Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Eat Less Fructose To Prevent Hypertension!

Dessert is usually a sweet course of dish served at the end of a meal. It includes cake, cookie, gelatin, pastry, ice cream, pie, and candy. Dessert is not only liked by children but also favored by many adults especially females.

Besides dessert, many of our daily diet can also be laden with excessive sugar. For instance, sugary or soda drinks are popular among teenagers and many young adults. Most of these sweetened drinks contained the popular high-fructose corn syrup (sometimes called corn sugar). Fructose can be found naturally in fruit and table sugar and that is why it is also called fruit sugar.

Well, lovers of sugary drinks and sugar-laden foods should pay attention to results of a study conducted by scientists from the United States, who reported that consuming a lot of foods and drinks sweetened with fructose might significantly increase the risk of developing hypertension (high blood pressure).

The study was published on July 1, 2010 in the ‘Journal of the American Society of Nephrology’ by researchers from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. They found increased rates of borderline high blood pressure for people who consumed at least 74 grams of fructose a day (about 4 bottles of soda).

American Heart Association (AHA) also warned that having too much sugar of any kind can cause people gain weight and this could in turn lead to diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

While scientists have yet to find out the exact reason why fructose would raise blood pressure, some experts suspected that fructose has the potential to reduce production of nitric oxide within the blood vessels.

Nitric oxide, which is known to relax the vessel, is supposed to lower blood pressure. But fructose reduces the production of nitric oxide and makes it difficult for the vessels to relax and dilate.

Meanwhile, fructose also raises uric acid in the blood that could raise blood pressure. Fructose can signal the kidneys to 'hold onto' more salt, and that can contribute to high blood pressure.

1 comment:

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