Question: How does sugar affect the brain??

Senga Robertson answered on 15 Nov 2017:

Thank you for asking me this again, now I can give you a bit of a longer answer with more information.

so sugar does a few things to your brain the first is that it activates your brains reward system and your brain releases something called dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical that makes you feel happy/ rewarded and it also can affect your mood. Although too much sugar or having sugar too often your dopamine levels start to sort of even out and we don’t find the sugar as satisfying which can make us eat more sugar to try and get that nice happy feeling again…and this can be quite unhealthy. Although, interestingly the brain uses a form of sugar called glucose as a source of fuel, it uses half of all of the glucose in our body and if you have low glucose levels in your body it can make it difficult for you to pay attention and to think properly BUT too much glucose can also cause the same problems so I think everything in moderation is the perfect phrase when it come to sugar.

Another thing sugar does to the brain is make it send signals to the body to produce a chemical called insulin which regulates how your body uses and stores sugars. The more sugar in your body the more insulin you produce, if you have a lot of sugar in your body over a long time (months/ years etc) then cells can become overwhelmed by the insulin in your body and stop working properly…when this happens it is called type 2 diabetes. Long term diabetes can cause problems with the brain including something called vascular dementia.

So…bottom line…too much sugar is bad for you , but we all know that 🙂

I hope this answered your question a bit more fully than the live chat, live chats are always crazy with soooo many questions. They’re so fun but I also like to take my time to give a proper answer.

Senga 🙂