The Sugar Saboteur: Understanding Your Body’s Hidden Enemy

🎧 Listen on the go: All our articles are available as podcasts for your daily commute or workout routine.

Picture Sarah. Every morning, she blends what she proudly calls her “green goddess smoothie” – spinach, kale, banana, berries, mango, orange juice, and organic honey. She feels virtuous. She’s drinking vegetables for breakfast, after all.

By mid-morning, she’s starving. By 11 AM, she’s fighting to keep her eyes open. After her “healthy” lunch salad with candied pecans, she crashes hard – irritable, foggy, and reaching for her third coffee of the day. At 3 PM, desperate for energy, she grabs a protein bar. By evening, she’s exhausted, cranky, and somehow still hungry despite eating all day.

What Sarah doesn’t know: she’s consumed over 80 grams of sugar before dinner. That’s roughly 20 teaspoons. And none of it came from obviously “bad” foods.

Her breakfast smoothie alone? That banana contains about 12 grams of sugar. The berries and mango add another 15 grams. The orange juice splash contributes 10 grams. The honey adds 17 grams. We’re at 54 grams before she’s brushed her teeth – more sugar than in a 16-ounce (0.473 liters) Coca-Cola.

But here’s the critical part most people miss: when you blend fruit, you break the fiber into smaller pieces. The sugar from that smoothie can hit your bloodstream faster than if you’d eaten the fruit whole – not a disaster, but something to keep in mind if you’re watching your energy swings. Without intact fiber to slow absorption, that sugar hits Sarah’s bloodstream like a tidal wave. And this triggers a cascade of problems that will affect her entire day.

The Addiction You Didn’t Know You Had

Research shows sugar activates some of the same brain reward pathways involved in addiction, which helps explain why we crave it so strongly – though scientists still debate whether this qualifies as true addiction. You might think I’m being dramatic – but this isn’t hyperbole; it’s neuroscience.

Studies using functional MRI brain imaging show that when you consume sugar, the same reward centers light up as when someone uses cocaine or other addictive drugs. Both trigger massive dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens – your brain’s primary reward center.

In one striking experiment, researchers gave rats a choice between a sugary drink and cocaine – and most chose the sweetness, even those already hooked on cocaine. It’s a vivid illustration of how powerful sweet rewards can be, at least in animal brains. When researchers removed the sugar, these rats exhibited genuine withdrawal symptoms: anxiety, trembling, and obsessive behavior trying to get more sugar.

Princeton neuroscientist Bart Hoebel, who conducted this groundbreaking research, concluded that sugar triggers addiction-like responses in the brain – the same reward circuits that light up for drugs like nicotine or alcohol. Animal studies and brain-imaging research in humans show the pattern clearly, though scientists still debate whether sugar itself qualifies as a true addiction. Sugar causes behavioral changes, alters brain chemistry, creates tolerance requiring increasing amounts for the same effect, and produces withdrawal symptoms when removed.

Now consider this: two centuries ago, the average person ate only a few pounds of sugar a year. Today, it’s dozens of pounds – a massive jump by any measure, though exact numbers vary by source.

Our brains evolved over millions of years in an environment where concentrated sugar was incredibly rare – perhaps a bee’s nest discovered once or twice a year, some seasonal berries, occasional ripe fruit. Our reward systems developed to make us seek out these rare, valuable energy sources.

But our brains never evolved for a world where sugar is available 24/7, in virtually unlimited quantities, engineered to be more rewarding than anything in nature. We’re running ancient software in a modern environment. The results are catastrophic.

Sugar isn’t just empty calories  –  it powerfully stimulates the brain’s reward system, training your cravings and making it easy to keep coming back for more. Understanding that biology is the first step to breaking free.

The Hormonal Cascade: Your Body’s Emergency Response

Let’s follow Sarah through her morning and watch what’s really happening inside her body.

At 7 AM, she drinks her smoothie. Within 15 minutes, 54 grams of sugar starts flooding her bloodstream. Her blood glucose skyrockets. This triggers panic mode in her pancreas, which pumps out massive amounts of insulin.

Insulin is the key that unlocks your cells so glucose can enter and be used for energy. But insulin is also a storage hormone. When insulin levels rise, your body temporarily prioritizes energy storage over fat burning – which can make steady weight loss harder if spikes happen often. You’re in storage mode, not burning mode.

By 7:30 AM, Sarah feels amazing. She’s riding a glucose high – energized, motivated, ready to conquer the day.

But here’s the problem: her pancreas is overshot. All that insulin drove her blood sugar down too aggressively. By 9 AM, her blood glucose has crashed below baseline. Now her body perceives this as an emergency. Blood sugar is fuel for your brain, and your brain doesn’t like running low.

