A Halloween Redux: Refined Sugar: Alluring on the Surface, but Nightmarish Underneath

I already did a post about this topic three years ago (which is pretty crazy, it doesn't feel that long ago) titled Refined Sugar - Alluring on the Surface, but Nightmarish Underneath. I suppose just simply based on the global unprecedented diabetes epidemic we are fast approaching, I can't pretend it doesn't bother me that Halloween, a tradition celebrated without neurotoxins for children for centuries, has only in the last 40-50 years somehow been hijacked by candy companies. Halloween candy sales are projected to reach $3.6 billion dollars this year, up 16% from last year. I don't want to be redundant, but the continual information regarding adolescent brain deterioration and sugar consumption being put forth from research establishments requires immediate, universal consideration and urgent, radical change. I could make this whole blog about this subject and it's something I think about quite a lot. I wonder: Are we giving children the opportunity to be content, clear-thinking, non-diabetic, healthy adults with the high sugar diets so many are consuming and subsequently addicted to? Are we giving them the opportunity to have an immune system?  

Have we fallen under a spell that compels us to completely acquiesce to our demise? More disturbing is the successive mainstream advocacy, however blind, for that demise that we see in our present times. I have never once in my life said to an adult feeding a child junk food, which of course I've witnessed countless times, "Excuse me, hi, I'm Lindsey... so there's a lot of reasons why I really don't think you should be feeding them that." Because I'm guessing I'd be seen as a super militant Karen looking for some deep purple bruises if I did. Just to illustrate my point. Although I know I am no enemy, I will never blurt anything like that out or tell anyone what to do, because that's not my modus operandi. I have been through my own long, arduous, life-robbing process and have emerged out of what There is a Cure for Diabetes calls "the culture of death." In all of my idealistic dreams, I hope people find me on here on their own accord because no one should experience the suffering, the precious time wasted. I found Eckhart Tolle before my diagnosis when I was in an incredibly bad place. I was terrified and my life was falling apart. He didn't knock on my door, I found him in a desperate search for help. I so direly needed someone to essentially say Ok, until you realize it was critical for you to get your blood sugar checked yesterday (which unfortunately you won't dear until you are almost dead), we will get through this together. And that was him for me.

I thought today we could explore some data that has only been published in 2022 & 2023, just again to avoid a repeat of the previous post from three years ago.

The 2022 study Long-Lasting Impact of Sugar Intake on Neurotrophins and Neurotransmitters from Adolescence to Young Adulthood in Rat Frontal Cortex states: "Although adolescents are among the highest consumers of sweet foods, whether brain alterations induced by sugar intake during this age persist until young adulthood or are rescued returning to a healthy diet remains largely unexplored...We observed that fructose intake induces inflammation and oxidative stress, alteration of mitochondrial function, and changes of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and neurotrophin receptors, synaptic proteins, acetylcholine, dopamine, and glutamate levels, as well as increased formation of the glycation end-products CML and CEL. Importantly, many of these alterations (BDNF, CML, CEL, acetylcholinesterase activity, dysregulation of neurotransmitter levels) persisted after switching to the control diet, thus pointing out adolescence as a critical phase in which extreme attention should be devoted to limit an excessive consumption of sweet foods that can affect brain physiology also in the long term."

The 2023 study Outrunning a bad diet: Interactions between exercise and a Western-style diet for adolescent mental health, metabolism, and microbes states: "Adolescence is a period of biological, psychological and social changes, and the peak time for the emergence of mental health problems. During this life stage, brain plasticity including hippocampal neurogenesis is increased, which is crucial for cognitive functions and regulation of emotional responses. The hippocampus is especially susceptible to environmental and lifestyle influences, mediated by changes in physiological systems, resulting in enhanced brain plasticity but also an elevated risk for developing mental health problems." The study concluded: "Western-style diets have deleterious effects on stress susceptibility, metabolism and the gut microbiota, leading to adverse mental health outcomes such as depressive/anxiety-like and poor stress-coping behaviors. At the same time, there is reasonable indication from preclinical research that exercise interventions partially restore peripheral homeostasis."

The 2022 study Feeding the Brain: Effect of Nutrients on Cognition, Synaptic Function, and AMPA Receptors states: "In recent decades, traditional eating habits have been replaced by a more globalized diet, rich in saturated fatty acids and simple sugars. Extensive evidence shows that these dietary factors contribute to cognitive health impairment as well as increase the incidence of metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes...We observe that memory and learning deficits mediated by high-fat/high-sugar diets, even over short exposure times, are associated with reduced arborization, widened synaptic cleft, narrowed post-synaptic zone, and decreased activity-dependent synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus, and also observe that these alterations correlate with deregulation of the AMPA-type glutamate ionotropic receptors that are crucial to neuroplasticity."

The 2023 study Real-World Intake of Dietary Sugars is Associated with Reduced Cortisol Reactivity Following an Acute Physiological Stressor found: "There is an increasing academic and clinical interest in understanding the nature of the relation between diet and response to stress exposure as a risk factor for mental illness...As the consumption of sugar rose, individuals had lower post-stressor cortisol levels, a smaller rate of increase in cortisol 20 and 35 mins after the Cold Pressor Test, a lower cortisol peak, and an overall weker quadratic effect. These observations add to a growing body of evidence reporting suppressive effects of high-energy foods on stress-associated glucocorticoids reactivity and are consistent with the comfort food hypothesis, where people are seen as motivated to eat palatable foods to alleviate the detrimental repercussions of stressor exposure."

