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My name is Christine Marquette and I'm a registered and licensed dietitian with the Austin Regional
Clinic and I'm going to talk to you about the question: does sugar affect the immune
system? There's been a lot of commentary from various organizations on sugar and its affects
on the immune system and even some of the editors at WebMD agree that an excess amount
of refined sugar such as sugar found in soda waters, or in cakes or pastries, does have
a depressive affect on the immune system, for example, an intake between seventy-five
and a hundred grams taken in all at once has been shown to cause a decrease affect of your
immune system. So for this reason, you do want to make sure that you avoid an excessive
amount of any type of refined sugar. For example, if you were to drink a thirty-two ounce Big
Gulp that was a regular soda water, that would be well above that seventy-five gram level
of sugar and would put you at risk of catching a cold or some other type of virus if you
were around people who were sick. So, sugar actually has been shown to decrease the immune
system, again, this is refined sugar. This isn't the sugar that you would find naturally
in your fruits or even sugar found in starchy carbohydrates, things like potatoes, or whole
grains or breads. It's primarily the refined sugar that you would find in beverages and
in pastries.