Are sweets dangerous for the psyche?

According to a new study, eating too many sugary foods not only causes weight gain, but also depression, anxiety and chronic stress.

Scientists have found that a person’s mental state is initially worsened if they are used to consuming large amounts of fructose since adolescence.

They also found that the brains of these people responded differently.

Fructose is known to most of us as fruit sugar and is found naturally in fruits and vegetables, but is also added to processed foods and drinks, generally speaking in all sugary foods, which are processed during their production.

But it is important to note that mass application of high fructose corn syrup is a practice for the US. But in Bulgaria white refined sugar is mainly used in the production of sugar products.

And in fruits and vegetables, apart from fructose, they also contain very valuable and important vitamins and minerals for the human body.

And in this regard, the results of the conducted research are somewhat misleading for the Bulgarian reader.

Furthermore, it has been repeatedly emphasized by many health experts that it is not the high fructose intake that is problematic, but the lack of physical activity.

With regular exercise, whatever amounts of sugary foods a person consumes, their blood sugar levels will return to normal.

Consuming predominantly high-fructose foods from adolescence can exacerbate symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Scientists reached this conclusion as a result of an experiment conducted on adolescent rats.

In transitory scientific studies, although the results are contradictory and have been repeatedly disputed, it has been found that it is possible that fructose is associated with serious diseases that have become epidemic in nature, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, kidney damage, type 2 diabetes and even dementia.

But in the new study, scientists found that fruit sugar stimulates areas in the brain that influence how the body responds to stress, and this affects a person’s overall behavior.

And it can also lead to worsening of symptoms related to depression and anxiety.

This negative impact of a diet mainly including foods containing fructose is particularly pronounced in the teenage years, as this is when a person’s responses to stress develop.

If the adolescent’s organism reacts too strongly to stress, then it would be difficult for him to tolerate too much mental stress.

Prolonged exposure to stress can cause:

• increase in blood pressure;
• the risk of heart attack and stroke increases;
• weakening of the body’s defenses;
• infertility;
• premature aging;

Although fructose is also a simple sugar, the presence of a keto group in its molecule makes glucose the main source of energy for the body.

Excess fruit sugar is converted into fat, which can accumulate in the cells of the liver tissue, causing the chronic and incurable disease hepatic steatosis or fatty liver.

Fructose puts an additional burden on the liver, which in turn creates a number of other problems, for example, an increase in blood lipid levels is often observed.

Prolonged intake of large amounts of sugar can cause insulin resistance, in which the cells’ receptors for insulin are damaged.

Glucose cannot penetrate the cells, and this stimulates additional synthesis of insulin in the pancreas.