We all have a sweet tooth and the urge for some more desserts after our main course once in a while. Sugary food items such as cookies, cakes, macaroons, or even a bite of chocolate feel like heaven, and a single taste of heaven doesn’t always give us the required satisfaction.
We keep stacked our shelves and jars with candies and refined sugar food products to quench the thirst for something sweet. But have you ever thought about what it is doing to your brain? Most probably not because we tend to believe that only diabetic people or people with high blood sugar should worry about what excessive sugar consumption could do.
The scientific truth and evidence point to a newer discovery saying that sugar can disrupt your cognitive abilities and affect your brain’s reward center. Our brain sure does gain its fuel and energy from the glucose content that reaches our body. Still, excessive sugar consumption thinking that it is ultimately going to break down into glucose and feed as energy for the brain isn’t accurate.
It has been observed in several individuals that a small content of sugar attracts or urges them the consuming more of it. Experts have mentioned and proved that sweet, salty, and fatty foods create an addiction-like feeling in the brain’s reward center, making a person drive over to lose self-control and begin craving and overeating.
Verywell Mind writes that sugar addiction is similar to substance abuse or drug addiction with the same behavioral and neurobiochemical characteristics. It is this reason that causes diabetes or obesity in the majority of the population. Moreover, foods that are high in the amount of glycemic and lead to higher blood glucose levels cause the brain activity to work in eating, hunger, cravings, etc.
So what could go wrong with your brain if you turn into a sugar addict and crave more and more sugary food items making you turn into a patient of hyperglycemia as well as hypertension? Read below in the article some of the ways sugar affects your brain and its functioning.
Sugar Addiction and Your Memory
Sugar addiction, according to many research has claimed could worsen the health as well as the addiction to low-nutrients and sugar-rich food products. More overeating we do modifies our brain’s reward center that pushes us more towards overeating, making the sugar addiction even worse.
Just as a certain amount of drugs are necessary to reach the same level of the reward region, sugar tends to make one adduct even if consumed in smaller amounts regularly. It diminishes the ability to self-control and opts for low-glycemic food products with more amount of nutrition.
Now, when it comes to sugar for the memory, the results and pieces of evidence might not be so good or neutral. Excessive of anything could cause an imbalance in acid, hormones, and other activities inside the system. Similarly, more sugar would redirect elevated glucose levels in the bloodstream, and the inability to breakdown it would not result in energy but hyperglycemic in an individual.
As glucose rise in the bloodstream, it disturbs the efficient functioning of the brain’s cognitive abilities and the ability to remember or concentrate. Over the years, researchers have concluded that high sugar consumption causes inflammation in the brain, responsible for altering the brain’s ability to remember.
But the damage in the brain due to inflammation is not permanent as by lowering sugar consumption; brain damage could be reduced; the damage could be reversed and help improve a person’s memory and cognitive abilities. Moreover, replacing sugar intake with Omega-3 fatty acids or consuming foods that specifically involve curcumin is suitable for memory, such as turmeric.
Sugar Addiction and Effects on Mood
A rise in blood glucose level is associated with a compromised ability to process emotions. Research has also mentioned that people who have type 2 diabetes often tend to feel sad or anxious. The reason behind feeling this is suffering from hyperglycemia which means increased blood sugar.
There has also been a study that showed evidence of the risk of depression more in people who tended to consume more refined sugar items. The study analyzed 23,245 individuals and their dietary consumption. Hence, there are more chances of diagnosing mental disorders if you do not know your sugar consumption limit.
Sugar Addiction and Mental Capacity
Frequent sugar consumption has been associated with higher HbA1c levels, higher levels of hemoglobin in people with more elevated blood sugar or diabetes. It also causes an effect on the brain, making it shrink to several degrees. The shrinking of the brain is mainly due to damage to the blood vessels.
As the brain shrinks due to harm caused to the blood vessels, there begins the occurrence of other problems such as conditions related to eyes in patients of diabetes, impaired ability to learning, memory, or other cognitive functions. People without diabetes could also show impaired cognitive abilities as higher sugar consumption causes insulin resistance, hyperglycemia, or increased cholesterol levels.
When it comes to hindering mental capacity, high sugar consumption also disrupts that chemical in the brain responsible for forming new learning or memory formation. Hence, the conclusive idea is that refined sugar isn’t a perfect choice if you are a sweet tooth; better go for sweet and nutritious foods and won’t cause any harm to your brain.
You could choose to go for natural products that are sweet and sugary rather than eating processed or refined sugar items.
