I rather suspect that you are sitting there saying ‘boy, Gillespie is scrapping the bottom of the barrel with this post – of course it is!’. But believe it or not until now this has not actually been proven by anybody who counts in the scientific community.
Now a
Princeton team has come out with some groundbreaking new work on the exact mechanism of sugar addiction. Yesterday Bart Hoebel presented new evidence demonstrating that sugar can be an as addictive to lab rats as heroin or crack cocaine. At the annual meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (sounds like fun doesn’t it) in Scottsdale, Arizona, Hoebel reported on profound behavioral changes in rats that had been trained to become dependent on high doses of sugar.
Rats that were denied sugar for a prolonged period after learning to binge, worked harder to get it when it was reintroduced to them. They also drank more alcohol than normal after their sugar supply was cut off. Watch out for that one – its suggesting that if you go cold turkey on the sugar you stand a chance of becoming addicted to something else.
Anyone who’s ever been on a diet could tell you sugar is addictive. But what’s interesting about this research is that for the first time a very highly regarded research team has proved it.
These rats were being fed a 10 percent sugar solution, which exactly the same as what you’d find in a soft drink or fruit juice. And they were becoming dangerously addicted to the point of encouraging other more dangerous addictions.
The research showed that when hungry rats binge on sugar a surge of dopamine is provoked in their brains. After a month, the structure of the brains of these rats adapts to increased dopamine levels, with fewer of a certain type of dopamine receptor than they used to have and more opioid receptors. These dopamine and opioid systems are involved in motivation and reward, systems that control wanting and liking something. Similar changes also are seen in the brains of rats on cocaine and heroin.
The researchers were also able to induce signs of withdrawal in the lab animals by taking away their sugar supply. The rats’ brain levels of dopamine dropped and, as a result, they exhibited anxiety as a sign of withdrawal. The rats’ teeth chattered, and the creatures were unwilling to explore their surrounds. Normally rats like to explore their environment, but the rats in sugar withdrawal were too anxious to leave their enclosures.
All of this may well explain the withdrawal period I suffered when I gave up sugar – and also reported by many of the people who have chimed in on the
Sweet Poison forums.
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