Holiday gatherings and cold-weather germs create a perfect storm for your immune system. Good hygiene helps protect you, but one major factor often goes unnoticed: sugar intake. Excess sugar can seriously weaken your immune defense, leaving you more vulnerable to seasonal bugs.
With Halloween candy lingering in the pantry, Thanksgiving pies, and endless holiday goodies, it’s easy to overdo it. Understanding how sugar affects your immune system can help you stay healthier and more energized all season long.
Sugar: An Enemy to the Immune System
There’s no way around it—sugar is hard on the immune system. It acts like a sledgehammer to immune cells, stunning them for hours or longer and rendering them unable to do their job.
A comprehensive review study evaluated nearly 40 years of research on how acutely elevated blood sugar affects the immune system. The study showed that high blood sugar blocks immune cells from doing their job, weakening your body’s defense system and allowing germs to flourish. High sugar intake also increases the production of free radicals, which inflame tissues and raise blood vessel permeability, injuring the endothelial lining. In addition, elevated blood sugar damages mitochondria, reducing energy production and contributing to fatigue and immune aging.
Whether it is an occasional splurge on desserts or a lifelong consumption of ultra-processed foods in the Western diet, your immune system takes a hit. The effects can lead to immune senescence, i.e. an aging immune system and loss of resiliency.
Reflect on your family’s eating habits. Have you noticed more sore throats, earaches, tummy aches, or runny noses after a stretch of sugar-rich foods or candy? Do your joints feel stiffer the day after fast food or high-sugar drinks? Does your gut feel more irritable or do existing digestive symptoms worsen? And what about bad breath?
Fiber: Necessary for Gut Health
A diet high in simple sugar commonly lacks fiber. This interferes with your immune system and gut microbiome. A lack of fiber changes the gut microbiome even after a day or two, causing the gut microbiome to use the gut mucosal barrier as their food source instead of dietary fiber. As the mucosal lining levels decline, the natural protection and functionality of this barrier declines, adversely affecting immune protection and antimicrobial activities.
Erosion of the mucosal lining leads to increased intestinal permeability and increases the likelihood of other pro-inflammatory health breakdowns. Adding fiber back into your diet reverse this shift.
In the Western diet, fiber intake is about 10 grams per day for an adult, rather than 35-50 grams necessary for gut health.
Additional Effects of Sugar on Your Body
The burden of sugar on your body extends further. High intake of sugar/ultra-processed carbohydrates is associated with mood and mental disorders, mental and physical fatigue, stress, reduced neuroplasticity and neurodegeneration, and decreased learning, creativity, and memory.
It is linked with or worsens type 2 diabetes, obesity, atherosclerosis/heart disease, cancer with poorer treatment outcomes. It affects kidney function, liver, and respiratory health. High sugar intake causes adverse changes in bone density, joint-cartilage deterioration, is the leading cause of cavities and poor dental health, and much more.
United States Health Crisis
The U.S. ranks last compared to nine other high-income countries with regards to health outcomes. We spend the most dollars and have the worst outcomes compared to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, the United States now ranks 39th in longevity compared to other countries around the world.
Startling Dietary Patterns in Children
Dietary habits and tastes start early in life. Unfortunately, many children today have high sugar intake with startling shortcomings in whole food intake. Some of the latest parental survey data from the CDC showed nearly one-third of children 1 to 5 years old did not eat any fruit every day and almost 50% did not eat any vegetables. Almost 60% of children had sugar-sweetened beverages at least once a week. Across the nation, sugar-sweetened beverage consumption ranged from 38% in Maine to 79% in Mississippi. Children aged 2-5 were found to consume less fruits and vegetables than 1-year olds.
Sugar in Popular Beverages
As cold weather approaches, you may have a craving for a special hot beverage. Having that latte or hot chocolate from your favorite coffee shop may fulfill that craving, but it has a hidden threat to your immune system with the high amounts of added sugar. That tasty 16 oz hot chocolate beverage has 37 grams of added sugar. If you add peppermint to the hot chocolate, it now has 56 grams of added sugar! A 16 oz Peppermint Mocha Frappuccino has a whopping 63 grams of added sugar! This is no better than a 16 oz bottle of Coca Cola that has 52 grams of added sugar.
Dietary Guidelines for Americans
To help you make good choices, consider using The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025 recommendations:
- People age 2 years or older, limit added sugar intake to less than 10% of their total daily calories. That means:
o For a 2,000-calorie diet, no more than 200 calories should come from added sugars.
o 200 calories equal about 12 teaspoons of added sugar from both food and beverages.
- Children younger than 2 years should not be given any foods or beverages with added sugars.
Mindful Choices
As we enter the holiday season with enticing goodies surrounding us, take time to support your immune resilience with these additional mindful choices.
- Enjoy occasional treats within the context of healthy whole foods meals.
- Eat foods rich in fiber to protect and support a healthy gut microbiome and mucosal lining.
- Choose fruits and vegetables rich in a wide variety of colors—these antioxidants are needed for immune and respiratory health.
- Try different recipes for your holiday baking and treats with whole grain or gluten-free flour mixed with oat bran instead of white flour and starches.
- Make pancakes and waffles with whole grains instead of white flour. Use real maple syrup instead of artificial maple or other flavored syrup.
- Use plain yogurt or kefir with fresh fruit instead of sweetened yogurt or kefir.
- Make your own hot chocolate with organic, dark cacao instead of the sugar loaded commercial products.
- Reduce portion sizes.
- When preparing home-baked goods, check for alternatives in the recipe to reduce added sugar.
- Reduce or eliminate alcohol to help gut, brain, and liver health while reducing non-nutritional calorie intake.
- When eating out, go to the restaurant’s website to review the nutritional facts to help you make informed choices.
- Have a high protein breakfast with good fats to start your day off well. Daily Protein Plus provides an easy, great tasting source of protein.
- Increase your dietary fiber to 35-50 grams per day. Add Fiber Helper for a boost.
- Reduce seed oils (cotton seed, soy, corn, safflower, sunflower, canola/rapeseed) to help reduce inflammation load. Extra-virgin organic olive oil, walnut, or avocado oils provide greater health benefits.
Extra Nutritional Support for the Holiday Season
If you need some extra support during this winter holiday season, consider these tips.
- Keep up with your B vitamins such as Daily Energy Multiple Vitamin or Super Coenzyme B Complex to help with daily demands and stress.
- Stress Helper, Pantethine, Adrenal Helper, Thyroid Helper or Activator Plus can be helpful when stress and fatigue are wearing you down.
- Super Immune Booster, Oregano Oil, Quercetin or Quercetin Phytosome + Luteolin, and/or Immune Plus are great to use before traveling or if your immune system needs extra support. Vitamin D is essential for all cells in the body.
- Fiber Helper, Super Dophilus, and Tributyrin Plus, for the gut microbiome are helpful.
- If sugar cravings have gotten the best of you, consider support such as Berberine Ultra, Cinnamon Plus, Gluco Plus, LeptiSlim, and/or Tributyrin Plus.
- If the dark, dreary weather affects you, essential support includes Vitamin D, Melatonin, omega-3 Daily DHA, magnesium, and vitamin B12.
It’s no fun to be down and out with a bug. Take time to support your body and enjoy this holiday season!
