Sugar can make you dumb, US scientists warn

http://news.yahoo.com/sugar-dumb-us-scientists-warn-190918006.html

Eating too much sugar can eat away at your brainpower, according to US scientists who published a study Tuesday showing how a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup sapped lab rats' memories.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) fed two groups of rats a solution containing high-fructose corn syrup -- a common ingredient in processed foods -- as drinking water for six weeks.

One group of rats was supplemented with brain-boosting omega-3 fatty acids in the form of flaxseed oil and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), while the other group was not.

Before the sugar drinks began, the rats were enrolled in a five-day training session in a complicated maze. After six weeks on the sweet solution, the rats were then placed back in the maze to see how they fared.

"The DHA-deprived animals were slower, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity," said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

"Their brain cells had trouble signaling each other, disrupting the rats' ability to think clearly and recall the route they'd learned six weeks earlier."

A closer look at the rat brains revealed that those who were not fed DHA supplements had also developed signs of resistance to insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar and regulates brain function.

"Because insulin can penetrate the blood-brain barrier, the hormone may signal neurons to trigger reactions that disrupt learning and cause memory loss," Gomez-Pinilla said.

In other words, eating too much fructose could interfere with insulin's ability to regulate how cells use and store sugar, which is necessary for processing thoughts and emotions.

"Insulin is important in the body for controlling blood sugar, but it may play a different role in the brain, where insulin appears to disturb memory and learning," Gomez-Pinilla said.

"Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new."

High-fructose corn syrup is commonly found in soda, condiments, applesauce, baby food and other processed snacks.

The average American consumes more than 40 pounds (18 kilograms) of high-fructose corn syrup per year, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

While the study did not say what the equivalent might be for a human to consume as much high-fructose corn syrup as the rats did, researchers said it provides some evidence that metabolic syndrome can affect the mind as well as the body.

"Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think," said Gomez-Pinilla.

"Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage."

The study appeared in the Journal of Physiology.

Hidden Sugar In Your Foods

http://articlesunlimited.holisticnetworkexchange.com/hidden-sugar-in-foods.html


By Cassandra Marx


Identifying Hidden Sugar In Your Diet By Cassandra Marx


Sugar is found naturally in many foods including fruit and grains and eaten in these naturally occurring foods is good for us. Unfortunately, the standard American diet has hidden sugar in our foods --- replete with processed, nutrient deficient foods which contain a daily average of twenty teaspoons of additional refined sugar.


Refined sugar is used in most processed foods and is very damaging to human health and compromises the immune system. For example, two cans of soft drink contain twenty four teaspoons of sugar and lower the efficiency of your white blood cells by ninety two percent. Furthermore, this consequence can last up to five hours. Your white blood cells are an important component of your immune system so if you are exposed to a virus or bacteria after you have had a couple of soft drinks, your immune system may not be able to defend you against the intruder.


High sugar intake is also responsible for blood sugar spikes which cause your pancreas and adrenal glands to overwork as they are caught up in an unhealthy cycle trying to stabilize your blood glucose levels. Eventually, the pancreas and adrenals burn out on a high sugar diet leading to Type 2 diabetes, chronic fatigue, hypoglycemia, and early menopause.


Refined sugar is without nutrients, which means that your body needs to take nutrients from its reserves in order to metabolize it. So not only does it not give you life-sustaining nutrition, it robs you of it.


The biggest problem with refined sugar is that it is often hidden sugar in your foods --- found in processed foods under other names and consumers are unaware that they are actually eating as much sugar as they actually are. Unless you are eating a totally natural food diet, avoiding processed foods altogether, you are probably consuming more refined sugars than you realize. Sugar is added to most packaged foods even if they are not sweet. It is actually hard to see how much sugar is in a product by simply reading the ingredient list. This is because there are many names used for refined sugar and a number of different ones can be used in a single product. You therefore need to know the various names of the hidden sugars in processed foods so that you can be an informed consumer.


To make it easier to identify the sugars in packaged food products, here is a list of a hundred alternative names for hidden sugars:

Amasake Apple sugar Barbados sugar Bark sugar Barley malt Barley malt syrup Beet sugar Brown rice syrup Brown sugar Cane juice Cane sugar Caramelized foods Carbitol Carmel coloring Carmel sugars Concentrated fruit juice Corn sweetener Corn syrup Date sugar Dextrin Dextrose Diglycerides Disaccharides D-tagalose Evaporated cane juice Evaporated cane juice Florida crystals Fructooligosaccharides (FOS) Fructose Fruit juice concentrate Galactose Glucitol Glucoamine Gluconolactone Glucose Glucose polymers Glucose syrup Glycerides Glycerine Glycerol Glycol Hexitol High-fructose corn syrup Honey Inversol Invert sugar Isomalt Karo syrups Lactose Levulose "Light" sugar "Lite" sugar Malitol Malt dextrin Malted barley Maltodextrins Maltodextrose Maltose Malts Mannitol Mannose Maple syrup Microcrystalline cellulose Molasses Monoglycerides Monosaccarides Nectars Neotame Pentose Polydextrose Polyglycerides Powdered sugar Raisin juice Raisin syrup Raw sugar Ribose rice syrup Rice malt Rice sugar Rice sweeteners Rice syrup solids Saccharides Sorbitol Sorghum Sucanat Sucanet Sucrose Sugar cane Trisaccharides Turbinado sugar Unrefined sugar White sugar Xylitol Zylose

Most of us like some sweet things. The best alternatives to sugar and high fructose corn syrup can be found in natural, whole fruits. If you need something sweet added to tea or to cook with, you might consider a little honey or if you can get hold of it, Stevia is a very sweet natural herb that you need very little of to gain a sweet benefit. Avoid artificial sweeteners entirely. They are not safe. Aspartame (NutraSweet) should be particularly avoided as it is a neurotoxin and poses a grave health risk to human beings.


Ideally, we need to overhaul our diets completely and totally avoid refined sugars and eliminate hidden sugar in our foods. We need to go back to the way people ate before the industrial revolution and the advent of food processing technologies. If we do this, we will protect ourselves from the modern plagues of diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.


About The Author


Cassandra Marx is a nutrition journalist who has written on the topics of health, nutrition and diet.