DEAR DOCTORS: I stopped eating sugar while I was losing weight last spring and summer. When holiday sweets started showing up at the office and at parties, I really indulged. I noticed that hip pain from rheumatoid arthritis, which stopped while I was dieting, came back again. Did the sugar do this?
DEAR READER: For a few decades now, studies have identified added sugars in the diet as a contributing factor to a range of adverse health conditions. These include Type 2 diabetes, increased body fat percentage, obesity, cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome.
