In another thread, a poster (I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten who) suggests avoiding sugar because it weakens the immune system. I’d never heard this before so I googled it. I find lots and lots of sites that accept it as conventional wisdom without much to back it up. Plus those sites all tend to be of the herbal and homeopathic strain… So I’m asking the Dopers, is there any REAL evidence that sugar is bad for the immune system? (I’d actually be glad if there were because it’d give me more resolve to avoid the left-over Halloween candy…)
Don’t know much about the common wisdom but if concern over sugar exists, perhaps the origin is in the immunodeficiency observed in diabetics. Nonetheless eating sugar and having diabetes are two different animals entirely.
I’m an MD with a PhD in immunology. I’ve never seen a study examining direct immunosupressive effects of a high sugar diet. I doubt one exists, but i’ll poke around on pubmed and be right back.
I did some fairly specific searches on pubmed that turned up nothing. My last search was diet AND immunosupression and yielded this article (not on sugar, but the title is amusing)
I guess there aren’t good studies on the question you ask.
Here’s an article that almost helps. It came up by searching diet AND sucrose AND immune.
Too much of anything is bad for you. Too much sugar can kill you (but you’d need a lot lot). When you throw your digestive system out of whack, it affects all the other systems in your body, thus, depressing the immune system. Too much sugar leads to increased weight, diabetes, and many other systemic problems.
And Americans eat too much sugar. Sugar is of course found in sweets and desserts. But there is corn syrup and sweeteners in almost everything (in ketchup, potato salad, hamburger buns, etc…). Also refined grains (like white bread and rice) are easily converted into sugar in the body.
The reaction: make sugar the evil bad guy you must avoid at all costs. Well, that’s just stupid. Eat in moderation. Cut back on sweetened foods and eat only whole grains and complex carbohydrates high in fiber. And exercise.
And homeopathy is pseudoscience quackery. Avoid it at all costs.
Peace.
Hey Y’all,
Thanks for the responses. choosybeggar that’s exactly what I was looking for; a real scientific study (or lack of) about the subject. I’m always instantly sceptical of anything a homeopathic site recommends, those guys are nuts… 
Glad your happy. Nothing I found supported the idea that sugar is immunosupressive, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t, necessarily.
Carry on