What happens to Your brain when You stop eating sugar? Bashny.Net

We all love sweet, anyway, and can't give up sweet tea. Let's say you have a friend living in the "chocolate capital of the world", that is, in a city full of sweet and delicious. He also does not mind to eat sweet. But he's a spiritual person and refuses sweets for lent. If you decide to abstain from sweets for the next 40 days, this is what you get.

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Sugar: natural rewardIn neurology food called "natural reward." So we can survive as a species, food, sex and upbringing of children should be pleasant for the brain, so these behaviors are reinforced and repeated.

Evolution has resulted in the mesolimbic pathway, a brain system that deciphers these natural rewards for us. When we do something nice, a bundle of neurons in the ventral region of tyre (an area of the brain is called) uses the neurotransmitter dopamine to transmit a signal to a brain area called the nucleus accumbens (nucleus accumbens).

The connection between adjacent core and our prefrontal cortex controls our motor movements, decides whether to take another piece of delicious chocolate cake. The prefrontal cortex also activates hormones that tell our body: "the Cake is not a lie, it's delicious. I'll remember that for the future for you."

Not all products are equally useful as part of the reward, of course. Most of us prefer sour and bitter foods sweet, because our evolutionary mesolimbic path has strengthened our knowledge that sweet things are a healthy source of carbohydrates for our body. When our ancestors gathered berries, sour meant "not yet ripe" and the bitter "warning — poison!".

But the modern diet turned the system power turned on its head. Ten years ago, a nutritionist calculated that the average American consumes 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day, which amounts to an additional 350 calories.

Since then, the figures likely have increased. A few months ago one of the experts also said that the average Briton consumes 34 teaspoons of sugar a day. You can calculate myself, but I'm from the sugar refused.

Today it is almost impossible to find among processed and prepared foods are those that do not contain sugar, sweet additives, preservatives or all at once.

This added sugar is very insidious and many of us, without our knowledge, hoisted on the hook. Psychoactive substances such as nicotine, cocaine and heroin — avoid the path of reward in the brain and make people dependent, increasing neuro-chemical and behavioral data, and sugar makes people dependent in the same way.

Dependence on sugar

"The first few days were difficult, I'll tell you after my decision to give up sugar. — Feeling like detoxing from drugs. I found that consume a lot of carbohydrates to compensate for the absence of sugar".

Dependence on different sources shows the same external behaviour, and it was well-studied in animals. A typical experiment goes like this: rats are deprived of food for 12 hours a day and then 12 hours are given access to sugar solution and conventional food. After a month of such daily feeding, rats begin to exhibit behavior similar to those who abuse drugs.

They are beginning to turn to sugar solution more often than usual food. Also show signs of anxiety and depression during periods of starvation. A sugar-dependent rats, which was then put on drugs like cocaine and opiates, showed the same addictive behavior towards drugs, compared with rats that were not fed sugar.

Like drugs, sugar triggers the emission of dopamine (or dopamine) in the nucleus accumbens. In the long term, regular sugar consumption modifies the gene expression and availability of dopamine receptors in the midbrain and frontal cortex.

In particular, the sugar increases the concentration of the type of receptor excitation of D1, but decreases another receptor type called D2, which is an inhibitor. Regular consumption of sugar also inhibits, or suppresses the action of the dopamine Transporter.

In short, this means that repeated access to sugar over time leads to prolonged dopamine signal, the greater the excitation of ways to reward the brain and more necessary in the Sahara, which should activate all srednedushevye dopamine receptors like before. The brain becomes tolerant to sugar — it requires more to achieve the same level of "sugar high".

"Withdraw" sugar really

While all of these studies were conducted in rodents, it is possible to assume that such primitive processes occur in the human brain. "Rod did not stop, but was more than psychological, says to abandon your sugar friend. But after the first week it became easier".

In the 2002 study Carlo Colantuoni and his colleagues at Princeton University, rats that have passed through the stage of dependence on sugar, then went through the stage of liberation from him, "removal". This contributed to either a hunger strike, or treatment with naloxone, a drug used for the treatment of opioid dependence.

Both methods output has led to physical problems, including knock teeth, the tremor in his paws and shaking his head. Treatment with naloxone also led to the fact that rats have become more worrying, since they spent less time on the hills.

Similar experiments on the excretion of sugar has also revealed a kind of depression in the tasks in type forced swimming. Rats on stage, excretion of sugar showed a passive behavior (swimming, for example), rather than active (trying to escape) in the water, as if he were helpless.

A new study published by Victor Mangabeira and his colleagues this month in Physiology & Behavior showed that the output of sugar is also associated with impulsive behavior. Initially, rats were trained to obtain water by pressing a lever. After training, rats were returned to cages and were given access to a sugar solution and water or just water.

After 30 days, when rats were again given the opportunity to press the lever for water, those who have become dependent on sugar pressed the lever significantly more time than the other control group.

Of course, this extreme experiments. We, the people, do not deprive ourselves of food for 12 hours, and then not allow ourselves to sit on the sweet water and rolls the rest of the day. But these rodent studies certainly give us insight into the neurochemical bases of addiction from sugar, its output and behavior of mammals.

For decades, nutritionists and health organizations around the world are trumpeting the fact that we are sitting on a diabetes needle and what sugar actually is not very useful for our body. Despite all this, the concept of sugar addiction is still a taboo subject.

If you are in doubt and want to experiment — give up sugar for forty days, and then try something sweet. Restore the relationship. This is the sweet first taste, too sweet to be true.published 

P. S. And remember, only by changing their consumption — together we change the world! ©

Source: glubinnaya.ru/archives/3978