The scary truth about sugar for runners

I dis­cov­ered this arti­cle on CNN Health through a link posted by @mikeyoung on Twitter.

It’s about the impact of sugar on blood-​​fat pro­files (known as ‘lipid pro­files’) and car­dio­vas­cu­lar risks, and it’s scary!

Now every­one knows that too much sugar is bad for you. But run­ners typ­i­cally get to ben­e­fit from the equa­tion
Calo­ries In <= Calo­ries Out
In other words, if you con­sume extra calo­ries, you can just run them off!

Had an extra por­tion at a busi­ness din­ner? Run it off the next day! Co-​​worker brought snacks in to a meet­ing? Run them off! Need a Coke and a candy bar in the mid­dle of the after­noon for a pick-​​me-​​up? Hold that thought!!!

Here’s what the study in the arti­cle found:

The strongest rela­tion­ship between added sugar and blood fats was found in val­ues for HDL-​​C, which fell from 58.7 mg/​dl for those who ate the least added sugar to 47.7 mg/​dl for those who ate the most. A higher HDL-​​C level is asso­ci­ated with a lower car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk.

Among some blood fats linked to higher car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk, the con­verse was true: Triglyc­eride lev­els went from 105 mg/​dl in the group that ate the least sugar to 114 mg/​dl in the group that ate the most. The so-​​called bad cho­les­terol, LDL-​​C, went from 116 mg/​dl for women who ate the least sugar to 123 mg/​dl for women who ate the most. There were no sig­nif­i­cant trends for LDL-​​C among men.

Ouch! That’s a double-​​whammy!! Sugar makes your good cho­les­terol go down and your triglyc­erides and bad cho­les­terol go up!

And the prob­lem, even for run­ners, is that sugar is processed so quickly, chances are you’re not run­ning it off before it starts affect­ing you.

But wait, there’s more!

Data from the mid-​​1990s show that 15.8 per­cent of the typ­i­cal American’s diet was com­posed of added sugar — 21.4 tea­spoons or 359 calo­ries per day. That’s up from 10.6 per­cent in 1977–1978.

And in the study cited in the arti­cle, the study par­tic­i­pants that were in the highest-​​consuming added sugar group ate about 46 tea­spoons of added sugar per day! Try to visu­al­ize that. If you need help, take a look at this arti­cle which shows what a mere 18 tea­spoons looks like, and also tells you how much sugar is found in com­mon drinks (one can of Coke has about 10 tea­spoons!).

Added sugar is every­where you look. Yes, you can avoid sodas and choco­late bars and candy. But how about ketchup, spaghetti sauce on your pre-​​race pasta din­ner, and the run­ner favorite Gatorade? All of these have added sugar in the form of “caloric sweet­en­ers,” the most com­mon of which is corn syrup. And even if you can con­trol your sugar intake, do you know how much sugar your chil­dren are eat­ing every day?

So what’s a run­ner and a con­cerned par­ent to do?

“What it really means is we have to go back to things like whole grains and veg­eta­bles and fruit and eat things in mod­er­a­tion in order to be healthy,” [study co-​​author Dr. Miriam B.] Vos said. “Plus, a good healthy dose of activity.”

What that means is just because you can run a marathon (or a half, or a 10K…) doesn’t mean you can bal­ance excess with excess. Excess non-​​nutritional caloric intake bal­anced by excess dis­tance does not a healthy run­ner make! If you achieve bal­ance by putting too much on both sides, your bal­ance may break.

4 Comments

• A Tale of Two Races | Running in the Family June 15, 2010 at 12:58 pm

  […] For more on why I think hand­ing out sodas to kids is such a bad idea, check out my pre­vi­ous post on the scary truth about sugar for runners. […]
• 
  foods that lower cholesterol May 26, 2010 at 12:38 am

  Web­mas­ters are not appre­ci­ated enough, thank you for tak­ing the time to post this.
• 
  Christina May 11, 2010 at 11:22 pm

  Thanks for stop­ping by and shar­ing your story about get­ting lost. I haven’t been to your web­site but see many top­ics that I want to read up on, includ­ing this one about sugar. I have high cho­les­terol and a sweet tooth. Know­ing the two are related will help give me moti­va­tion to reduce my sugar.
  • 
    Evhen May 14, 2010 at 7:53 pm

    Thanks! I’m glad you found this topic help­ful, and hope you enjoy the rest of the site.