The 2022 paper A High-Sugar Diet Consumption, Metabolism and Health Impacts with a Focus on the Development of Substance Use Disorder: A Narrative Review concluded: "This paper has emphasized the latest data showing that high-sugar diets, added sugar, and sugar components are some predictive factors in changing behavior. Epidemiological studies have shown that sugar intake is too high in industrialized countries. An increasing number of adults and children consume added sugar, sugar-sweetened beverages, high-fructose corn syrup and refined sugar. Preclinical studies have pointed out that a maternal high sugar diet during pregnancy and lactation is strongly correlated with offspring's metabolic and mental disorder development (mood disorders and compulsive or impulsive dysfunction). High sugar diets and sugar can be addictive and predispose an individual to the risk of food addiction. Recent limited animal studies have demonstrated that perinatal or postnatal chronic exposure to high-sugar diet or sugar (glucose and/or fructose solutions) changed the sensitivity to drugs of abuse in addiction-like behavior models...Sugar overconsumption can also affect mood, causing compulsivity and impulsivity repetitive behaviors, which are substance use disorder predictors...Based on the data, it is strongly recommended to limit sugar consumption in an individual's everyday diet, especially for children and pregnant women."

The 2022 study Adolescent high-fructose corn syrup consumption leads to dysfunction in adult affective behaviors and mesolimbic proteins in male Sprague-Dawley rats found: "Adolescence is known to be a key period of neural maturation wherein the brain undergoes significant synaptic alterations that persist into adulthood...Adolescent brain development is centralized in regions involved in higher-order processing, such as the medial prefrontal cortex and the mesolimbic dopamine system...The consumption of added sugars, such as high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a sweetener frequently found in beverages, has escalated over recent years, While adolescents are top consumers of HFCS, research examining the impact of excessive HFCS consumption on cognition and behavior during critical development periods is in its infancy." The researchers concluded: "Molecularly, protracted decreases in accumbal dopamine D1 and D2 receptors and protein kinase G, as well as increases in tyrosine hydroxylase and GluA2 receptor subunits, were observed following HFCS exposure. Taken together, these data suggest that adolescent HFCS-consumption leads to protracted dysfunction in affective behaviors and alterations in accumbal proteins which persist following cessation of HFCS-consumption."

The 2022 study Short-term exposure to an obesogenic diet during adolescence elicits anxiety-related behavior and neuroinflammation: modulatory effects of exogenous neureglin-1 states: "Childhood obesity leads to hippocampal atrophy and altered cognition...Western diet rats exhibited reduced right hippocampal volume, altered microglia morphology and increased levels of cytokines implicated in neuroinflammation...We identified a potential novel interaction between obesogenic diet exposure and TACE/ADAM17-NRG1-ErbB4 signaling during hippocampal maturation. Our results indicate that supraoptimal ErbB4 activities may contribute to the abnormal hippocampal structure and cognitive vulnerabilities observed in obese individuals."

The 2023 study Western diet consumption impairs memory function via dysregulated hippocampus acetylcholine signaling found: "Western diet consumption during development yields long-lasting memory impairments, yet the underlying neurobiological mechanisms remain elusive...Results revealed dynamic hippocampus and acetylcholine binding during object-contextual novelty recognition was highly predictive of memory performance and was disrupted in high-fat/high-sugar diets versus healthy diet. Further, hippocampus alpha-7 nicotinic receptor agonist infusion during consolidation rescued memory deficits in high-fat/high-sugar diet rats. Overall, these findings identify dysregulated hippocampus and acetylcholine signaling as a mechanism underlying early life western-diet-associated memory impairments."

I'm going to call it a night after this one. The 2023 study Early life high fructose exposure disrupts microglia function and impedes neurodevelopment states: "Despite the success of fructose as a low-cost food additive, recent epidemiological evidence suggests that high fructose consumption by pregnant mothers or during adolescence is associated with disrupted neurodevelopment. An essential step in appropriate mammalian neurodevelopment is the synaptic pruning and elimination of newly-formed neurons by microglia, the central nervous system's resident professional phagocyte...Offspring fed high fructose diet and neonates exposed to high fructose exhibit decreased microglial density, increased uncleared apoptotic cells, and decreased synaptic pruning in vivo. Importantly, deletion of the high affinity fructose transporter SLC2A5 (GLUT5) in neonates completely reversed microglia dysfunction, suggesting that high fructose directly affects neonatal development...Mice exposed to high fructose as neonates exhibited cognitive defects and developed anxiety-like behavior which were rescued in GLUT5-deficient animals. Our findings provide a mechanistic explanation for the epidemiological observation that early life high fructose exposure is associated with increased prevalence of adolescent anxiety disorders."

The human destruction that is observed in the studies I put on this blog I liken to fragments of a puzzle I have been frantically trying to put together for myself, like tentacles of a monster I have been fighting for so long. To fully defeat it in all its dark, shrouded, extensive forms feels at times like it would take the might and determination of Eleven in Stranger Things closing the gate to the Upside Down.