{"id":1057,"date":"2022-01-29T12:02:35","date_gmt":"2022-01-29T17:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.drjenkerns.com\/?p=1057"},"modified":"2022-01-29T12:02:35","modified_gmt":"2022-01-29T17:02:35","slug":"is-sugar-making-my-chronic-pain-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drjenkerns.com\/2022\/01\/29\/is-sugar-making-my-chronic-pain-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"Is sugar making my chronic pain worse?"},"content":{"rendered":"
As is evidenced by my Project 135 stats below showing a stagnant weight, I have been on the sugar train this week thanks to me using my birthday on January 25 as an excuse. And I noticed the last few days that my legs and back are killing<\/i> me. I\u2019ve had problems with my low back for a long time and an MRI about 3 years ago showed degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, and a bad ruptured disc pressing on my lumbar nerve roots (explaining total numbness in my right leg and weakness in my right foot). Since then I\u2019ve struggled with chronic low back pain and occasional sciatica. I\u2019ve also developed issues since buying my Peloton a year ago \u2014 somehow riding the bike seems to exacerbate my back pain, and has also created issues in my left knee and hamstring over the past few months. Well, this week the pain has been pretty terrible. Like, my legs and low back\/hip girdle hurt constantly, and if I sit for more than a minute and then try to get up, I let out the old lady moan and have to go super slowly for the first few steps because I\u2019m \u201call stove up\u201d (stuck and unable to move), as my late father used to declare. It\u2019s disrupting my sleep, too, because the pain literally wakes me sometimes and makes it hard to get back to sleep. Added sugar consumption has also been associated with cognitive impairments, especially worsened hippocampal memory function. Rats on a high sugar\/low fat, or a high sugar\/high fat diet show hippocampal-dependent memory deficits (61<\/a>). This relation appears to be mediated by increased hippocampal inflammation, which is especially pronounced in the high sugar\/low fat condition (61<\/a>). Associations in humans support these findings: greater relative carbohydrate intake predicted a heightened risk of mild cognitive impairment or dementia in elderly people, while carbohydrate intake in school children was negatively associated with nonverbal intelligence tests (61<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Another paper titled Do nutritional factors interact with chronic musculoskeletal pain? A systematic review<\/a>\u00a0suggested that plant-based diets may improve chronic pain in certain conditions and stated, \u201cpain severity is positively associated with fat and sugar intake in chronic osteoarthritis pain.\u201d And, interestingly, one of the consequences of frequent consumption of refined sugar may be an increase in advanced glycation end products<\/a>\u00a0(AGEs)\u2014 proteins and lipids in the body that get chemically changed by the addition of a bit of sugar to them (this process is called \u201cglycation\u201c). AGEs may contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer\u2019s. This paper<\/a> found a correlation with a person\u2019s level of AGEs and their low back pain severity. And it just dawned on me last night that when I had my fancy Boston Heart blood panel drawn last spring for Dr. Isaacson (in advance of my visit to the Cornell Alzheimer\u2019s Prevention Clinic<\/a>), while my hemoglobin A1C (HgA1c, or glycated hemoglobin) was low, suggesting I was not diabetic or prediabetic, I actually did<\/i> have a high level of glycated protein in my blood!<\/p>\n
\nWhy is my pain so much more noticeable this week? My sleep quality has been shit, that\u2019s for sure. Going to bed with a full stomach, and specifically a stomach full of sugar (to make it worse), has left me with an elevated resting heart rate, depressed heart rate variability<\/a>, and multiple awakenings through the night. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s not helping my pain. But I know I\u2019ve read many places that refined sugar increases inflammation in the body (and inflammation triggers pain receptors), so I started wondering last night whether all the sugar this week is literally making my musculoskeletal pain worse.
\nThere are lots of blogs about it, but not a whole lot of research. I found one meta analysis<\/a> that found no significant worsening of the inflammatory marker high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, or hsCRP, when people are fed fructose or high fructose corn syrup compared to glucose. This doesn\u2019t really tell me if added sugar (of any type, whether fructose, sucrose, or glucose) vs. NO added sugar is\u00a0different when it comes to inflammation. Another 2018 review paper titled Impact of sugar on the body, brain, and behavior<\/a> stated:<\/p>\n