Have you ever been told that sugar is bad and that you should stop eating it? Probably. But then you may have wondered, why is it bad? And if it is, how bad are we talking here? Like a little bad and I can still eat my cookies or a lot of bad and I should stop eating it immediately?

Well, in today’s article, we’re going to answer these questions as well as talk about how the body processes sugar, what it actually is, and even talk about how exercise can change how we utilize and process it. This is going to be full of all sorts of sugary, anatomical ossanus. So let’s do this.

What Is Sugar?

So first, what do we even mean when we use the word sugar? Most of us are referring to table sugar, and this can sometimes be associated with some negative connotations. Maybe you’ve heard things like it is bad for you, it causes weight gain, it’s associated with diabetes, it can cause inflammation, and the list goes on and on. But are these accurate or even fair assessments? And could there ever be potential situations where it might be beneficial?

Because in biology, the term sugar is used to refer to certain types of carbohydrates. And what you might find interesting is that as we talk about it, we’re going to find that the same types of carbohydrates that are found in table sugar are the same carbohydrates that are found in fruits, vegetables, and other whole food sources that we typically consider as good for us. So we definitely need to go a little bit deeper into this discussion.

Carbohydrates And Simple Sugar

Let’s start with the term carbohydrate. Carbohydrates are a type of compound that is made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. And they include things like sugars, starches, and even cellulose.

Now, cellulose we’re not going to talk a lot about because this is something our body can’t break down and absorb. And it is one of the contributors to the fiber in your diet. So it helps push things along in your large intestine so that you can have epically, amazing bowel movements. But sugars and starches we can definitely break down and absorb into the bloodstream through the small intestine and we typically use these as energy sources. And so again, sugars and starches fall under this umbrella of carbohydrates.

But what are some of the differences? Now, the term sugar is referring to simple carbohydrates. You may have heard of the phrase simple sugars before. Now, these are smaller carbohydrate molecules, which include things that are called disaccharides and monosaccharides. Saccharides just mean sugar.

dimens, two mono means one. And so a disaccharide is made up of two monosaccharides. Now, even though we’re using some of these jargony biology terms, you have likely heard of disaccharides and monosaccharides that are found in the foods you eat. For example, lactose is the disaccharide found in milk products. And of course, sucrose is a disaccharide that makes up table sugar.

And since we’re really kind of focusing on this table sugar. This table sugar, aka sucrose, is made up of one monosaccharide called glucose, bonded to another monosaccharide called fructose. So glucose plus fructose equals sucrose, which is it.

So if we kind of takes a step back, imagine yourself holding a spoonful of it, and that spoonful of it is made up of multiple molecules of sucrose and therefore the building blocks of glucose and fructose. And you’re about to eat it, but of course, you’re an inquisitive mind about biology, anatomy, and physiology, and you’re thinking to yourself, what is it about this table sugar?

Therefore, the fructose and glucose that are found in this make it worse than the glucose or fructose that I find just in fruits and vegetables and other food sources. Well, to answer that, I think we need to talk a little bit about the starches.

Complex Carbohydrates And Starches

Starches are complex carbohydrates, which are polysaccharides, and the starches that humans ingest the most are amylose and amylopectin, and these are multiple glucose molecules strung together or bonded together, or you could think of them as these long chains of glucose, hence they are referred to to as polysaccharides.

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Now, we can definitely compare and contrast these to the disaccharides or the table sugar. As we can see, yes, they both do contain glucose, but there’s a huge difference in the size of a table sugar versus the size of the molecules that make up the starches.

And this is where you start to see some discuss a negative potential effect of the table sugar. And that has to do with how it’s broken down and absorbed into the body when you compare it to the starches. So we need to talk about what happens when you put the table sugar in your mouth versus what happens when you put the starch in your mouth. Now, since we are talking about putting things in our mouths.

How Our Body Breaks Down Sugars

So, the ingesting of sugars and starches and this discussion around how bad is it. So once we place the sugar and starches into our mouths, what we refer to as the oral cavity in anatomy, this is where the process of digestion begins through chewing and through the secretion of saliva, which contains certain enzymes to help start this digestive process.

We then move this down the esophagus and into the stomach. Or the sugars and starches will mix with the acid through the smooth muscle contractions of the stomach. And this mixture will eventually make it to the first part of the small intestine called the duodenum. Now, the duodenum contains specific enzymes that can break down specific types of carbohydrates. For example, sucrose will break down sucrose, the table sugar, into the individual glucose and fructose molecules that we talked about earlier.

