Washington, Oct 3: A new study in worms has found that renouncing sweets could help spell a longer life. A team of German researchers discovered that restricting glucose, a simple sugar found in foods such as sweets, triggered a process that extended the life span of some worms by up to 25 percent.

“In the US and Europe, added sugar accounts for 15 to 20 percent of daily calories, and the breakdown of that sugar always generates glucose. If the findings in worms hold for humans, it suggests that, in healthy people, glucose may have negative effects on life span,” said Michael Ristow of the University of Jena in Germany and the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke.

The findings may also cast some doubt on the prevailing treatments for type 2 diabetes, all of which are aimed at lowering blood levels of glucose by increasing the amount of sugar taken up by body tissues, Ristow said.

For the study, the German team used a chemical that blocked the worms' ability to process glucose in a treatment that extended their life span by up to 25 percent, the equivalent of 15 years in humans.

Unable to depend on glucose for energy, the long-lived worms ramped up the activity of cellular powerhouses known as mitochondria to fuel their bodies, Ristow said. That mitochondrial activity led to the increased production of reactive oxygen species, sometimes referred to as free radicals. In turn, the worms’ defenses against “oxidative stress” increased, the researchers found.

However, antioxidants and vitamins given to some worms erased these benefits by neutralising free radicals and preventing the body from generating the defences, Ristow said.

“These latter findings tentatively suggest that the widespread use of antioxidants as human food supplements may exert undesirable effects," the researchers said.

The study is published in the journal Cell Metabolism. (ANI)