Trending Medical education topic: Dietary Sugars: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Dietary sugars and sweeteners are widely used in the food system, with over 200 names for sugar and an increasing variety of non-sugar sweeteners in use today. There is often quite a bit of misunderstanding of the different types of sugars and how they affect the human body, including infants, children, and adults. Beyond contributing to weight gain, sugars and sweeteners are linked to a range of health risks, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, and negative effects on brain health and cognitive function. This lecture will explore the various types of sugars and sweeteners and their specific impacts on these health outcomes.

Proposed Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of this activity, the learners will be able to:

• Recognize the different types of sugars and sweeteners in the diet and how they affect health risk, mental health, and cognition 
• Identify sugar in patient diets (include added and naturally occurring and low or no calories sugars/sweeteners) 
• Provide patients with strategies on how to reduce sugar consumption 
• Educate patients on how to identify sugar in their diet and how different dietary sugars and sweeteners may affect them in different ways 
• Reflect on the patient populations most affected by dietary sugars and consider how implicit bias may impact the appropriate care of these patients 

If your medical staff needs an update on the effects of sugars, consider contacting our office to book a speaker at 877-505-4777 or info@speakersnetwork.com.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7774304/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25183752

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27599886

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24493081/