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How Sugar Affects the Brain

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Great little video showing just how sugar hijacks the reward system of the brain much like any other drug

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picture of warm gooey cookies crunchy Andy's velvety cakes waffle cones piled high with ice cream is your mouth watering are you craving dessert why what happens in rain that makes sugary food so hard to resist sugar is a general term used to describe a class of molecules called carbohydrates and it's found in a y variety of food and drinks just check the labels on sweet products you buy glucose fructose sucrose maltose lactose dextrose and starch are all forms of sugar or high-fructose corn syrup fruit juice raw sugar and honey and sugar isn't just in candies and desserts it's so added to tomato sauce yogurt dried fruit flavored waters are granola bars since sugar is everywhere it's important to understand how it affects the brain what happens when sugar hits your tongue and does eating a little bit of sugar make you crave more you take a bite of cereal the sugar is it contains activate this sweet least receptors part of the taste buds on the tongue these receptors send a signal up to the brainstem and from there at Forks off into many areas of the forebrain what are what is the cerebal cortex different sections of the cerebal cortex process different tastes bitter salty Umami and in our case sweet from here the signal activates the brain's reward system this reward system is a series of electrical and chemical Pathways across several different regions of the brain it's a complicated network but it helps answer a single subconscious question should I do that again that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you taste Grandma's chocolate cake what's your reward system saying yes and it's not just activated by food socializing sexual behavior and drugs for just a few examples of things and experiences that also activate the reward system but over activating this reward system kick-starts A Series of Unfortunate Events loss of control using an increased tolerance to Sugar let's get back to our bite of cereal the travels down into your stomach and eventually into your gut and guess what there sugar receptors here to there not taste buds but they do send signals telling your brain that your full or that your body should produce more insulin to deal with the sugar you're eating the major currency of our reward system is dopamine an important chemical or neurotransmitter there many dopamine receptors in the forebrain but they're not evenly distributed certain areas contain dense clusters of receptors and these dopamine hot spots are a part of our reward system drugs like alcohol nicotine or heroin sends dopamine into overdrive leading some people to constantly seek that high in other words to be addicted sugar also cause dopamine to be released them not as violently as drugs and sugar is rare among dopamine inducing Foods broccoli for example has no effect which probably explains that's why it's so hard to get kids to eat their veggies speaking of healthy foods let's say you're hungry and decide to eat a balanced meal you do and dopamine levels Spike hoverboard system hotspots but if you eat that same dish many days in a row dopamine levels will Spike less and less eventually leveling out that's because when comes to food the brain evolved to pay special attention to new or different tastes why two reasons first to detect food that's gone bad second because the more variety we have in our diet the more likely we are to get all the nutrients we need to keep that variety up we need to be able to recognize a new food can more importantly we need to want to keep eating new foods and that's why the dopamine levels off when a food becomes boring now back to that meal what if in place of the healthy balance dish you eat sugar rich food instead if you rarely eat sugar or don't eat much at a time the effect is similar to that of the balanced meal but if you eat too much the dopamine response does not level out in other words eating lots of sugar will continue to feel rewarding in this way sugar behaves little bit like a drug it's one reason people seem to be hooked on sugary Foods so think back to all those different kinds of sugar each one is unique but every time sugar is consumed it kick starts a domino effect in the brain that Sparks a rewarding feeling too much too often and things can go into overdrive so yes consumption of sugar can have addictive effects on the brain but a wedge of cake once in a while won't hurt you

Uploaded by Randall Fenderson.

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