Can Eating Sugar Lower Your IQ?

Can eating too much sugar actually reduce your mental capacity? Compelling research shows that your brain responds significantly to your diet as well as to your lifestyle choices. This response can be positive or negative..

We are genetically programmed to seek out sugar. During primitive times, sweet foods were a very rare treat that boosted energy levels. The problem today is that we still have that sugar seeking hard wiring, but sugar is everywhere. The processed food industry wants us to believe that sugar is a perfectly reasonable “nutrient” that belongs in a healthy diet. That is far from the truth.

A piece of fruit, or even a treat like ice cream, isn’t going to cause you too much trouble, provided it truly is just that, a treat and not something that you consistently overindulge in. Most Americans, however, are overindulging. The average American now consumes one-third of a pound of sugar per day, half of which is processed fructose. That is roughly 120 pounds of sugar a year!

Dr. Richard Johnson’s book, The Sugar Fix, suggest about 50% of Americans consume as much as half a pound of sugar a day!

When you consume too much sugar, it leads to serious imbalances in your body, including microbial changes that have far-reaching effects on your health.

Eating Too Much Sugar Is Detrimental to Your Brain:

Obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease are commonly known to be linked to a poor diet with excess sugar (including fructose). But brain troubles are also strongly linked to excess sugar consumption.

A study in mice, published in the journal Neuroscience, revealed that a high-sugar diets can lead to changes in gut bacteria that were in turn related to a significant loss of cognitive flexibility, which is a measure of your brain’s ability to adapt to changing situations. Impairments in both long-term and short-term memory were also noted. After four weeks of consuming excess amounts of sugar, the mice performed poorly on a variety of tests related to mental and physical function when compared to mice fed a normal diet. An analysis of the mice revealed that an imbalance of bacteria in the guts of the high-sugar consuming mice, which directly correlated with their poor performance on tests of cognitive flexibility.

This isn’t the first time sugar has been linked to declines in brain function. In 2012, researchers investigated the effects of high-fructose syrup, which is similar to high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a cheap sweetener six times sweeter than cane sugar, which is used in many soft drinks, processed foods, condiments and even some baby foods.

They fed rats a fructose solution as drinking water for six weeks, then tested their ability to remember their way out of a maze. The rats fed fructose syrup showed significant impairment in their cognitive abilities. They struggled to remember their way out of the maze. They 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.

Additionally, the fructose-fed rats showed signs of resistance to insulin, a hormone that controls your blood sugar and synaptic function in your brain. Because insulin is able to pass through your blood-brain barrier, it can trigger neurological processes that are important for learning and memory.

Elevated ‘Normal’ Blood Sugar Levels Linked to Memory Loss:

One study involved people with an average age of 63, who were free from diabetes and pre-diabetes. Yet, even among this group, those with higher blood sugar levels scored lower on memory tests.

For each 7-mmol/mol increase in Hemoglobin A1c, a measure of long term blood glucose levels, participants recalled two fewer words on memory tests. Those with higher blood sugar levels also had lower volume of the hippocampus, a brain region linked to memory.

How to Keep Your Gut & Brain Healthy:

A healthy gut may therefore be the key to a healthy brain and one of the key strategies toward this end is limiting excess sugar, including fructose. Regularly consuming more than 25 grams of sugar per day will dramatically increase your risk of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. Try to limit your sugar intake to under 25 grams per day if you are healthy and 15 grams or less if you are overweight or have diabetes, pre-diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure.

Consuming naturally fermented foods, such as sauerkraut, naturally fermented pickles, kefir, and yogurt, is one of the best ways to optimize your gut bacteria, which in turn may optimize the health of your brain. Fermented vegetables are particularly easy to make at home.

Making sure you’re eating a healthy diet is one key to a healthy gut and to a healthy brain. Physical exercise is also very important for a healthy brain, but that is a story for another day.

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