But, *how* does sugar cause inflammation?

By now we’ve all heard sugar causes inflammation.

But, how?

by Dr. Jaime Fritsch, DACM, L.Ac.

I want to talk first about cells.

Your body is composed of trillions of cells (with trillions of additional bacterial & fungal cells as well as plenty of viruses and other actors that don’t share your DNA). These cells are lined with a cell membrane composed of fat in the form of cholesterol and proteins. The cholesterol makes the membrane supple and the proteins act to process cellular information as it comes and goes. (Protein and cholesterol are both incredibly important, but we’ll save that for another day.)

Inside the cell are many organelles, which are specialized structures within the cell. One organelle in particular, the mitochondria, you might remember from high school biology. Remember the “powerhouse” of the cell? That’s the mitochondria.

In the mitochondria, your body takes glucose from carbohydrates and turns it into adenosine triphosphate, more commonly known as ATP. Mitochondria can also use fat or protein to make ATP, but again we’ll get into that another day. ATP is essentially the currency of the body, allowing all processes that require energy to happen.

Want the heart to beat? ATP. Want to reach out and hug someone? ATP. Want to have literally any thought at all? ATP! (The brain actually uses about 20% of the body’s entire ATP production, using billions of ATP molecules per neuron per second!)

So, ATP = super important. ATP good.

If ATP comes from glucose (carbohydrates), then glucose good too, right? Well, it is until it isn’t. Glucose is indeed fuel for ATP, but consuming too much is like overfilling your gas tank and causing it to spill all around the car.

By overfilling your tank, so to speak, your body then has some cleanup to do to keep too much glucose from circulating in your bloodstream (which on its own leads to a whole host of issues but for now we are going to focus on ATP production). The “cleanup” process of removing glucose from the bloodstream occurs by your pancreas releasing insulin to signal your cells to take in more glucose (and hopefully turn it into ATP).

At first, your cell membrane of cholesterol and proteins will see all the insulin and obey the chain of command, letting more and more glucose inside. This temporarily solves the initial problem of excess glucose in the bloodstream, but also eventually overwhelms the mitochondria (not to mention the cell itself) and impairs their ability to function.

When the mitochondria can’t function optimally, they aren’t processing all the glucose being shoved inside them, and your bloodstream backs up with more and more glucose as you shove your face with bread and rice and orange juice or whatever your carbohydrate of choice may be.

(Remember: glucose from a piece of multigrain bread needs processed just the same as glucose from a coke.)

Eventually if you continue down the road of overloading your system with carbohydrates, you become “insulin resistant” wherein your cells have been bombarded with glucose for so long that they stop listening to the insulin telling them to take in even more glucose.

Now you have a situation wherein your body is pumping out more and more insulin to address the high levels of glucose in the bloodstream and simultaneously processing less and less glucose into ATP due to mitochondrial overload and dysfunction.

This is a problem in two ways.

First is that your mitochondria have been compromised and can’t produce ATP at the level your body needs. Without ATP your body can’t do, well, anything. You can’t think, move, coordinate. Your immune system can’t function. It affects literally anything and everything you do.

Second is that, because mitochondrial dysfunction is inherently problematic, your immune system is called in. However, this is a problem that your immune system is only called in to fix because your body just simply doesn’t know what else to do but it knows it’s in trouble and needs to do something. It doesn’t know that this isn’t a problem the immune system can fix. It’s just confused and doesn’t have the tools it needs (which are mostly dietary changes and physical activity). Additionally, a higher level of insulin on its own will create an inflammatory immune response and again, high blood sugar in and of itself is problematic. Your body sees mitochondrial dysfunction and all that insulin and excess blood sugar and says, “Something is wrong, let’s send in the troops.”

The immune system though, as we already know, has been compromised. It can’t function properly just like the rest of your body also can’t function properly. Remember, it doesn’t have the ATP it needs and it needs ATP to do everything. From the top to the bottom, the immune system is now impaired along with every other system of the body.

This faulty immune response would be like calling 911 and the operator sends out the police, fire department, and paramedics to not just one house on the block but to all the houses on the block. Complicating things further, the first responders come acting like complete lunatics. The police start shooting randomly, the fire department gets out their high power water hoses, and the paramedics just inject anybody they see with a cocktail of drugs.

This is inflammation. And when this goes on for a long period of time creating a pattern, this is autoimmune. The first responders acting so crazy—your compromised immune system—just stay in the fight trying to solve the problem year after year because really they just want to help no matter how much it seems like they are on a different team entirely.

So, in a nutshell, this process is how excess carbohydrates leads to inflammation and, eventually, autoimmune. This is just one of myriad causes of inflammatory response. Others include stress, environmental toxins, sedentary lifestyle, sleep deprivation, emotional traumas, micronutrient imbalances, among other factors.

Addressing the balance of your macronutrient intake and getting more active could be the first step toward adding good years to your life.

Thanks for reading. I hope this helps to clarify how sugar causes inflammation.

—Dr. Jaime