A new study suggests that eating less sugar can improve blood pressure and cholesterol in less than two weeks.
The University of California San Francisco Benioff Children's Hospital made a study involving obese children who at least have one chronic disorder such as high blood pressure that were asked to cut back on sugar intake for nine days, following a meal plan that still included all snacks and drinks that they usually eat - it had the same fat, protein, carbohydrate, and calorie levels as their previous diets at home, with the carbohydrate from sugar replaced by foods such as bagels, cereals and pasta. Hot dogs, crisps and pizza from local supermarkets were still part of the children's diet - but restricted sugar intake.
According to Youth Health, the researchers discovered that less sugar intake has greatly improved the children's health measure in lowering their blood pressure, bad cholesterol and triglycerides count. They also obtained better scores for insulin levels and fasting glucose, two assessments of type 2 diabetes - all this results in spite of the fact that they were not asked to exercise or change their calorie intake.
"I have never seen results as striking or significant in our human studies; after only nine days of fructose restriction, the results are dramatic and consistent from subject to subject," said Jean-Marc Schwarz, the senior author and a faculty of the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Touro University California.
"These findings support the idea that it is essential for parents to evaluate sugar intake and to be mindful of the health effects of what their children are consuming," explains Robert Lustig,
Lead author and pediatric endocrinologist UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital San Francisco. He also added, "This study definitively shows that sugar is metabolically harmful ... because it's sugar," he said. "This internally controlled intervention study is a solid indication that sugar contributes to metabolic syndrome and is the strongest evidence to date that the negative effects of sugar are not because of calories or obesity."
Although the study is small, the researchers believed that they have prove the point that calories are not the same, and out of all possible sources, sugar could be the worst.
The study is now available in Obesity.