So her body releases stress hormones – cortisol and adrenaline. These tell her liver to dump stored glucose into her bloodstream. But they also make her feel anxious, jittery, irritable, and hungry. That overwhelming urge to eat something, anything? It’s not hunger. It’s a hormonal emergency signal.

She eats the overnight oats. Another spike. Another insulin surge. Another crash. This cycle repeats five, six, seven times throughout her day. Each crash leaves her more depleted than the last.

What feels like an energy crisis is really a blood sugar crisis. When you stabilise glucose, you stabilise energy, mood, and focus.

The Insulin Resistance Trap

When you constantly bombard your cells with insulin – multiple times a day, day after day, year after year – something unfortunate happens. Your cells become numb to insulin’s signal.

It’s like living next to train tracks. The first week, every passing train startles you awake. By month three, you sleep right through them. Your cells do the same thing with insulin. This is insulin resistance – the first step toward type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and metabolic syndrome.

Here’s why this matters for energy and weight: when your cells are resistant to insulin, your pancreas produces more and more insulin to get the same effect. You end up with chronically elevated insulin levels. Remember, high insulin means you cannot burn fat.

Sarah is eating in a calorie deficit, going to the gym four times a week, and she can’t lose a pound. It’s not because she’s not trying hard enough. It’s because her insulin levels keep her body locked in fat storage mode 16 hours a day.

The Other Hormonal Victims

Sugar doesn’t just mess with insulin. It wreaks havoc on your entire endocrine system.

Leptin (your satiety hormone) stops working properly. Leptin tells your brain, “We have enough stored energy, you can stop eating now.” But high sugar consumption, especially fructose, creates leptin resistance. Your brain stops hearing the “I’m full” signal. This may help explain why some people feel hungry soon after consuming sugary foods.

Ghrelin (your hunger hormone) increases. High sugar intake increases ghrelin production. So you’re not just unable to feel full – you’re also feeling hungrier more often. You’re fighting your own biology.

Sex hormones become imbalanced. For women, high sugar intake has been associated in research with hormonal fluctuations that may influence symptoms such as PMS or conditions like PCOS. In one clinical study, men who drank a glucose solution saw their testosterone levels drop by about a quarter for a couple of hours afterward – a short-term dip that shows how quickly sugar can tweak our hormones.

Cortisol rhythm gets disrupted. Cortisol should be high in the morning to wake you up, gradually declining throughout the day, lowest at night for sleep. Sugar-induced blood glucose swings create artificial cortisol spikes throughout the day and evening. This is why Sarah lies awake at 11 PM feeling simultaneously exhausted and wired.

The Inflammation Crisis: Your Body on Fire

Think of inflammation as your body’s emergency response team. When you cut your finger, inflammation rushes to the scene – increasing blood flow, bringing immune cells, starting the healing process. This acute inflammation is healthy and necessary.

The problem is chronic inflammation – a state where your emergency response team never goes home. They just keep responding to a threat that never ends. Sugar creates this state through multiple mechanisms.

How Sugar Triggers

First, when you consume sugar, your body produces inflammatory molecules called cytokines. Occasional sugar consumption isn’t a problem – your body handles it and returns to normal. But when you’re consuming 60, 80, 100 grams of sugar daily, cytokine production never stops. You’re in a constant state of low-grade inflammation.

Second, sugar triggers advanced glycation end products – AGEs. When you have high blood sugar, glucose molecules stick to proteins in your body and form these AGEs. They’re basically rust forming on your internal machinery. AGEs damage blood vessels, organs, and tissues throughout your body. They’re particularly destructive to collagen and elastin – the proteins keeping your skin firm and elastic.

Third, high sugar intake can disrupt the gut microbiome and weaken the integrity of the gut lining over time. Your intestinal wall should be a selective barrier – letting nutrients through while keeping partially digested food and bacteria out of your bloodstream. Sugar weakens this barrier, leading to increased intestinal permeability – commonly known as leaky gut.

When your gut becomes permeable, food particles and bacteria escape into your bloodstream. Your immune system sees these as foreign invaders and attacks them. This triggers systemic inflammation – inflammation throughout your entire body.

Here’s the vicious cycle: inflammation damages your gut, a damaged gut creates more inflammation, which damages your gut further. It’s self-perpetuating.

The Far-Reaching Consequences

Why does this matter? A large share of your body’s immune cells live in and around the gut, constantly sampling what you eat and adjusting your immune responses. When your gut is inflamed, your immune system is constantly activated, leaving you vulnerable to every virus and infection. It’s why Sarah catches every cold at the office and takes weeks to recover.