Amylase is a specific enzyme for breaking down amylose. And what’s important to understand is that our bodies can only absorb the monosaccharides, meaning the individual glucose and fructose molecules. So you can see that this breakdown in the digestive process is important for absorption.

And as those glucose and fructose molecules move further down the small intestine, as they’ve been freed through the digestive process, they’ll move into the Dignum and the ileum, the second and third part of the small intestine, and then be absorbed through the wall and into the bloodstream. And once those glucose and fructose molecules are in the bloodstream, the first place that they will go is to the liver.

Now, the liver does a lot of different things, but one of the first things it will do is convert those fructose molecules into glucose molecules so we don’t have all this fructose circulating throughout the body. And when you think about that from a clinical setting, when we measure, say, like blood sugar levels, we’re measuring blood glucose levels, as glucose is this primary monosaccharide that’s circulating throughout our body.

How The Sugars Are Absorbed Quickly

But I did graze over something kind of quickly there, and that was the breakdown and the absorption rate of saying like it versus the breakdown and absorption rate of starch. And remember we mentioned that they are relatively small carbohydrate molecules, the disaccharides, especially when we compare them to the complex carbohydrates polysaccharides. And because of this difference, the sugars, the disaccharides, tend to be broken down and absorbed much more quickly.

So blood sugar levels will rise more rapidly, but they’ll also taper off or go down more rapidly as compared to, say, a complex carbohydrate, where that breakdown or that digestion is slower. So the blood sugar levels tend to rise more slowly, but they also tend to be sustained for a longer period of time.

And this is one of the negative things you can think of or that’s sometimes mentioned about it, is that the blood sugar levels could spike, but then also kind of crash down. Now, you can combat that in some situations. If you only ate a simple sugar, you’d kind of deal with that spike and crash.

But if you paired that simple sugar, say, with complex sugar or complex carbohydrate, yes, the blood sugar levels would increase relatively rapidly, but then you’d get that sustained blood sugar level because you’d have that complex carbohydrate following behind.

Can Sugar Ever Be Good?

Now, there are certain situations where I want a simple sugar or sugar to get in there and raise the blood sugar levels quickly. For example, say, in a clinical setting, I had a patient that was hypoglycemic. I don’t want to wait for a complex carbohydrate. I want to get a simple sugar in there to raise the blood sugar levels up to get them out of that hypoglycemic state.

Maybe I’m a marathon runner and I’m halfway through the marathon. My glucose levels are getting low, and I need to get an energy boost of glucose into my bloodstream as quickly as possible. Yes, the ideal situation is to have a balanced intake of carbohydrates or blood glucose levels.

But as you can see, there are certain situations where it can be appropriate to get that glucose into the bloodstream as quickly as possible. And one thing I do want to mention is that in the clinical setting, if we have to get somebody’s blood sugar levels up or during a marathon, it’s not like we’re giving people, like, spoonfuls of table sugar.

There are certain mixtures or products that are made up of simple sugars or simple carbohydrates to get this done. But if you are in a pinch, a sugary drink or a sugary juice often will have the same effect.

Your Body Does Not Care Where Glucose Comes From

And we have to go back to this idea that I mentioned or alluded to earlier. The glucose molecule in table sugar is the exact same structure and form as the glucose molecule that came from some fruit, vegetable, or another whole food source. It’s not like the glucose molecule from it is labeled as poison. It’s not like your body has this glucose segregating police force that says your glucose molecule came from it.

You are banished to the fat cell, but your glucose molecule that came from the whole grain food can go into the muscle cell, and you the glucose molecule that came from the kale. You can go into the nerve cell. No, your body doesn’t care or know the difference between where the glucose came from. Glucose is glucose.

Empty Calories

Now, even though I said glucose is glucose and that our body doesn’t differentiate between the sources from where the glucose comes from, there are still some important considerations we have to have when it comes to it.

For example, it is often referred to as empty calories, meaning that glucose and fructose are essentially all we get in the form of calories and energy from that, as opposed to getting that glucose and fructose from whole food sources. In that case, that glucose and fructose are often going to be associated with other benefits, with things such as vitamins, fiber, and other nutrients that can help bolster health and wellness.

Worst Thing About Sugar?

And building further off of this idea of empty calories, if we had to pick the most negative thing when it comes to it, it’s probably this. We can eat a ton of it without actually feeling that full. And when you think about it from the perspective of say, early human ancestors or hunter-gatherers, did they get carbohydrates and some simple sugars through ingesting fruits and vegetables?

Yes, of course. But were they also creating these factories where they were developing refined table sugar to also add to the foods they were already eating? No. But we do think about maybe the last time you went to a restaurant, maybe instead of ordering water, you ordered a soda and maybe you got two to three refills and that extra sugar that was in that soda was ingested and probably didn’t make you feel any more full than if you just had two to three glasses of water instead.

