Sugar Addiction

Nutritionists have debated for a while whether there's such a thing as "sugar addiction". (I have a name for this kind of debate- I call it "ridiculous". I put it in the same class as the "debate" among conventional doctors over whether there's such a disease as chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia. How clueless are these people?)

So, yes, I've long since made up my mind that sugar addiction "exists", and so have plenty of people who have experienced it themselves. But it's always nice when science backs up our own intuitions. A recent study by graduate student Maglie Lenoir and her colleagues at the Unvierstiy of Bordeaux in France showed that rats given a choice between highly sweetened water and intravenous cocaine overwhelmingly picked- you guessed it- the sugar water!

And their preference was just as intense regardless of whether the liquid was sweetened with saccahrin or sugar (diet soda drinkers note well).

As Rachel Dvoskin explains in this month's issue of Scientific American: Mind, hypersensitivity to sugar and the taste of sweetness probably evolved when sugar was scarce in the diet and it's presence indicated a high-calorie (and therefore nutritious) meal. But the excessive sugar and sugar-substitutes in our modern diet may just overstimulate the sweet receptors in the brain, leading to a loss of self-control mechanisms and the risk of addiction.

Remember, even the sweet tooth had an evolutionary purpose. We humans are unable to manufacture our own vitamin C. And vitamin C is normally found in sweet things like fruits. Add this to the fact that many bitter plants are poisonous, and you can see a sound evolutionary reason for the Genome Organizing Device (GOD) to give us a nice strong sweet tooth- it kept us away from poison and made us seek out vitamin C containing foods.

But the modern diet has sent these normal control mechanisms into overdrive and driven us literally crazy. Remember, drugs and food both activate reward pathways in the brain, and sometimes these reward pathways get "hijacked". When they do, it takes more and more of the craved substance to get the same "high", and "regular" pleasures don't even register on our inner pleasure meter. We're addicted. Like the rats to sugar water.

Other research has also shown that rats can become quite dependent on sugar and act exactly like addicts when it's taken away- shivering and shaking and exhibiting typical symptoms of addiction and withdrawl.

So no, if you think you might be addicted to sugar, it's not necessarily "all in your head". The good news is that you can kick it. The bad news is that it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. But the best news of all is how great you'll feel once you're off the roller coaster of blood sugar hell.

Note: A good way to start your crave-busting program is with heaping tablespoons of L-glutamine. The brain uses it for fuel, and it seems to calm cravings. A second thing you can do is make a deal with yourself that you can have whatever it is you're craving if you just wait 15 minutes and do something else first (like walk around the block, do 50 push-ups or take a warm bath). Cravings- even the worst of them- tend to die out after 15 minutes. You just need to learn to outsmart them.