Sugary Sweet Sabotage Part 1

Sugar is destroying your immune system. Here's how...

There's an expression attributed to Sir Francis Bacon: "Knowledge is Power." When it comes to gaining the willpower to reduce sugar intake, the more you know how bad it is for your body, the more power you'll gain over yourself.

Sugar, in its many forms, is addictive and delicious and seems to be found in almost every food we eat these days. Why is there sugar in ketchup?!

Sugar has a devastating effect on the health of the human body. At ImmuneStrong Kids, we are focused on helping parents raise children with strong and resilient immune systems. Today, we'll focus on the science of how sugar sabotages the immune system.

White Blood Cells (WBCs) are a key immune system component. There are many types of WBCs, and each has a specialized function. For example, Killer T Cells are a type of WBC that kills cancer cells and cells infected with viruses, while monocytes are a category of WBCs that break down bacteria. Sugar destroys the function of WBCs.

In this paper, researchers in Pakistan found that consuming 100 grams of sugar (that's how much sugar is in a liter of Coke) would reduce the reactivity of WBCs by 40% for up to 5 hours.

An article published in the 1970s in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition similarly found that only 75 grams of sugar would reduce WBC function for around 5 hours.

More recently, in 2011, the Open Journal of Immunology published an article about sugar suppressing immune system function. The researchers concluded: "Together, our studies show that dietary sugars, in particular fructose, negatively regulate the innate immunity against viral and bacterial pathogens."

Here's the key takeaway: Sugar destroys immune system function in many ways. One fundamental mechanism is the reduction in the function of White Blood Cells for multiple hours following consuming large amounts of sugar.