Also adding that to foods that we already eat, again, probably doesn’t increase how full we feel, but increases the number of carbohydrates and sugars and therefore calories that we ingest on a day-to-day basis, again, depending on how much that you ingest.

And so this whole idea again is we’ve changed the ratio and therefore the total amount of carbohydrates and sugars that we ingest. Sugar in and of itself is not evil, it’s the amount that we’re getting so easily included in our daily diet.
How Are Body Deals With Excess Sugar

So another thing that I think will be helpful is for us to understand what happens as the glucose circulates throughout the body and what happens if there’s too much. Now, we already know that the glucose will first go to the liver, and any fructose that’s in there will just get converted to glucose anyway. But the liver will also start to store the glucose in its storage form, which is called glycogen.

And the liver can store about 100 grams of glycogen. And the rest of the glucose that isn’t stored in the liver will circulate throughout the body. And yes, insulin is going to be released by the pancreas in response to these increasing blood sugar levels. So for now, just know that insulin essentially tells the majority of the cells in your body to take the glucose from the bloodstream and into themselves, therefore lowering blood glucose or blood sugar levels.

And if we take a look at a skeletal muscle, in particular, the glucose that gets pulled into the skeletal muscle tissue will also get stored as glycogen. And the skeletal muscles throughout your body can store about 400 to 500 grams of glycogen, depending on who you are. So kind of think of the liver and the skeletal muscle tissue as little gas tanks for glucose and glycogen.

But what happens when we’ve completely filled up the liver, completely filled up the skeletal muscle tissue and there’s still more glucose in the bloodstream? That’s when we start seeing the glucose getting converted to fat and getting stored in the adipose tissue.

And that’s where we can start to run into problems by really increasing our glucose or our sugar intake beyond the capacity of, say, our liver and our skeletal muscle tissue.

Exercise Changes How The Body Stores And Processes Sugar

So hopefully that gives you a different perspective or a better understanding of how it can be bad, so consistently ingesting too much of it and having increased blood glucose levels. And that excess blood glucose gets stored as fat and increases weight over time, and the associations of increased adipose with things like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other conditions.

But finally, how does exercise influence or even change how we process sugar or glucose? Moderate to intense activity causes the skeletal muscles to preferentially shift their source of energy to burn more carbohydrates, more so than fats.

Also, as someone increases their activity or consistently exercises, their ability to store glycogen in their skeletal muscles increases. So think of your skeletal muscle gas tank for glycogen getting bigger so you can store more glycogen. And if you compare that to a secondary or an inactive person with that of an active person, those who are inactive, you’d see that they’re resting Glycogen stores are about 20% to 30% less than the active person.

So in theory, someone who’s consistently active could eat more carbohydrates, not only because they’re just burning more calories on a day-to-day basis, but also because they have the ability to store more of it in their skeletal muscles before it will start getting converted to fat.

Exercise, Insulin, And Sugar

Exercise also sensitizes muscles to insulin, especially directly after exercise. And this is kind of the opposite of what happens during type two diabetes. Generally, we say with type two diabetes that the majority of cells throughout the body become insensitive to insulin. But exercise has this sensitizing effect, especially with the skeletal muscles. And speaking of insulin, something that’s really cool with exercise is that an exercising muscle doesn’t actually need insulin to bring in the glucose as a resting muscle does.

So say you’re running a marathon or exercising and you ingest a simple sugar or a carbohydrate to replenish your carbohydrate stores. Those contracting muscles can bring in glucose without the need for insulin.

Best Time To Eat Sugar?

So obviously, you can see there are some amazing benefits to exercise through how it helps us to process and utilize those sugars for that glucose. And again, hopefully, all of this help to just clarify how and when sugar can be bad.

And of course, if you made me pick between the two extremes say I had someone that didn’t eat any processed sugar and only got their carbohydrates from whole food sources versus someone who ate a ton of sugar, obviously we’re going to pick the situation where we get our carbohydrates only from the whole food sources, but most of us don’t live on those two extremes.

And as long as the majority of your carbohydrates come from whole food sources and you have this balanced ratio of carbohydrates to lipids to proteins, you’re likely going to be just fine with indulging in your favorite sugary treat every so often.

And remember, one of the best times to do that is directly after exercise when those skeletal muscles are sensitized to bring in that glucose to replenish the glycogen stores. And FYI, it’s also a good time to add protein to that because your skeletal muscles are primed to also bring in those amino acids or those proteins to help the rebuilding process.