Refined Sugar - Alluring on the Surface, but Nightmarish Underneath

With Halloween just a few weeks away, I feel compelled to write this post to lightly touch on the irony of the question "Trick or Treat?"

It's not exactly news to hear that candy is bad for you. Any annoying health nut, dentist, cardiologist or endocrinologist will tell you candy is bad for you, and many Americans will dismiss these Debbie-downers. It's not like anyone has ever died from one night of candy, they'd argue, and it's a Halloween tradition that kids have loved for decades.

However, far beyond the obvious side effects like weight gain and dental decay, the hidden problem with kids eating copious amounts of candy, refined sugar, processed or "simple" carbohydrates, etc., is the slow, progressive, but very real brain damage. To quickly cite just a few studies:

According to the 2015 study Insulin Resistance in Brain Alters Dopamine Turnover and Causes Behavioral Disorders: "Using mice with brain-specific knockout of insulin receptor, we show that depressive-like behavior and anxiety can be a direct consequence of insulin resistance in the brain. These alterations occur in a progressive, staged process."

The 2015 study, Impact of Adolescent Sucrose Access on Cognitive Control, Recognition Memory and Parvalbumin Immunoreactivity, stated: "Analysis of brains showed a reduction in expression of parvalbumin-immunoreactive GABAergic interneurons in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, indicating that sucrose consumption during adolescence induced long-term pathology, potentially underpinning the cognitive deficits observed. These results suggest that consumption of high levels of sugar-sweetened beverages by adolescents may also impair neurocognitive functions affecting decision-making and memory, potentially rendering them at risk for developing mental health disorders." 

A very enlightening 2019 paper titled The Impact of Sugar Consumption on Stress Driven, Emotional and Addictive Behaviors reports: "It has been estimated that by 2020, 1.5 million people will die each year by suicide, with 15 to 30 million attempting it. Children suffering anxiety disorders are twice as likely to attempt suicide, while those suffering major depressive illnesses show a three fold chance at attempt...If negative emotions are so prevalent in our children, and sugar intake so common, its consumption may be considered a threat to the emotional stability of our race. More importantly, reduction of sugar overconsumption may be capable of significantly reducing the prevalence of negative emotion in a vast number of individuals around the world."

The 2010 study Sugar Overconsumption during Adolescence Selectively Alters Motivation and Reward Function in Adult Rats concluded that: "Sugar overconsumption induces a developmental stage-specific chronic depression in reward processing that may contribute to an increase in the vulnerability to reward-related psychiatric disorders."

Lastly, the 2016 study Adolescent Maturational Transitions in the Prefrontal Cortex and Dopamine Signaling as a Risk Factor for the Development of Obesity and High Fat/High Sugar Diet Induced Cognitive Deficits notes: "Adolescence poses as both a transitional period in neurodevelopment and lifestyle practices. In particular, the developmental trajectory of the prefrontal cortex, a critical region for behavioral control and self-regulation, is enduring, not reaching functional maturity until the early 20's in humans. Furthermore, the neurotransmitter dopamine is particularly abundant during adolescence, tuning the brain to rapidly learn about rewards and regulating aspects of neuroplasticity...The physiological consequence of increasing global consumption of diets laden in fat and sugar are not simply the increasing prevalence of obesity, but also cognitive dysfunction, memory deficits and increased risk of developing psychiatric disorders in a younger population... Thus, addressing the prevalence of high fat and high sugar diets in adolescents is vital, and further research should be undertaken to determine age-related cognitive effects of these diets and tailored intervention strategies."

There's a plethora of additional studies that validate these claims - I advocate anyone reading this to view other publications on this topic. 

I can't really say when it hit me in my research that - for a long time now -  kids have been subjected to something akin to Pleasure Island in the Disney film Pinocchio. Pleasure Island lures innocent children in at their own accord and promises well, pleasure, fun, a good time, but hidden behind the island's closed doors is the Coachman (think of him as insulin resistance), a total creep who secretly seeks out cunning ways to destroy them. 

Today, our human society is incredibly weakened in its health and is at the mercy of many diseases and ailments with insulin resistance at their root. As is with any other destructive addiction, the best way to conquer sugar addiction is to never start.