Sugar and Your Body: Explaining to Youth

This is Fiora. She is a smart young lady. She likes to keep her body healthy by eating food that is good for her body.

One day Fiora’s friend Cassi offered her some candy, and Fiora said "No thanks."  Cassi asked her “Why don’t you eat candy?”  Fiora politely said, “It doesn’t make me feel good so I think it might not be good for me.”

Cassi was confused. “Well my dad told me I was too skinny and need to eat more candy! It's just sugar. Don’t we need sugar?”  Fiora said, “We do need glucose, but even that in large amounts can hurt our bodies in lots of ways.”

“I don’t get it!” said Cassi. “How can something we need hurt us?”  “It’s ok,” said Fiora. “I didn’t get it at first either. Let me tell you about sugar and how glucose works in our bodies.”

First, let me introduce some important players! This is Blood Cell, our blood carries oxygen and energy from food to all parts of our body so we can move and function. It’s important our blood is clean so it can keep our organs and brain healthy.

This is Glucose. We get her from sugar, fat, and protein. It’s the most important source of fuel in our bodies!  We wouldn’t be able to do much without her, so she can’t get too low. But if she gets too high she is toxic.

This is Pancreas. He does two jobs, makes Enzymes to help break down food into Glucose and makes Insulin and Glucagon to make sure there is not too much or too little glucose in the blood. Enzymes break the sugar down so we can access Glucose.

 Insulin is a hormone that comes out of pancreas when Glucose enters the blood, he helps store glucose in the liver, or if there is not enough room in liver then in fat cells, so it doesn’t get too high. Glucagon takes glucose out of the liver when it’s too low.

This is Liver, we really need him! He monitors the blood for toxins and glucose before sending it to the rest of the body, our blood would kill us without liver! He also stores glucose in his cells for later use by turning it into glycogen. Liver wants our blood to stay clean and balanced in blood glucose levels.

These helper guys are called Fiber, Vitamin, and Mineral. They are part of foods we eat that help the stomach, liver and pancreas digest food and regulate glucose for energy. We need lots of fiber to help move food through our bodies, and slow down the digestion process so we don't spike insulin, and vitamins and minerals make liver, pancreas, and muscles strong.

This is Water. Water helps blood move freely, helps cleanse the liver and pancreas and stomach, and helps our bodies get rid of toxic waste like too much sugar. We need to drink a lot more water than the amount that we eat food.

This is Sugar, he’s not part of our body. He has lots of names, like carbohydrate, fructose, sucrose, honey, corn syrup, candy, etc. Sugar is very sweet to eat, so it’s also very hard to stop. There are natural kinds of sugar (in fruit and veggies), and man made or refined sugar (in donuts and soda), but all sugars do a similar thing when you eat.

Let’s say you ate a pear. A whole pear has vitamins, minerals, a small amount of sugar called fructose, lots of fiber, and water. All important players in digestion! The pear goes in our mouths and enzymes from our saliva start to break the pear down into small particles.

Then Stomach enzymes and Pancreas enzymes break the food down so small it can be converted into Glucose and used as energy to fuel our muscles, heart, and brain. Pancreas sends out Insulin to protect the blood from too much glucose and send it via blood cells to the Liver.

The big blood vessel from the digestive track to Liver is called the HPV. Blood entering the HPV is rich with glucose from food, so it’s escorted by Insulin. Liver stores much of this as Glycogen so it can be released quickly as energy between meals. Liver could not do this without the help of Insulin.

Pancreas is what signals insulin to get the sugar to Liver and convert it into Glucose. If Pancreas isn’t giving enough enzymes or too much insulin, problems will arise. Blood glucose will get out of balance! So its very important to have a healthy pancreas that works right.

Too much glucose is toxic for our blood and organs, like poison. Too little glucose will starve our organs and brains. The body has a lot of ways to make sure we don’t have too high or too low glucose, but there are ways we can help it stay balanced by being careful what we eat.

Let’s say now that you ate a pear flavored candy. There is no fiber, no water, no minerals, and no vitamins in candy, there is a lot of sugar called sucrose. This is hard on Pancreas! He has to work extra hard to get enough insulin produced to escort, convert, and store that sucrose into glucose.

If Insulin senses high amounts of sugar, it comes out like an army and gets to work getting sugar out of the blood (called a "spike"). But that creates a problem an hour later when you don't have any glucose left because Insulin got rid of it all.  You "crash" or have no energy!

Liver is hard at work too.  Without fiber to slow things down, vitamins, and minerals to help, Liver has to take minerals and vitamins and glucose from food you already ate to store the sucrose-glucose as fat or get it out of your body. If you ate 5 candies, it’s likely that is too much to be stored at once! So Liver needs extra fiber and water to get rid of the sugar or it acts like poison and hurts your cells.

Other foods, like chips, donuts, cake, white bread, cookies, crackers, and pasta contain high carbohydrates and low fiber, vitamins, minerals, and water. It makes Pancreas and Liver work too fast all at once! So they also overwork enzymes and insulin, throw our blood glucose off balance, and have to store it as lots of fat, like when you eat candy.

Sugar makes us feel energized for a little while, but then our blood glucose crashes because Pancreas and Insulin worked hard! We are out of balance!!! Then we feel depleted, tired, and moody. We will feel hungry really soon and crave food. Our brains will think it needs more glucose, even if we have lots of fat stored, because of the sugar high.

Protein is another source of fuel for our bodies. It is different from sugar and carbohydrates, but the enzymes can still convert it into energy for our bodies through a process called glucogenesis, the same way it turns glycogen into glucose. Protein slows down insulin, so if you have a weak pancreas protein is a good food to eat.

The best way to keep our glucose balanced is to eat whole foods! Eating an apple (fiber, minerals, vitamins, water, fructose) will keep you balanced, eating apple juice (water and high fructose), especially from the store with added sugars and preservatives, will spike your insulin and be hard on your pancreas and liver.

The body lets us know when we’ve had too much sugar by getting sick or fat.  I metabolize food quickly already, so it doesn’t take much sugar to make me feel upset in my stomach, tired, moody, and weak. Sugar will deplete my body instead of giving me energy. Being cranky is another sign you’ve had too much sugar.

“Are there any foods that make you not feel good Cassi?”

Cassi thought about  it. “I did feel sick once when I ate three cinnamon rolls. They were so good I couldn’t stop.”

“That would make me sick too!” said Fiora.  “And sometimes if I go too long without eating I get really angry,” said Cassi.  “I call that Hangry!” said Fiora.

“So you eat sugar, you just eat it in fruits and vegetables to help your body digest it easier and stay balanced in glucose?” Cassi clarified.

“Exactly!” said Fiora. “It’s hard to do, but it makes me feel great. I try to listen to my body.”

“I understand now. Thanks for explaining Fiora. Maybe I will try to eat less sugary and refined foods too. Or at least pay attention to when my body says enough is enough. So what do we do with this candy?” Cassi said.  “Better in the garbage than in our bodies!” said Fiora. “Let’s keep our bodies clean.”  “OK!” and Cassi threw it away.

WRITTEN BY HEATHER SCHAUERS * * * ILLUSTRATED BY KRYSTAL BARRETT