But the gut connection goes even deeper. Around 90 percent of your body’s serotonin is made in the gut — the same chemical that helps regulate mood, sleep, and appetite. Sugar can throw off your gut microbiome, feeding the wrong bacteria and disrupting the signals that help keep serotonin – and your mood – in balance.

This research suggests a strong biological link between diet and mental health, especially through inflammation, hormones, and gut health.

In one long-term study, men who regularly ate the most sugary foods were more likely to develop depression over time – about a 20-plus percent higher risk. That’s an association, not proof of cause, but the trend is hard to ignore.

Another study published in Scientific Reports found that higher sugar consumption from sweet foods and beverages was associated with a 23 percent increased likelihood of incident mood disorders after five years – even after controlling for other dietary factors, exercise, smoking, and socioeconomic status.

The mechanisms aren’t mysterious. Sugar’s effect on inflammation, gut health, blood sugar stability, and hormone production all directly impact brain function and mental health. When Sarah snaps at her co-workers, feels hopeless about her weight, and cries for no apparent reason, she’s not being dramatic. Her brain chemistry has been disrupted by a metabolic problem.

Your Brain Under Siege

Your brain accounts for only 2 percent of your body weight but uses about 20 percent of your glucose. It’s an incredibly energy -demanding organ. Frequent blood sugar swings can make it harder for the brain to get steady fuel – a pattern that may feel like brain fog or mental fatigue.

Research shows that high-sugar diets reduce production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) – a protein crucial for learning, memory formation, and neuroplasticity. Low BDNF is associated with depression and neurodegenerative diseases. Animal studies show that high-sugar diets actually impair hippocampal function – the part of your brain responsible for memory and learning.

So when you can’t remember where you put your keys, can’t focus on what someone is saying, or feel like you’re thinking through fog, it’s not early dementia or aging. It might be what you ate for breakfast.

Diets high in added sugars can keep the body in a low-grade inflammatory state – the kind of simmering irritation that’s been linked to heart disease, fatigue, and brain fog. Everything is connected. The inflammation that started with your breakfast smoothie isn’t confined to one area – it’s systemic, affecting your entire body.

The Four Pillars Collapse: When Everything Falls Apart

The Four Pillars framework is my attempt to synthesize the research into a coherent model that makes the hidden connections visible and understandable.

Now, just so we’re clear, this framework is for educational use only. It’s not a diagnostic or clinical tool.

I talk about the Four Pillars of wellbeing: FUEL, MOVEMENT, MIND, and RHYTHM. These foundations work together, supporting each other like the legs of a chair. But sugar doesn’t just weaken one pillar – it systematically undermines all four, creating a cascade where each falling pillar pulls the others down.

1. FUEL: The Nutrient Depletion

The FUEL pillar isn’t just about calories – it’s about providing your body with the nutrients it needs to function optimally. Sugar provides calories but zero nutrients. Worse, it actively depletes your nutrient stores.

Processing sugar requires B vitamins, magnesium, chromium, and other micronutrients. Every time you consume sugar, you’re spending these nutrients without replacing them. Magnesium deficiency alone – incredibly common in people eating high-sugar diets – contributes to muscle cramps, poor sleep, anxiety, irregular heartbeat, and fatigue.

High sugar intake can shift your gut microbiome toward a less balanced state, reducing the abundance of beneficial bacteria. You have trillions of bacteria in your intestines performing crucial functions: producing vitamins, regulating your immune system, manufacturing neurotransmitters, and protecting against harmful pathogens. When you feed these bacteria sugar, you’re selectively feeding harmful species while starving beneficial ones. Over time, this leads to dysbiosis – an imbalanced microbiome that promotes inflammation and impairs nutrient absorption.

2. MOVEMENT: When Exercise Feels Impossible

Regular physical activity requires stable energy and healthy metabolic function. Sugar sabotages both. Those blood sugar crashes make consistent exercise nearly impossible. During a crash, your body literally cannot access stored fat for fuel because insulin is blocking it, and your blood glucose is too low to power activity effectively. Exercise feels torturous, so you skip it.

The chronic inflammation sugar creates also affects your joints, tendons, and muscles. Recovery from workouts takes longer. You’re more prone to injury. Movement becomes associated with pain, so you move less.

There’s another mechanism that’s particularly insidious: sugar impairs mitochondrial function. Mitochondria are the powerhouses of your cells – they convert fuel into ATP, the energy currency your body runs on. Chronically high sugar intake can stress mitochondria – the cell’s energy producers – and make them work less efficiently over time. This is why Sarah feels exhausted even when she’s well-rested. Her cells literally can’t generate energy efficiently anymore.

