Who wants a bite of this creme brulee? I am ready to eat my screen! Before we make a beeline to the closest French bakery, let’s consider this.
Did you know that excess sugar causes skin aging? (Go ahead, groan. Yes, Yet Another Thing That Ages Our Skin.)
So what does sugar have to do with skin? Well, it loves to bind with collagen.
When sugar attaches to collagen, it has a ‘creme brulee’ effect on collagen. It makes it hard and stiff. Think of a pie crust getting browned and crispy in the oven. That’s what happens to collagen.
This browning process is called glycation. Glycation is a form of cross-linking, which is any process that causes a protein to bind to something else. In this case, collagen is the protein, and it happens to be a large protein. Picture a bunch of large collagen proteins getting tangled and stuck to each other – it’s not organized and even, like healthy collagen is.
Cross-linking causes collagen to become deformed. And what does deformed collagen do to skin? You guessed it. It ages skin. Specifically, it makes skin less firm, less elastic, sallow, and dull.
Sugar isn’t the only cause of cross-linking. It can also happen from UV, smoke, and heavy metals.
