Study: Sugar Is “As Bad As Taking Drugs”

By now, we’re all aware that as far as your body is concerned, sugar is public enemy number one. Fat content is no longer the only thing to be mindful of, and a high intake of the tiny crystals?are linked to a variety of health concerns such?developing diabetes to increasing your stress and anxiety levels. Experts the world over are highlighting?merits of cutting down on or even cutting it out altogether and a new study may convince you to leave the sweet stuff alone once and for all.

Startling new research has found eating sugar is similar to taking various drugs. A team at the Queensland University of Technology set out to examine the effect sugar consumption has on our brains. They not only found that our behaviour changes quite drastically upon consumption?but also that eating sugar can be linked to drug abuse because they both alter the layout of our brain cells in?a similar way.

?Basically brain cells communicate with each other and other parts of the body and if there’s a change in the structure and layout, it’s going to change that communication, impacting behavior,? Shariff told The New York Post.

Neuroscientist Professor Selena Bartlett explained that when we have sugar, our brain releases dopamine. This is associated with feelings of pleasure and hence we become attached to what we’ve just taken. The same happens when drugs are consumed.

“After long-term drug abuse or sugar consumption, the dopamine levels drop, which leads to higher consumption of a substance because you are trying to get that pleasurable feeling back, so if you’re a sugar addict, and you decide to quit, you’ll have withdrawal in the same way drug addicts can,” Bartlett said. “This really put the spotlight on the fact we need to re-evaluate our sugar intake.?

So, bar that initial satisfying hit in our lunchtime tea or coffee, sugar really is doing us little good.

Via The New York Post