There has been much discussion over how sugar affects the minds of young people, around the world. Sugar has been banned in schools such as in places like California and New York. Is sugar actually causing children to be hyperactive and failing grades? Or is sugar improving their attention span and their IQ? When we eat healthy we feel better. We also think and perform better. There are five ways sugar can affect your mental performance and sometimes test performance. it can affect your focus, mood, memory, it can also affect your emotional mental balance, and last it can affect your stress. Eating sugar can lower your IQ. Interesting research shows that your brain responds to your diet as well as your lifestyle choices. Too much sugar is …show more content…
Eating too much sugar can cause our brains to feel foggy or out of it. This is because eating too much sugar forms free radicals in the brain’s membrane. This makes up our nerve cells and give us the ability to communicate, according to a recent UCLA study. Sugar can affect our ability to focus because it has addictive qualities. For example when we taste sugar it triggers something in our brain called Dopamine. Dopamine makes you crave certain things like, sugar, or alcohol.When you are fighting your craving over something your thought process gets interrupted and it’s hard for you to be focused. This “reward chemical” does not help you …show more content…
German researchers discovered that the higher a person's blood sugar is, it can be harder, for that person to be on task, and it also affects your learning abilities. Higher levels of long- term blood glucose markers, were also attached with a smaller hippocampus. A hippocampus is an area in your brain that plays a big part on memory. High blood sugar levels can harm small and large vessels in the brain, guiding to reduce blood, and nutrient flow to the brain cells. Elevated blood sugar may also interrupt the gesture, between, and within the cells of your hippocampus. The most desperate memory issues are related to long-term markers of elevated blood
According to the article, Too Much Can Make Us Sick (http://www.sugarscience.org/too-much-can-make-us-sick/), “Heart disease. Diabetes. These chronic conditions are among the leading causes of death worldwide. Increasingly, scientists are focusing on a common set of underlying metabolic issues that raise people's risk for chronic disease. It turns out that the long-term overconsumption of added sugars is linked to many of these dysfunctions.” This means that people living today, have a lot more trouble with diseases because of our unhealthy sugar intake compared to the
Jon Gabriel explains how sugar has become an addictive drug like nicotine, the only difference is that its legal. Once we become hooked on it we become habituated to its effects and need more and more to satisfy ourselves. As a result of the increase in marketing and the on going dependence on sugary foods and beverages, children are taking in more and more sugar and obtaining less and less nutrients. According to Gentry Lasater,
The pathophysiology of diabetes mellitus in is related to the insulin hormone. Insulin is secreted by cells in the pancreas and is responsible for regulating the level of glucose in the bloodstream. It also aids the body in breaking down the glucose to be used as energy. When someone suffers from diabetes, however, the body does not break down the glucose in the blood as a result of abnormal insulin metabolism. When there are elevated levels of glucose in the blood, it is known as hyperglycemia. If the levels continue to remain high over an extended period of time, damage can be done to the kidneys, cardiovascular systems; you can get eye disorders, or even cause nerve damage. When the glucose levels are low in one’s body, it is called hypoglycemia. A person begins to feel very jittery, and possibly dizzy. If that occurs over a period of time, the person can possibly faint. Diabetes mellitus occurs in three different forms - type 1, type 2, and gestational.
Sugar is an important part of history in many ways. Sugar brought a lot of change to the world. The power of sugar molded the history and put many different nations on the map, which includes the Caribbean, South America, and the southern parts of the United States. Sugar Fueled the slave trade, brought sweetness to an era of sour, and brought different groups of people together.
“there’s a fundamental difference between the sugar that you find in fruits & vegetables and the sugar that you find in a large Mountain Dew. The sugar in a lot of these carbonated drinks is highly concentrated simple sugar, the kind that will spike your blood glucose levels, reduce your insulin response over time (leading to Type 2 diabetes) and almost immediately get stored in your body as fat.” There is a difference between sugar from nature and sugar that is processed. Sugar that is processed is highly concentrated because of this it tends to increase your blood glucose levels higher than natural sugar. With high
Anything that is used to replace regular sugar, or sucrose, can be considered an artificial sweetener or sugar. Americans are increasingly using artificial sugar. “Fake sugar” is toxic, not just to the body, but to the metabolism as well. Artificial sweeteners were designed to be sugar substitutes as a less fattening alternative because seventy five percent of the population is overweight in United States. These are in the brand names that most people recognize such as Splenda, Sweet One, Equal, Sweet 'N Low, and many more. These artificial sweeteners are all synthetically made in labs and can legally be labeled as 'natural' because it appears somewhere on the Earth, despite it being made in a lab. The reason people use artificial sweeteners in their food is because these products do not add calories to the food. Dieters and people who are aggressively trying to lose weight see this as a golden opportunity to eat something that is just as sweet, but does not contain the calories. Likewise, artificial sweeteners do not need to be used in huge quantities to sweeten something. In fact, it takes much less than regular sugar to sweeten the same product. Perhaps this seems way too good to be true. This would then lead us to investigate the following question: How do artificial sugars affect our body?
