Sugar kills. Most women know of its link to obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
But it also does terrible damage to your skin…
In your body, sugar molecules attach to proteins in a process known as glycation. This produces harmful sugar-protein compounds, called advanced glycation end-products, or AGEs.
AGEs can affect all organs and tissues in your body. They trigger damaging inflammation. In your eyes, they can cause cataracts.
And when they affect the skin, they cause premature aging.
AGEs attack the two things that make your skin soft and supple: collagen and elastin.
Once damaged, springy and resilient collagen and elastin become dry and brittle. This leads to wrinkles and sagging skin.
And the more sugar you eat, the more AGEs you develop.
But this little-known, wrinkle-causing problem can be solved with a few simple tweaks, which I’ll show you today.
It Gets Worse with Age
Glycation is easy to deal with in your 20s and 30s, when your body has more resources to ward off damage, and you’re producing more collagen.
But as you enter your 40s, your collagen production slows down. The AGEs in your system start to run wild and cause your skin to become dry and rigid.
To make matters worse, AGEs also triggers production of enzymes that attack the structure of the lower layers of skin. This adds to the appearance of aging.1
Simple Solution Solves “AGE-ing”
While glycation can’t be stopped completely, it can be slowed significantly by preventing the build-up of AGEs.
To do this, I recommend the following steps…
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Avoid sugar and refined carbohydrates that turn into sugar in the body. This includes cereals, bread, crackers, pasta, doughnuts, cookies, pizza, chips and pretzels. Keeping your blood-sugar levels down will help lower the amount of AGEs your own body makes. |
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Take green tea extract. It’s been shown to suppress the extent of glycation and the formation of AGEs.2 I recommend you take a supplement containing at least 50 mg of epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), the most potent antioxidant in green tea. |
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Add carnosine to your diet. Carnosine can decrease the number of AGEs in the body.3 Grass-fed, pasture-raised beef is the best way to get carnosine from food. A typical 3.5-ounce serving of beef has about 124 to 220 mg of carnosine. Overcooking meat denatures protein, breaks down vitamins and removes nutrients, including carnosine. I recommend eating your beef rare. |
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Take a carnosine supplement if you can’t get enough by eating red meat. I recommend taking 500 mg twice a day with a meal. |
By eliminating sugars and adding these simple supplements to your diet, you’ll lower the amount of damaging AGEs in your body, while keeping your skin looking soft and supple beyond your years.
To your good health,
Al Sears, MD
1 Pageon, H., Zucchi H., Rousset F., Monnier VM, Asselineau D. “Skin aging by glycation: lessons from the reconstructed skin model” Clin Chem Lab Med. 2014 Jan 1; 52(1): 169-74.
2 Babu PV1, Sabitha KE, Shyamaladevi CS. Therapeutic effect of green tea extract on advanced glycation and cross-linking of collagen in the aorta of streptozotocin diabetic rats. Clin Exp Pharmacol Physiol. 2006 Apr;33(4):351-7.
3 Mohamed-Saiel Saeed Alhamdani, Hasan Fayadh Al-Azzawie, And Fawzi K.H. Abbas. Decreased Formation of Advanced Glycation End-Products In Peritoneal Fluid By Carnosine And Related Peptides. Department Of Medical Sciences, College Of Pharmacy, Al-Mustansiriya University; Biochemistry Department, College Of Science, University Of Baghdad.