Blood Sugar Research Paper

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Sugar is constantly eaten everywhere in various shapes and forms. At school, I noticed that everyday, my friends snacked on mentos, muffins, and gigantic cookies. Looking back on my sugar log from the last five days, I realized that like my friends, I ate too much sugar on a daily basis. I always eat one or two granola bars which have at least 7 grams of sugar each and an apple or a whole cantaloupe, which is 19 grams of sugar and 43 grams. The rest of the food items (mentos, life savers, and ritz bitz peanut butter crackers) belong on the list, but should not have been on the list because I was not hungry when I was eating them. Unfortunately, after watching a video and carefully studying two articles, I reached to the conclusion that sugar…show more content…
Blood sugar levels refer to the “measurement of the amount of glucose in a person’s blood” (Seaman). Because the body “regulates blood sugar levels by releasing insulin, which helps turn glucose into energy”, elevated blood sugar levels would have too little insulin to transform the blood sugar into energy (Seaman). Eventually, when this unfortunate process occurs, blood sugar disorders such as diabetes causes poor brain function. Even those with blood sugar levels of below diabetes or pre-diabetic have a risk of memory problem (Seaman). Scientists in Berlin conducted an experiment consisting of 141 fifty to eighty year old non-heavy drinkers without diabetes, obesity, or memory problem (Seaman). After “at least 10 hours without food, each participant receives an MRI image of their brain” and a blood test (Seaman). For various periods of time, participants were also given 15 unrelated words to remember and repeat. The result was that “people with higher blood sugar readings performed worse on the memory test, compared to those with lower blood sugar levels” (Seaman). For example, when there was an increase of 7 units of sugar on the blood test, 2 fewer words were remembered on a 30 minute memory test (Seaman). However, there is a possibility that the experiment was not accurate as age might have factored towards memory problem…show more content…
“Added sugars make up at least 10% of the calories the Average American eats in a day” (Corliss). “About one in 10 people get a whopping one-quarter or more of their calories from added sugar” (Corliss). The biggest source of more than a third of added sugar consumed is from sodas, energy drinks, and sports drinks (Corliss). With a lack of fiber, vitamins, minerals, calories and nutrients, added sugar also causes weight gain (Corliss). One could eat an enormous load of fruits and veggies, and stimulate the liver to collect more harmful fats into the bloodstream, boosting heart disease risk. A 15 year study captures the essence of sugar towards cardiac mortality. Subjects show that the more sugar consumed, the higher the cardiac mortality. Those “who took in 25% or more of their daily calories as sugar were more than twice as likely to die from heart disease as those whose diets included less than 10% added sugar”

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