The link between sugar and cardiovascular diseases, chronic

The article was professionally consulted by Dr. Nguyen Van Duong - Interventional Cardiologist, Vinmec Central Park International General Hospital.

Sweet foods and drinks always have an attraction that makes it hard for us to refuse. However, if not well controlled, excessive sugar intake for a long time will cause many health consequences, especially increasing the risk of cardiovascular and chronic diseases.

Habit of eating too much sugar will seriously harm the heart. Even, sugar is many times more harmful than fat, causing damage to blood vessels, increasing the risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular diseases. In addition, sugar also increases insulin levels, activates the sympathetic nervous system, and increases heart rate and blood pressure.
High blood pressure makes your heart and arteries work harder, increasing your risk of heart attacks, strokes and some other serious artery problems like peripheral vascular diseases.
The more foods you eat with high sugar content, the higher your risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Excess sugar will first affect the liver - the largest and most important detoxification organ of the body. Eating a lot of sugar not only causes toxins to be eliminated, but also overloads the processing of protein in the body. In addition, the liver also has to handle a lot of other metabolic processes.
Liver diseases are usually caused by drinking too much alcohol. Studies have shown that even if you don't drink a lot of alcohol, you can develop liver disease when you eat too much sugar.
When consuming sugar in large quantities, the liver can be damaged as well as when drinking a lot of alcohol. The habit of eating too much sugar will put a lot of pressure on the liver, leading to fatty liver and long-term causing other chronic liver diseases.
A diet high in sugary foods and drinks, in addition to increasing the risk of obesity, can also increase the risk of cancer significantly.
A study of more than 430,000 people found that eating too much sugar was associated with an increased risk of esophageal cancer , pleural cancer and small bowel cancer .
Another study also found that women who ate cakes and cookies more than 3 times per week also had a 1.42 times higher risk of endometrial cancer than women who consumed these foods. This is less than 1 time per week.
The habit of eating too much sugar can lead to the risk of obesity, insulin resistance and inflammation. All of these are risk factors for cancer.

In addition to the long-term, harmful consequences and increased risk of chronic cardiovascular diseases, too much sugar also causes many health problems.
3.1 Uncontrolled weight gain Habit of eating a lot of sugar will cause weight gain, but will not increase muscle mass, but will only increase harmful fat. Many studies have identified a clear link between carbonated soft drinks and obesity. Carbonated soft drinks not only bring no nutritional value but also cause weight gain and increase the risk of obesity.
3.2 Teeth are more susceptible to decay One of the scary effects of eating too much sugar is that it will make your oral health worse. The more carbonated soft drinks you drink, the more candy you eat, the faster your teeth will decay.

3.3 Difficulty absorption of nutrients The people who consume the most sugar are children and adolescents. While this is the group that needs to absorb the most nutrients, eating a lot of sugar interferes with the absorption of important nutrients for the body. The body may have difficulty absorbing nutrients such as vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin B12, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron...
Causes of nutrient deficiencies that you can ignore is to eat too much sugar. Sugar has the ability to slow down or completely prevent the absorption of nutrients needed by the body.
3.4 Skin gets worse Scientists have found that consuming foods high in sugar is linked to skin problems. Sugar molecules often cause collagen adhesion, the component that determines the beauty or badness of your skin.
Too much sugar makes the collagen cells in the body work less efficiently, causing the skin tissues to harden, the skin loses the necessary elasticity. At that time, wrinkles will appear, causing rough skin, acne, even serious dermatitis.
The more sugar you eat, the worse your skin condition will become. Sugar will make your skin more acne-prone and age faster.
Thus, no matter how attractive the foods and drinks containing a lot of sugar are, you also need to limit your intake to avoid adverse effects on health and increase the risk of disease.