Imagine hot, gooey cookies, crunchy candies, velvety cakes and ice cream-filled waffle cones. Is your mouth watering? Craving for dessert? Why? What happens in the brain that makes it so hard to resist sugary foods?
Sugar is a general term used to describe a class of molecules called carbohydrates and is found in a wide variety of foods and beverages. Just check the labels on the candy you buy. Glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose, lactose, dextrose and starch are all forms of sugar. Likewise, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, raw sugar and honey. And sugar is not only found in sweets and desserts, it is also added to tomato sauce, yoghurt, dried fruit, flavoured water or muesli. Bars.
Because sugar is everywhere, it's important to understand how it affects the brain. What happens when sugar reaches the tongue? Does a little sugar make you crave it?
You take a cereal. The sugar it contains activates the sweet taste receptors, part of the taste buds on the tongue. These receptors send a signal to the brainstem, and from there it branches out to many areas of the forebrain, one of which is the cerebral cortex. Different sections of the cerebral 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 consists of a series of electrical and chemical pathways through several different regions of the brain.
It's a complicated network, but it helps answer just one subconscious question: should I do this again? That warm, fluffy feeling you get when you try grandma's chocolate cake? That's your reward system that says, "Hmm, yeah!" And it's not just food that activates it. Socializing, sexual behaviour, and drugs are just a few examples of things and experiences that also activate the reward system. But over activating this reward system triggers a series of unfortunate events: loss of control, cravings, and increased tolerance for sugar.
Let's get back to our bite of muesli. It travels down into the stomach and eventually into the intestines. And guess what? There are also sugar receptors here. You don't have taste buds, but they send signals that tell your brain that you're full or that your body needs to produce more insulin to deal with the extra sugar you're eating.
The principal currency of our reward machine is dopamine, a crucial chemical or neurotransmitter. There are many dopamine receptors withinside the forebrain, however, they may be now no longer frivolously distributed. Certain regions comprise dense clusters of receptors, and those dopamine warm spots are part of our praise machine. Drugs like alcohol, nicotine, or heroin ship dopamine into overdrive, leading a few humans to continuously are searching for that high, in different words, to be addicted. Sugar additionally reasons dopamine to be released, even though now no longer as violently as drugs. And sugar is uncommon among dopamine-inducing foods. Broccoli, for example, has no impact, which possibly explains why it is so tough to get children to devour their veggies.
Speaking of wholesome foods, let's consider you are hungry and determined to devour a balanced meal. You do, and dopamine stages spike withinside the praise machine warm spots. But in case you devour that equal dish many days in a row, dopamine stages will spike much less and much less, ultimately levelling out. That's due to the fact with regards to meals, the mind developed to pay unique interest to new or one-of-a-kind tastes. Why? Two reasons: first, to hit upon meals it truly is long gone bad. And second, the greater range we've in our diet, the much more likely we're to get all of the vitamins we want. To hold that range up, we want so that it will apprehend brand new meals, and greater importantly, we want to need to hold consuming new foods. And it truly is why the dopamine stages off while meals will become boring.
Now, again to that meal. What occurs if, in the area of the wholesome, balanced dish, you devour sugar-wealthy meals instead? If you hardly ever devour sugar or do not devour a lot at a time, the impact is just like that of a balanced meal. But in case you devour too a lot, the dopamine reaction does now no longer degree out. In different words, consuming masses of sugar will maintain to experience worthwhile. In this way, sugar behaves a bit like a drug. It's one cause humans appear to be addicted to sugary foods.
So, assume again all the one-of-a-kind varieties of sugar. Each one is unique, however, whenever any sugar is consumed, it kickstarts a domino impact withinside the mind that sparks a worthwhile feeling. Too a lot, too often, and matters can move into overdrive. So, yes, overconsumption of sugar could have addictive consequences on the mind, however, a wedge of cake occasionally will not do any harm to you.
Credit: How Sugar Affects The Brain?
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