Sugar, The New Tobacco

Sunday, May 20, 2012

The year was 1944.  World War II was raging and Franklin D. Roosevelt was president.  The average price of a new automobile was $1200 and over 200,000 automobiles were registered in the United States.  An average family income was $2600 per year with a minimum wage of 30¢ per hour.  The price of a loaf of bread was 10¢ as was the cost of a package of cigarettes.  300 billion cigarettes were produced that year. 

If you were to ask the average American in 1944, if cigarette smoking caused lung cancer, the answer would have been a definitive no!  It wasn’t until 1952 that the American Cancer Society declared a link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.  In 1965 Congress made it mandatory for cigarette manufacturers to include a warning label on every package of cigarettes sold in the United States.

I can still remember the disbelief, resistance and anger from both the general public and the scientific community in regard to this health hazard declaration.  In the end, the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer was undeniable and since that time, study after study has confirmed this.

I find it most interesting to remember that there has always been a connection between tobacco use and cancer.  Even in the absence of public acceptance and a lack of proof through scientific research, tobacco and cancer have always gone hand in hand.

Sugar Blues is a book by William Dufty that was released in 1975 declaring that sugar was an addictive substance that was harmful to the human body.  People scoffed, the author was called all sorts of names, industry rose up to laugh at the concept and people in the United States and around the world continued to consume refined sugar at alarming rates.  I, personally, have been on the anti-refined sugar bandwagon for over 30 years.  I too have been called everything from a quack to a fanatic as a result of my “radical” and unpopular position.  But if the truth be known, tobacco is to cancer as refined sugar is to ill health.  

More and more people are now beginning to believe that this deadly connection does indeed exist, especially in light of the current scientific research on the matter.  I have included information on one of the latest studies linking sugar consumption to low intelligence.  However, I would like to bring up the point that inquiring minds have always understood this connection.  And while it is comforting to have scientific evidence of these nutritional facts, refined sugar has always been harmful to the human body.

I hope you enjoy the following study and share it freely with your loved ones.  And remember, science is the observer of truth, not the determiner of it.

More information about refined sugar and similar non foods is available on my website www.AskDrRon.com  

Blessings,

Dr. Ron Cherubino

Can Sugar Make You Stupid? A new UCLA study is the first to show how a diet steadily high in fructose slows the brain, hampering memory and learning — and how omega-3 fatty acids can counteract the disruption. The peer-reviewed Journal of Physiology publishes the findings in its May 15 edition.

“Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think,” said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a professor of integrative biology and physiology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science. “Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain’s ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage.”

While earlier research has revealed how fructose harms the body through its role in diabetes, obesity and fatty liver, this study is the first to uncover how the sweetener influences the brain.

The UCLA team zeroed in on high-fructose corn syrup, an inexpensive liquid six times sweeter than cane sugar, that is commonly added to processed foods, including soft drinks, condiments, applesauce and baby food. The average American consumes more than 40 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“We’re not talking about naturally occurring fructose in fruits, which also contain important antioxidants,” explained Gomez-Pinilla, who is also a member of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute and Brain Injury Research Center. “We’re concerned about high-fructose corn syrup that is added to manufactured food products as a sweetener and preservative.”

Gomez-Pinilla and study co-author Rahul Agrawal, a UCLA visiting postdoctoral fellow from India, studied two groups of rats that each consumed a fructose solution as drinking water for six weeks. The second group also received omega-3 fatty acids in the form of flaxseed oil and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which protects against damage to the synapses — the chemical connections between brain cells that enable memory and learning.

“DHA is essential for synaptic function — brain cells’ ability to transmit signals to one another,” Gomez-Pinilla said. “This is the mechanism that makes learning and memory possible. Our bodies can’t produce enough DHA, so it must be supplemented through our diet.”

The Testing;

The animals were fed standard rat chow and trained on a maze twice daily for five days before starting the experimental diet. The UCLA team tested how well the rats were able to navigate the maze, which contained numerous holes but only one exit. The scientists placed visual landmarks in the maze to help the rats learn and remember the way.

Six weeks later, the researchers tested the rats’ ability to recall the route and escape the maze. What they saw surprised them.

“The second group of rats navigated the maze much faster than the rats that did not receive omega-3 fatty acids,” Gomez-Pinilla said. “The DHA-deprived animals were slower, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity. Their brain cells had trouble signaling each other, disrupting the rats’ ability to think clearly and recall the route they’d learned six weeks earlier.”

The DHA-deprived rats also developed signs of resistance to insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar and regulates synaptic function in the brain. A closer look at the rats’ brain tissue suggested that insulin had lost much of its power to influence the brain cells.

“Because insulin can penetrate the blood–brain barrier, the hormone may signal neurons to trigger reactions that disrupt learning and cause memory loss,” Gomez-Pinilla said.

He suspects that fructose is the culprit behind the DHA-deficient rats’ brain dysfunction. Eating too much fructose could block insulin’s ability to regulate how cells use and store sugar for the energy required for processing thoughts and emotions.

“Insulin is important in the body for controlling blood sugar, but it may play a different role in the brain, where insulin appears to disturb memory and learning,” he said. “Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new.”

Still planning to throw caution to the wind and indulge in a hot-fudge sundae? Then also eat foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon, walnuts and flaxseeds, or take a daily DHA capsule. Gomez-Pinilla recommends one gram of DHA per day.

“Our findings suggest that consuming DHA regularly protects the brain against fructose’s harmful effects,” said Gomez-Pinilla. “It’s like saving money in the bank. You want to build a reserve for your brain to tap when it requires extra fuel to fight off future diseases.”