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Thursday 27 June 2019

The truth about sugar addiction

[Mercola]: When you eat sugary foods, the reward center of your brain, known as the nucleus accumbens, is stimulated through increased signals of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a role in your perception of pleasure.

Because eating sugar makes you feel good, you're likely to eat it often. As you consume excessive amounts of sugar on a regular basis, your body's dopamine signals become weaker and you develop tolerance, so you have to eat more sugar to get the same level of reward, eventually resulting in sugar addiction.

This is why manufacturers use sugar to drive your behaviour.

There have been many studies regarding the addictive potential of sugar. For instance, a 2018 review published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine states that "sugar has been found to produce more symptoms than is required to be considered an addictive substance."

It exhibits drug-like effects such as bingeing, craving, tolerance, withdrawal, cross-sensitization, cross-tolerance and cross-dependence. Another study published in the journal Neuroscience states that intermittent bingeing on sucrose and abusing drugs can both increase extracellular dopamine in the nucleus accumbens...read more>>>...