In Positive Psychology and the Body, Dr. Kate Heffron tells us:
“Recent research has found evidence that sugar, while not only bad for our waistlines, can have deleterious effects on our brain. Sugar has been found to shrink areas responsible for important functions such as memory and mood regulation, wearing on the hippocampus. Westover and Marangell conducted a cross-national study (Korea, USA, France, Germany, Canada, New Zealand) on the relationship between sugar consumption and incidence of major depression. They found that ‘there was a highly significant correlation between sugar consumption (cal/cap/day) and the annual rate of depression.'”
In an interview with Brian Johnson, Dr. Chris Palmer tells us:
“…when you just consume pure fructose that actually is a mitochondrial, inhibiting agent, some would call it a mitochondrial toxin, I’ll go ahead and use toxin for all of you. It is not good for your mitochondrial health, it impairs mitochondrial health, it causes something called mitochondrial dysfunction, which then makes the cells in which those mitochondria preside malfunction. And if that’s happening in your brain, that means your brain cells are going to start to malfunction. And what does that mean? That means brain fog, cognitive impairment, anxiety attacks for no reason, depression for no reason, and in the extreme version psychosis. So let’s reduce the sugar. It doesn’t have to be a zero sugar diet for the majority of people, because you can get sugar in fruits and vegetables and other things.”
In The Happiness Diet, Tyler Graham and Dr. Drew Ramsey tell us:
“A large study recently published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that eating processed foods, such as refined carbohydrates, sweets, and processed meats, increased the risk of depression by about 60%. Eating a whole-food diet, on the other hand, decreased the risk of the disease by about 26%.”
Sugar, “some would call is a mitochondrial toxin.” Yikes!
Let’s reduce our sugar. Research shows doing so is likely to have positive effects on memory, mood, cognitive function, anxiety, and risk for depression.
