to be just fine with indulging into your favorite sugary treat every so often and remember one of the best times to do that is directly after exercise when those skeletal muscles are sensitized to bring in that glucose to replenish the glycogen stores

and fyi it's also a good time to add protein to that because your skeletal muscles are primed to also bring in those amino acids or those proteins to help the rebuilding process and as always thank you for watching everyone we really do appreciate everyone's support in making this channel possible if you're interested in checking out ag1 again that link is in the description below and if you feel the need like subscribe leave some comments below and we'll see you in the next video [Music] [Music] you