Dr's Casebook: Added sugar in the diet ages the biological clock

Research from the USA suggests that excess sugar intake increases age at the cellular level. Photo: AdobeStock

I watched an episode of Digging for Britain the other night. In it, Professor Alice Roberts was looking at skeletons recently uncovered from the Roman era. The state of the teeth was remarkable, a result of the diet they had. In particular it was highly suggestive that they had little sugar in their diets.

Dr Keith Souter writes: Nowadays we advise people to look after their teeth and to avoid sweets and sugars. But sugar does not simply have a deleterious effect on one’s oral and dental health. Research from the USA suggests that excess sugar intake increases age at the cellular level.

They used a biochemical test on samples of individuals’ saliva to assess what is called the epigenetic clock, which gives an approximate relationship between both health and lifespan. The field of epigenetics looks at the factors in life that affect health, but which are controllable.

Effectively, they found that the better people’s diets, the younger their cells seemed to be. They went so far as to suggest that for each extra gram of added sugars in the diet there was an increase in the epigenetic age.

It has been known for a long time that increased sugar intake has an adverse effect on metabolic health and early disease, more than any other nutritional factor. The researchers suggest that this accelerated epigenetic aging underlies this effect.

Over 340 women with an average age of 39 years had their food records analysed. They found a large variation in intake, ranging from just under three grams of added sugar a day to over 300 grams. The average was 60 grams of added sugar. To put this in perspective, a bar of chocolate will give 25 grams of added sugar, while a can of cola would give just under 40 grams.

The intakes were compared to their epigenetic clock measures obtained from saliva samples. They looked at different types of diet and found that those women who kept to the Mediterranean diet had the lowest biological ageing. Significantly, they found a clear pattern of accelerated ageing with increased sugar intake.

They recommended that reducing ten grams of added sugars a day reduced the epigenetic clock measures by several months.

Essentially, less sugar reduces the biological age of cells.