Does Sugar Really Suppress the Immune System?

Eating sugar may put your white blood cells into a temporary coma. But there’s a lot more to the story of how sugar affects our immune response

By Nutrition Diva Monica Reinagel

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As you may be aware, we are celebrating a Decade of Diva this year as the Nutrition Diva podcast approaches its tenth anniversary. You might think that after ten years of weekly podcasts, I’ve said just about everything that can be said about nutrition. No danger of that! Our understanding of how food affects our bodies is constantly expanding and evolving. Sometimes, that means modifying or even reversing our positions in light of newer evidence.

Case in point: when I started doing the Nutrition Diva podcast, calcium supplements were widely recommended to post-menopausal women as a hedge against osteoporosis. Since then, there’s been a steady drip of research suggesting that high-dose calcium supplementation after menopause does little to reduce the risk of bone fractures and may actually increase risk of other problems like kidney stones, colon polyps, and even heart attacks. High-dose calcium supplements are no longer the standard prescription. In fact, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force now recommends against calcium supplementation for most post-menopausal women.

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