Sugar, Alcohol, And Loneliness in Your Brain

The brain is the most important organ in our body. It is responsible for everything that makes us human — thinking, feeling, memories, and it controls and coordinates our survival as an organism. Because of its vast complexity, it is no surprise that scientists are continuously trying to learn new things about the brain.

Here are recent findings you should know about concerning the brain.

1. Sugar is The New Cocaine And it Alters Brain Chemistry After Only 12 Days

The brain uses more energy than any other organ in the human body and glucose is its primary source of fuel. But what happens when you exposed the brain to an excessive amount of sugar in your diet?

For a long time, scientists have debated whether sugar is addictive but a recent study has now confirmed that excess sugar in foods produces drug-like effects in the reward center of the brain. And this can manifest as quickly as 12 days.

The research was carried out using a particular species of pigs known as Göttingen minipigs. For 1 hour each day for 12 straight days, the pigs had access to the sugar solution. Before and after the 12-day sugar intervention, researchers used a PET imaging technique that measured dopamine and opioid activity. They also scanned five of the pigs’ brains after their first sugar intake.

The reason researchers focused on the dopamine and opioid systems is that both play key roles in the brain’s pleasure-seeking behavior and addiction.

One of the researchers, Michael Winterdahl, explains:

“After just 12 days of sugar intake, we could see major changes in the brain’s dopamine and opioid systems. In fact, the opioid system, which is that part of the brain’s chemistry that is associated with well-being and pleasure, was already activated after the very first intake.”

This research may have been performed on animals, but scientists describe sugar remains the most consumed addictive substance around the world.

Once you get addicted to it, this craving for more cause overeating and weight gain, affects your mood, slows cognitive functioning, and may even lead to memory and attention losses over time. This is why to optimize your health, it’s key to minimize your sugar consumption in line with Dietary Guidelines recommended limit of less than 10 percent of total calories per day.

2. Binge Drinking Kills Your Empathy

Binge drinking is a destructive behavior that can cause serious damage to the brain and increases the chances of memory loss later in life. But more importantly, a new study says chronic heavy drinking damages parts of the brain associated with feelings of empathy.

Empathy is often described as the ability to understand another person’s situation, emotion, or viewpoint, without actually experiencing it yourself.

Even though for a long time scientists didn’t fully understand why we empathize, but there wasn’t ever a doubt about the benefits. Empathy allows people to build emotional bridges, enable compassion and aid. When you feel empathy for someone, you feel that person’s pain.

However, researchers say heavy drinking makes it harder to empathize.

University of Sussex scientists conducted fMRI scans on participants, half of whom were categorized as binge drinkers because they drank the equivalent of about three-quarters of a bottle of wine (or 2.5 pints of beer) in one sitting in the past 30 days.

While their brains were being scanned (all subjects were sober), they were presented with images of a limb being injured and were asked to imagine that the limb belonged to them or someone else. The binge drinkers found it harder to adopt another person’s perspective.

The takeaway is that binge-drinkers need to work harder to feel empathy for other people in pain. They need to use more resources in terms of higher brain activity than non-binge drinkers. What this means in everyday life is that people who binge drink might struggle to perceive the pain of others as easily as non-binge drinkers do. It’s not that binge drinkers feel less empathy — it’s just that they have to put more brain resources into being able to do so.

3. Loneliness Changes The Brain

Human connection is a key factor in people’s physical and mental health. But a global survey shows that 33% of adults experience feelings of loneliness worldwide. According to stats on the website of Campaign to End Loneliness, a sense of loneliness is associated with health risks that are equivalent to or exceed that of obesity or smoking 15 cigarettes per day.

There are many health problems that may arise due to loneliness such as hypertension, immune system dysfunction, and even suicide.

But in a season defined by social isolation owing to the global pandemic, a new study has now shown that loneliness has the capacity to physically reshape our brain.

Researchers observed how loneliness is manifested in the human brain using a sample of about 40,000 middle-aged and older adults, comparing the fMRI data of participants who reported often feeling lonely with the data from those who did not.

The result indicated that the brains of people who experience loneliness display specific patterns in a network of regions called the “default network.” Specifically, loneliness was linked to three major changes to the default mode network, which lights up when we dwell on the past, plan for the future, or daydream.

This network is associated with thinking processes, including the ability to remember, imagine, and plan for different moments like the past, present, and future. Additionally, recent research has begun to detect links between activity in the default mode network and mental disorders like depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia.

In an article via Medical News Today:

“In the absence of desired social experiences, lonely individuals may be biased toward internally directed thoughts, such as reminiscing or imagining social experiences. We know these cognitive abilities are mediated by the default network brain regions.”

Understanding how loneliness manifests itself in the brain could be key to preventing neurological disease and developing better treatments.

Final Thought

The brain is the hub of our central nervous system. Through this organ, we take note of the world, we assess our version of reality, we dream, we ponder, we laugh. Its nervous tendrils permeate every inch of our bodies, innervating, controlling, and monitoring all that we touch, think and feel.

To protect it:

• You need to reduce sugar intakes
• Minimize alcoholic intakes, and
• Build supportive social connections with people around us.