We all know sugar’s bad for us. Makes you fat, causes dental problems and diabetes. You may or may not know that it could be more of a villain than saturated fat when it comes to heart disease. But I bet you didn’t know it can ruin your love life!

A recent study indicates that excessive levels of glucose and fructose (forms of sugar) in the blood can disable the gene that controls your sex hormones. The research, reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, shows that the sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) gene gets deactivated when the liver processes glucose and fructose.

So, no SHBG, no (or low) sex hormones - which can cause low libido or impotence in men and a myriad of problems, including uterine cancer, in women. Which gives us all one more reason to avoid sugar. If you’re thinking that you’ll just replace it with artificial sweeteners, I urge you to think again. There’s really not enough room here to go into specifics regarding the various artificial sweeteners, so just pop the name of your sweetener of choice into your favorite search engine and you’ll see why.

And avoiding sugar means also avoiding high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which has pretty much replaced sugar in processed foods because it’s cheaper, but is implicated in a host of health problems including obesity, as it appears to turn off the satiety signal, causing people to eat more and more.

Two sweeteners that appear to be ok in moderation are the herb stevia and the sugar alcohol xylitol. Both have less of an effect on the body’s blood sugar level than regular sugar, and according to research, xylitol actually combats tooth decay. Not just doesn’t cause it, but actually fights it! Still, use these in moderation if at all.

Basically, if you want a sweet treat that’s healthy, I’d advise sticking to fruit. Just don’t go crazy, because fructose is what makes fruit sweet, and as we saw earlier, too much of that is just as bad as too much glucose, which is table sugar. Luckily, fiber in fruit usually serves to slow the rate of blood sugar rise that occurs after eating it, as long as you eat small to moderate amounts - enough to satisfy your sweet tooth, not enough to put you to sleep or get you bouncing off the walls.

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