Eating Sugar can Also Increase Your Blood Pressure: Study

Eating too much sugar can also trigger your chances or having hypertension and heart diseases, warns a study.

Intake of a sodium-rich diet is known to give rise to blood pressure and cardiovascular illnesses leading to stroke and even death. A new French research involving 8,670 participants blamed sugary diets for spiking blood pressure levels and increasing the risk of heart diseases. Earlier, scientists at the Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute discovered that reducing salt content in food may does not help in reducing risk of hypertension as it induces people to binge on salty food to satisfy their cravings.

After going through reviews of clinical data, researchers discovered sugar stimulates the brain area associated with increasing blood pressure and also signals the body to carry out its normal functions at a faster pace. Low sodium diet on the other hand, hikes up the production of a certain type of fat in the body, which is a common indicator of heart diseases and heart attacks.

"It is sugar not the salt that may be the actual causative factor for high blood pressure. This notion is supported by meta-analyses of randomized control trials (large-scale studies) suggesting that sugar is more strongly related to blood pressure in humans than sodium. Encouraging consumers to hold the sugar, not the salt, may be the better dietary strategy to achieve blood pressure control," write the authors in the research, reports the Inquisitr.

According to the guidelines by the American Heart Association, 1,500 milligrams of salt daily is recommended in the diet but, many consume more than 3,400 milligrams of salt every day. The World Health Organization also advises people to eat less than 50 grams of sugar in a day.

Cardiologists and researchers in the United kingdom, leading the campaign Action on Sugar, urge people to lower their overall sugar consumption saying that its ill-effects on health have not been fully focused upon, reports the Express.Co.Uk.

"We know that sugar does not provide any nutrients and there is growing evidence that it is an independent risk factor for many diseases. The average Brit is consuming treble the upper limit of sugar recommended by the World Health Organisation," added Aseem Malhotra, a cardiologist and science director of Action on Sugar, reports the Express.Co.Uk.

The results stress on the need for incorporating healthy eating habits and intake of balanced diet. However, the study authors believe in investigating further as their findings are "incredibly weak" and need more analysis to link the risk of heart ailments and intake of sugar.

More research is available online in the American Journal of Cardiology.