How Sugar Affects The Brain

Sugar is sucrose that is extracted from sugar beets and sugarcane. Sucrose, or table sugar, is the most common added sugar, and is found in the form of high fructose corn syrup. Americans consume up to 60 pounds of sugar in one year, that is 76.7 grams of sugar per day, which equals 19 teaspoons or 306 calories! This number is much larger for people that eat more processed foods or drink soda beverages on a regular basis. No sugar is healthy, but an average amount of sugar for men, should be around 150 calories per day, and women should have around 100 calories per day. This is said on the website, Authority Nutrition, that Americans are eating too much sugar and should be more cautious. Sugar causes inflammation in the brain, which ultimately
To begin, Nagina Abdullah, a Life Hack author, writes an article, 5 Ways Sugar Affects Your Mental Performance, on how sugar affects a person’s mood, focus and learning and memory. Sugar is known to be linked to binge eating and dopamine spikes. Dopamine is a reward chemical in the brain. These lead to emotional crashes, and during these crashes, a person starts to crave sugar. Withdrawal symptoms then result when sugar isn’t given to the body. This eventually leads to short tempers, lower patience and depressed thoughts. Along with mood changes, some people find it difficult to focus at times. When eating sugary treats or food that contains sugar, it causes the brain to light up. The dopamine in your brain makes a person want to crave more and more. When the brain is concentrated on getting sugar, you cannot focus (Abdullah 1-2). Sugar causes loss of focus because is causes withdrawal, making a person lose concentration. Furthermore, studies have shown that sugar affect a person's memory and learning ability. David Sack, a Psychology Today author of 4 Ways Sugar Could be Harming Your Mental Health, writes about a rat study, that was conducted in the University of California, in Los Angeles. Since rats immune systems closely resemble humans, people test many questions on rats. The study shows how rats react to a high sugar diet for 6 weeks, showing that the
To start, Dr. Mercola’s article, The Links Between Sugar and Mental Health, on Mercola Articles, talks about how hypoglycemia affects the physiological part in your body. Hypoglycemia is the falling of blood sugar levels. When a person has a diet that consumes large amounts of sugar, extra amount of insulin is released. Insulin is a hormone that breaks down sugar, and when too much is released, it leads to hypoglycemia. This causes your brain to create secrete glutamate in such levels, causing agitation or even depression. Sugar also triggers chemical reactions that promote chronic inflammation. If inflammation is a long term thing, it starts to disrupt normal function of the immune system and weakens your brain. These are also linked to depression or schizophrenia (Mercola 1-3). Hypoglycemia is something that can disrupt and/or contribute to the psychological disorders among people, specifically Americans, as they have high sugar and fat diets. To continue on, Brian Clement’s youtube video, Effects of Sugar on Psychological Disorders, explains what sugar also does to the body. Glycation with any type of sugar join together with extra proteins, this creates free radicals, which causes disease and premature ageing. Glycation is the bonding of sugar molecule to a protein. Any type of sugar includes agave syrup, maple syrup and xylitol, these also affect the body despite most