When we are stressed or upset, we like to turn to chocolate, cookies or cakes. And you usually feel better afterwards. But what creates a feeling of happiness in the short term has a harmful effect in the medium and long term, reports the Sunday newspaper.
A research group from the University of Basel, the first in Switzerland to examine the effects of glucose on mental health, has demonstrated that while the brain does indeed need sugar to function, it can also be damaged by excessive consumption. Explanations: to control the absorption of sugar into cells, our body uses insulin. But if the cells are often flooded with sugar, they react more slowly and develop resistance to this insulin, a phenomenon often a precursor to type 2 diabetes. The blood sugar level remains constantly too high because the insulin can no longer function. Normally. This damages blood vessels and also leads to chronic low-grade inflammatory reactions in the body that go unnoticed.
“Just like in the body, insulin resistance, increased sugar levels and chronic low-grade inflammation also cause damage in the vessels of the brain,” explains Timur Liwinski, head of the research group. Intestine and psyche” at the University Psychiatric Clinics in Basel. And this damage can contribute to mental illness. The German Brain Foundation agrees. “High blood sugar levels damage brain vessels and lead to deposits on their walls. This makes it more difficult for the brain cells to supply nutrients,” the institution wrote in a press release a few months ago.
Furthermore, researchers increasingly suspect that excessive sugar consumption also plays a role in the development of dementia. People with type 2 diabetes are most likely to develop such a pathology. The effort to give up sugar is worth it for everyone, according to the German Brain Foundation. “40% of all cases of dementia are preventable, and many of them are caused by industrial sugar,” she says.