In 2004, at the age of 49, my uncle was diagnosed with Type-2 diabetes, or late onset diabetes. He had been an unhealthy eater much of his life. At the time of his diagnosis, he weighed two-hundred forty-seven pounds. That may not sound like a lot, but at five-foot two-inches tall, he was ninety pounds heavier than average male of his height should be. Although, possible in the future, he was spared from daily injections of insulin. However, his battle with a new enemy was only beginning. In lecturing him on better eating habits, his doctor indirectly blamed sugary foods such as soda for his weight and overall health. Not knowing any better, my uncle took what he was told as grave warning. For the first time, he was forced to change what he eats. His life-long relationship with fast food and casino buffets were over, and in their place came a new and healthier diet. He is not alone, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there are over twenty-six million people living with diabetes, seven million of that the CDC believes are undiagnosed cases. For my uncle’s age group, 40-49, the percentage of people with diabetes increased by fifty-five percent between 1990 and 1999. Furthermore, there were over one-million new cases of diagnosed cases for his age group, in 2010. (National Database 1-12). Does eliminating sugar intake and eating fresh foods equate to better health?
Over the last 50 years, sugar has become a staple in the American diet and can be found virtually anywhere. In fact, it is often hiding where you would least expect it. Sugar is no longer found only in sweet treats, but in many of the basic meals we eat on a daily basis. In saying this, it isn’t surprising that many adults and children are consuming more sugar than our bodies can process. Growing up in a very health conscious family, the notion that sugar is addictive and unhealthy has always been stressed in my household. While some kids would flaunt their candy bar at lunch, I was left eating an apple. At a young age, I was resentful of the lack of sugar in our cabinets. However, as I’ve grown older I have realized that my parents did me
Sugar is not only a sweet substance used in coffee, cookies, and many other sweet tasting foods we love to eat and enjoy. It is truly a good that changed the world in many ways all the way back to its roots. In more than one way sugar is a useful and profitable tool, originating all the way back to the early middle middle ages. The sugar trade impacted the the Earth both socially and politically with the use of slaves brought to the Americas by the middle passage and other places. Economically, especially when prices dropped due to new technological improvements and slave abolishment all over the world. Lastly, the sugar trade impacted the world culturally, by leading
...in sources of energy. When cells cannot absorb sugar, you can become fatigued or feel exhausted” (Healhline), complain of blurred vision” In the short term, high glucose levels can cause a swelling of the lens in the eye. This leads to blurry vision. Getting your blood sugar under control can help correct vision problems. If blood sugar levels remain high for a long time, other eye problems can occur” (HealthLine), experience nocturia “Elevated glucose levels force fluids from your cells. This increases the amount of fluid delivered to the kidneys. This makes you need to urinate more. It may also eventually make you dehydrated” (Healthline), and have sores and cuts that will not heal “Elevated glucose levels may make it harder for your body to heal. Therefore, injuries like cuts and sores stay open longer. This makes them more susceptible to infection” (HealthLine).
The elevated blood glucose levels can lead to long-term complications, especially, in the eyes, kidneys, nerves, heart, and blood vessels.
The vending machines which have mostly sodas and chips are also convenient for kids, but they are consuming tremendous amount of sugars that are so unhealthy for their diets. In high schools, their hormones are changing and when they eat or drink foods that are not healthy, their hormones respond to those, by making them hyper, unable to learn and to comprehend subjects better in schools.
For years doctors have been saying that refined sugars are empty calories and consist of absolutely no vitamins or minerals that people need to survive. Dentists warn that sugary foods encourage tooth decay. Many people avoid sweet food because it can lead to obesity, heart problems, diabetes and cancer. These negative responses by people’s bodies are actually warnings. Maybe people eat sugar for other reasons than the sweet taste. The human body's negative responses to sugar may be a similar purpose to the reason kids feel pain when they are playing too roughly. People’s consumption of sweet foods might also serve as a sign of defiance against their bodies’ health limitations. What many people do not realize is that their tasty treats can affect their mind and emotions.
There is a study where rats were given various amounts of sugar sweetened beverages, and then tested their cognitive ability. The results were found that there was cognitive dysfunction along with addictive behaviours. Some of the cognitive dysfunctions included the lack of spatial learning as well as memory loss (Kendig 2014). This is one of many different studies done on how sugar levels affect our behaviour. This study was inspired by the change in behaviour of children who consume large amount of sugars. Even though it was only rats that were tested, it can be hypothesised that similar results will be found in humans (Kendig, 2014). The consumption of sugar filled food is maladaptive for the purpose that there is a loss of cognitive ability. It also creates a downward spiral since the sugar consumption becomes addictive, and there for the cognitive function can never be restored to normal without the withdrawal of the sugar. Dirt however has no addictive properties, and can act as a supplement for vitamins and minerals (Callahan, 2003). In fact pregnant woman often use it to sooth upset stomach, and receive supplements such as calcium, which is important during the third trimester when the fetus’s bones are beginning to
Sugar, like many other tradeable goods, was circulated through a variety of regions for over a thousand years. As trade and transportation created opportunities for more interactions between locations, sugar was introduced to places that it had been previously unknown. In the sixteenth century, Europe, specifically England, took a large interest in sugar, first serving as a luxury for the elite class but eventually evolving into a good available to all social classes. The high demand for sugar led to the expansion of sugar production, an increase in African slavery, and implemented a significant system of trade.