The rush and 'high' that many people experience after indulging in a sweet treat is not just a harmless increase in energy. No, in fact the rush that people get is actually due to the reward-inducing properties that sugar has upon us. According to Princeton psychology professor Bart Hoebel, Ph.D., "Sugar stimulates to activate the same pathways that are stimulated directly by drugs such as heroin or morphine". What sugar does is it increases the extracellular dopamine (DA) in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) parts of our brains. Experiments done by Princeton psychologist show that continued intake of excess amounts of sugar leads to changed expression in DA receptors: i.e. its effects are analogous to the effects that alcohol consumers experience over a long period of time drinking; their bodies adapt so that it becomes necessary to drink more to feel the same effects.
YIKES!! Theses reports are scary to say the least! Sugar is virtually unregulated in the amounts that it can be added into foods, available to all ages and seems to be added in nearly all foods, and in other words unavoidable. It seems like we are all hopelessly destined to battle a sugar addiction. To conquer this addiction, detoxing the body of all added sugar (naturally occurring ones in fruits and veggies are OK) is necessary. It takes 4-7 days to detox the body and doing so will make for a rough first 3 or so days. But the effects of the detox can result in decreased food intake, decreased food craving and actually heightened energy!
Unregulated and Uncontrolled: Our Addiction to Sugar
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I really enjoyed the video on here!
I'm curious after learning about the rat and sugar water experiment. My first thought was that they probably enjoyed the water because it was sweet and different (where does sheer taste come into play?), but when the researcher said that they started drinking more and more without touching their actual food I couldn't help but wonder- does sugar create a sense of being full?
This really grabbed my attention. No one really considers sugar to be a drug and here we are eating it day in and day out in unregulated amounts. I'm curious as to what would make the first three days so tough? Would I go through a small version of withdrawals? Would I be craving to eat something sugary? I'm just curious. I really enjoyed the article, though. I think it would be interesting to see what happens to our societies obesity problem if the government started regulated sugar consumption.
This was a really interesting blog. It's hard to believe that sugar acts like a drug in our system. I'm curious what it would be like if the government decided to regulate the sugar in our country. I wonder what would happen to the obesity problem in this nation. It would probably also get a lot of ridicule in the political realm considering the immense amount of regulation it would create. What type of side effects would happen if one were to go on the sugar free diet? Would they go through withdrawals? Would they start craving sugar? I'm curious to see what would happen. Otherwise, great entry.
I was amazed to hear all the effects sugar has on our bodies. I just thought for the longest time it was just we got a sugar rush and was hyper for a while. Also sugar tastes good and sweet. But I didn't know it released dopamine which is analogous to heroin and morphine. It really is a drug that is unregulated and anyone can buy. It's not a stretch to see why we have such a high rate of diabetes and other related problems. We binge on sugar and we have since we were little. Speaking from personal experience I know I need a pop during class sometimes to keep me awake and going, or a dessert after dinner that adds a sweet touch to the meal. I wonder if it is possible for the average person to get off the sugar habit and have a minimal intake of it? Could we as college kids be able to do it when we either have little money to spend on healthy food or the dining hall does not offer enough of such healthy food.
It is very interesting to me that sugar in some aspects can have the same overall effect on us as Alcohol! We need more sugar overtime to feel the "sugar high" that we get. It is also scary that we are often unaware about how much sugar is in the foods that we eat daily.
I feel like sugar has too strong of a hold on our society for people to ever really accept these findings and institute "sugar detox" as a regular practice, especially if the detox was expensive.
Another alcohol reference that can be made here is that alcohol has such a strong place in the social lives of people that its negative effects are often glazed over unless something really bad happens. Despite studies like these that clearly indicate very negative (drug-like) effects, I highly doubt people will reduce their sugar intake for a very long time.
Wow. I always knew caffeine had the potential to be addicting to constant users, but I had no idea it had so many negative repercussions. It appears I was just as naive as others in thinking that sugar simply increases the levels of dopamine in our bodies, as you mentioned in your post. I had no idea that rats and humans became addicted to the "sugar-rush" as quickly as they did. The video was very eye-opening in seeing how rats drink an increasingly high amount of sugar water after even one encounter with the sweet drink. Also, I found it very interesting how rats and humans pay less attention to their food while accompanied by a sweet drink!
Ha! That's an awesome picture, and a great post too.
I found this post to be very interesting, as well as the comments that followed. The most interesting idea I got out of the blog and video was that our diets heavily revolve around sugar. One of the only ways to get around this is to severely watch what you eat or detox your body once in a while. I liked the comment that seube020 made on the fact that this could potentially be a problem for college kids my age. We don't have a lot of resources to healthy foods and we also are in the age that is very common for eating disorders to arise. My question to ask is what is the best way to go about getting the appropriate, necessary sugars that our bodies need without possibly getting addicted, but also not falling into an eating disorder path?
This is a very interesting post because so many people eat foods with an excess amount of sugar in them. One thing that I am wondering that you did not mention in the post was whether or not your body requires a certain amount of sugar in it?