Everybody knows that consuming too much sugar is bad for both our heart health and our waistlines. However, now there is also mounting evidence that sugar, in high levels of consumption, can negatively affect one’s brain health, including cognitive function and psychological well-being.
Sugar is not a source of concern if you just have it in very small quantities. The problem is that most of us tend to eat way too much of it. This sweet stuff which we also call glucose, fructose, dextrose as well as corn syrup is found in about 74% of all the packaged foods in the supermarket.
The fact that food with high sugar content is always readily available is not helping our case. While people just seem to accept the fact that one cannot evade sugar easily, perhaps reading about what it actually does to our brain will help us try harder.
Sugar creates a nasty chain of cravings.
When you eat sweets, sugar activates your tongue’s taste receptors which send signals to the brain. Along the way, they also light up reward “pathways” that then cause a rush of feel-good hormones like dopamine, to then be released. While it may seem pretty harmless to have this reward system activated every once in a while, it becomes problematic when it happens frequently on a daily basis.
When this reward system is over activated, you lose control, you crave more sweets and your tolerance to sugar also increases. Research has also reported that the brains of obese children reflect a heightened food reward response when they taste sugar. What this suggests is that the way their brains respond may predispose them to a life-long craving for sugar.
Too much sugar weakens memory and learning skills.
A study on rats conducted by researchers from UCLA in 2012, found that a diet high in sugar or fructose, actually gets in the way of one’s memory and learning by literally slowing down the brain. Rats that have consumed sugar excessively also had impaired communication among their brain cells.
Sugar may contribute to anxiety and depression.
Sudden highs and lows in blood sugar levels cause you to feel certain symptoms like mood swings, irritability, and fatigue. This is because when you consume sugar by drinking pop for example, it causes your blood sugar level to surge and suddenly plummet. It is when blood sugar crashes that you may feel depressed or anxious.
It is also a risk factor for dementia.
A 2013 study showed that insulin resistance and blood glucose levels are linked with a higher risk for developing Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders. Some researchers even refer to Alzheimer’s as Type 3 Diabetes, showing how your diet has a role in one’s risk for getting this disease.
