Sugar? No Thanks! The Truth About Glycation

“Sugar and spice and everything nice” is what little girls were said to be made of, which is a lot better than the “snips and snails” that was the stuff of little boys. As a young girl, having sugar as a basic building block may seem fantastic, but when it comes to skin health and aging it is anything but. The simple truth is that sugar is a toxic, skin-aging accelerator. And, it comes with no gender bias. It kills skin health and beauty equally in men and women. To learn why sugar harms skin, let’s avoid all the hype and turn to science to explain why sugar is a skin killer. True, a certain amount of sugar in the body’s blood is normal and even necessary as fuel for the body, but elevated levels of blood sugar is likely to cause big-time problems, principle among them, diabetes. But – and this is important – an individual does not have to be a diabetic to suffer the damaging skin effects of too much sugar. 

WHY DOES SKIN AGE? 

Researchers at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, now part of Temple University in Philadelphia, identified a compound in lenses in the eyes of diabetic rats. This compound, fructose 3-phosphate (F3P) is not present in normal lenses. This discovery led to the holy trinity of questions in scientific inquiry: what is this new stuff, where did it come from, and what does it do? F3P is a product of glycation. Glycation occurs when the overabundance of sugar in the blood causes that sugar to fuse with proteins (in the form of amino acids) in the blood to produce glycated proteins. This process not only occurs inside the body, but it can occur outside the body when proteins are cooked with sugar. For example, cheesecake (eggs, milk, and sugar) and sausage (meat and sugar) are both foods where glycation occurs in their production. Even cooking Chinese foods causes glycation when proteins (beef, chicken, pork, or shrimp) and sugar (either as a direct ingredient or in the form of corn starch) are cooked together. Two important proteins in the skin, collagen and elastin, are especially sensitive to glycation. After glycation, the resulting protein-sugar combination is rearranged in the body’s cells. These rearrangements are aided by enzymes that add a phosphate molecule to the protein-sugar combination. The researchers at Fox Chase discovered that one specific enzyme produces a molecule that automatically rearranges to form a reactive sugar by-product. This by-product is a highly reactive and toxic molecule. It leads to the formation of toxic sugars that cause inflammation, fibrosis, oxidative stress, and collagen crosslinking – all of which contribute to the aging and wrinkling of skin. Moreover, it leads to the formation of detrimental compounds known as advanced glycation end products. Even the acronym for these compounds, AGEs, suggests getting older! In a nutshell: protein and sugar combine, enzymes react with the protein-sugar combination to form a product that automatically rearranges to form this reactive by-product and AGEs, and these cause skin to age, becoming wrinkled and crepey, suffering inflammation, and losing its elasticity.

DEALING WITH SKIN AGING FROM INSIDE-OUT

Sugar is not exactly the everything nice promised in the nursery rhyme. But, while science has diagnosed the issue, it has also pointed to a solution. The team of scientists left Fox Chase Cancer Center and, with its permission, continued the basic research. The discovery the team made was startling: this enzyme pathway is a viable target for a unique compound that retards, if not completely stops, the enzyme, thereby inactivating the formation of the reactive by-product. In so doing, the scientists discovered a unique compound, Supplamine®, that combined a natural sugar-derived compound that lowers the production of toxic sugars coming from this enzyme, and a natural amino acid that neutralizes glycated sugar coming from poor diet. The net effect is to deactivate the reactive by-product and stop the production of toxic sugars. Turns out, the enzyme prefers the sugar-derived compound over the sugar protein the enzyme typically acts on. As a result, toxic sugars never get made. It substitutes a harmless amino sugar for the dangerous sugar protein. And, the natural amino acid inactivates toxic sugars coming from poor diet and the normal digestive process. Subsequent clinical studies showed that the research team was right on target.  The Supplamine® complex significantly improved skin health and appearance, increasing the appearance of skin firmness, decreasing the appearance of visual dryness, crepiness, and fine facial lines, and increasing moisturization. 

YOUNGER-LOOKING SKIN IN THE GAME

The average adult has 22 square feet of skin, weighing about eight pounds. That is a lot of skin in the game! Besides being the body’s largest organ and one of the most important, skin is what gets immediately noticed in every game played in life, from stepping out with friends to stepping up for that dream job interview. Knowing what drives skin aging is as important as knowing how to inhibit the skin-aging process. To fight back against skin aging, encourage clients to start by avoiding sugar intake, especially from processed foods. The initial sugar-protein interactions are less likely to occur with reduced blood sugar levels. To counter the reactions on sugars that do get consumed, use skin care products that contain ingredients designed to both cripple this enzyme and diminish the reactive by-product’s effectiveness in damaging the skin. This is the best recipe for youthful, more vibrant-looking skin, regardless of what the body is originally made of.

Written by   Annette Tobia, PhD, founder and CEO of Dynamis Skin Science