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The Punch - Nigeria

High-fructose heart risks
Only two weeks of modest consumption of high-fructose corn syrup causes cholesterol and triglycerides levels to rise, and the more consumed, the greater the increases.
Researchers divided 85 people chosen for their healthy lipid profiles into four groups.
One group consumed drinks sweetened with 25 per cent high-fructose corn syrup; the second with a 17.5 per cent concentration; the third 10 per cent; and the last drinks sweetened only with aspartame.
The results, in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, were consistent: The more corn syrup, the worse the lipid profile. While LDL (or “bad” cholesterol) in the aspartame group remained the same before and after the diet, the 10 percent group went to 102 from 95, the 17.5 per cent to 102 from 93, and the 25 per cent group to 107 from 91. Optimal LDL levels are under 100.
Other blood tests of cardiovascular risk — non-HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, uric acid and others — moved in the same negative directions.
“It was a surprise that adding as little as the equivalent of a half-can of soda at breakfast, lunch and dinner was enough to produce significant increases in risk for cardiovascular disease,” said the lead author, Kimber L. Stanhope, a research scientist at the University of California, Davis.
“Our bodies respond to a relatively small increase in sugar, and that’s important information.”
Sugar as a stress reliever
Many people consume sweets in response to stress. Now researchers may have discovered why. Sugar reduces cortisol, the stress hormone.
Scientists recruited 19 female volunteers. For 12 days, eight of them consumed beverages sweetened with aspartame, an artificial sweetener. The rest drank an identical beverage containing 25 per cent table sugar.
Before and after the experiment, researchers measured volunteers’ saliva cortisol levels and performed magnetic resonance imaging scans while they took arithmetic tests beyond their abilities — a procedure known to increase cortisol levels.
The study, in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, found no differences in the tests between the two groups before the 12-day diet. But afterward, cortisol levels were lower in the sugar consumers and higher in the aspartame group.
The postdiet MRI scan showed more activity in the areas of the brain controlling fear and stress in the sugar group, and less activity in the aspartame group.
The senior author, Kevin D. Laugero, a nutritionist with the Agriculture Department, said one should not conclude that sugar should be used as a stress reducer.
But, he said, “the finding is intriguing because it suggests that there is a metabolic pathwaya sensitive to sugar outside the brain that may expose new targets for treating neurobehavioral and stress-related conditions.”
New York Times Service