- According to the INSP, Mexico ranks first in the world in the consumption of sugary drinks.
- The current lifestyle that predominates favors obesity and heart problems.
- The excessive consumption of sugars from an early age generates malnutrition, metabolic damage, excessively increases adipose tissue and oxidative stress.
It is a reality that our country is going through a serious public health problem marked by high levels of obesity and diabetes. If both diseases have something in common, it is that one of their risk factors is excessive consumption of sugars. That is why it is so important to promote a healthy lifestyle from the earliest years to reverse this scenario.
According to National Institute of Public Health (INSP), Mexico ranks first in the world in the consumption of sugary drinks. The diet in the population, since childhood, includes highly sugary products with sucrose (refined sugar) and fructose (high fructose corn syrup), which are industrially refined carbohydrates present in juices, nectars and soft drinks.
Impact on heart health
For her part, the Ministry of Health (SSa) has associated childhood and excessive consumption of refined sugars with obesity and the development of an enlarged heart, commonly known as cardiac hypertrophy.
David Julián Arias Chávez, assigned to the laboratories of Guadalupe Bravo and Norma Leticia Gómez Víquez, researchers at the Cinvestav Department of Pharmacobiologywas given the task of analyzing the relationship between obesity and cardiac hypertrophy, both being risk factors for heart failure, that is, the heart is not capable of pumping enough blood to the rest of the body.
Obese children between the ages of 3 and 12 have been reported to develop cardiac hypertrophy; that is to say, it was not necessary for them to become adults or present arterial hypertension (as the main precursor of heart enlargement) to present these complications.
“The importance of the research lies in analyzing the appearance of cardiac hypertrophy in baby rats that were administered beverages with an excessive content of refined sugar and/or fructose, seeking to resemble the current feeding conditions of children in Mexico, who from their first months of age receive abundant sugary drinks”.
When talking about cardiac hypertrophy, it is said that the heart increases in size due to a pressure overload that generally occurs in arterial hypertension. Similarly, there is an elongation of the cavities in response to an increase in blood volume caused, regularly, by excess body fat. In a similar way, the oxidative stress generated when compounds that are not useful for life, and yes, highly harmful, are produced in the body in these alterations.
To explain these alterations, it has been reported that the participation of a protein present in the heart, called calcium calmodulin protein kinase II (CaMKII), is strongly related to the development of cardiac hypertrophy and that its hyperactivation, through its oxidation, leads to enlargement of the heart.
Therefore, the objective of the research was to observe whether an animal model with an excess of visceral adipose tissue, caused by highly sugary diets, could develop cardiac hypertrophy, by analyzing the hyperactivation of CaMKII and its ability to put into The molecular mechanism that activates the genes for the development of hypertrophy is working.
“We observed that obesity induced by excessive consumption of sugary drinks from an early age significantly increases oxidative stress and CaMKII oxidation in the heart, resulting in cardiac hypertrophy. This allowed us to understand the pathophysiological bases of cardiac remodeling in states of obesity and oxidative stress with the aim of stopping its development”.
Guadalupe Bravo and David Julian
The research protocol consisted of administering drinks with sucrose, fructose and one combined with the two mentioned to the three-week-old animal model of recently weaned rats. After 5 months of intake, they presented significantly excess adipose tissue compared to the group that received drinking water without carbohydrates.
“We verified that sugary diets, in addition to cardiac hypertrophy, oxidative stress and hyperactivation of CaMKII, also generated an increase in blood pressure, triglycerides, cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and possibly metabolic syndrome, being higher in the combined diet ”.
In addition, the study found that the excessive consumption of sugars from an early age It generates malnutrition, metabolic damage, excessively increases adipose tissue and oxidative stress, favoring the development of cardiac hypertrophy and, in a matter of time, heart failure.
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