3. MIND: The Mental Health Crisis

The MIND pillar encompasses your mental health, emotional stability, and cognitive function. Sugar creates mood swings through blood glucose volatility, but the damage goes deeper. The gut-brain axis – the communication highway between your digestive system and your brain – becomes disrupted when sugar damages your microbiome. This affects neurotransmitter production, stress response, and emotional regulation.

Sugar also impairs your prefrontal cortex function. This is the part of your brain responsible for impulse control, decision-making, and rational thinking. When this area is impaired by blood sugar instability and inflammation, you make poorer choices – including eating more sugar. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle. The worse you eat, the harder it becomes to make better choices.

4. RHYTHM: The Sleep Disruption

The RHYTHM pillar represents your daily habits and circadian health. High sugar consumption, especially later in the day, disrupts your sleep architecture. Sugar eaten in the evening interferes with melatonin production and prevents the natural cortisol decline that should happen at night.

Even when you fall asleep, the quality is poor. Blood glucose fluctuations can wake you multiple times during the night. You never reach the deep, restorative sleep stages where physical repair happens and memories are consolidated.

Poor sleep then drives more sugar cravings the next day. Sleep deprivation increases ghrelin (hunger hormone) and decreases leptin (fullness hormone). Studies show that sleep-deprived people consume an additional 300-550 calories the next day, primarily from sugary and fatty foods.

You’re trapped: sugar disrupts sleep, poor sleep increases sugar cravings, more sugar further disrupts sleep.

The Interconnected Collapse

This is the interconnected collapse. Each weakened pillar stresses the others. Sarah’s high-sugar diet creates nutrient deficiencies and inflammation that make movement painful, so she becomes more sedentary. Lack of movement worsens her metabolic dysfunction. The metabolic dysfunction creates mood instability that damages her relationships and self-esteem. Her deteriorating mental state disrupts her sleep. Poor sleep further impairs her metabolism and intensifies her cravings.

But here’s the hopeful part: the same interconnectedness that creates the problem can also drive the solution. When you stabilize blood sugar, you don’t just improve energy – you also reduce inflammation, which helps movement feel better, which improves sleep quality, which stabilizes mood. One change creates a cascade of positive effects throughout all four pillars.

Awareness isn’t about blame – it’s about clarity. Once you see how sugar shapes your energy and emotions, you can start taking your power back.

Breaking Free: Your Action Plan

If you’ve recognized yourself in Sarah’s story, you might feel overwhelmed. That’s normal. But hear this: you’re not broken or weak –  you’ve been fighting a battle against a substance chemically engineered to override your natural satiety signals.

The truth is, you’re responding exactly as your biology is designed to respond. The solution isn’t more willpower – it’s changing your environment and understanding what’s really happening in your body.

Knowledge gives you leverage. Once you understand biology, you can work with your body, not against it.

Your First Step: Awareness Before Action

So here’s what I want you to do – take a brief moment for honest self-reflection.
Before changing anything, simply observe.

Ask yourself honestly:

  • How many times today did I reach for something sweet – even a “healthy” option?
  • Did I feel steady energy through the morning, or did I crash before lunch?
  • When I felt tired or stressed, did I crave sugar for comfort?
  • How many foods or drinks I thought were “healthy” actually contained added sugars?
  • How did my mood and focus shift after those choices?

For the next few days, notice how often sugar shows up in your meals, snacks, and drinks. Not to judge yourself – but to learn.

To help you get started, we’ve created a free 5-Day Sugar Awareness Challenge you can download below. It’s a simple daily checklist that reveals your real sugar habits and helps you connect the dots between what you eat and how you feel.

Remember, awareness always comes before transformation.

You don’t need to fix everything at once. Just start noticing.
Patterns will begin to emerge – and with awareness, you gain power.
In just five days, you may be surprised by what you discover.

Then, when you’re ready, you can begin making small, sustainable swaps – the kind that help your energy, focus, and wellbeing return naturally.

(Download your free 5-Day Challenge below – no commitments, just curiosity and self-awareness.)

Your New Reality

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about progress. It’s about understanding that every food choice you make is either supporting your four pillars or undermining them. Every meal is a new opportunity to work with your body instead of against it.

Six months from now, you could wake up with real energy – not the jittery, artificial high from sugar, but the steady, reliable vitality that comes from a body functioning as designed. Your mental fog could clear. That chronic pain might finally ease. Your mood could stabilize. Your relationships could improve. Your weight could normalize without calorie counting or misery.

This isn’t fantasy. These are some of the positive changes many people report when they reduce added sugar intake.

The path forward isn’t easy, but it’s straightforward once you understand what you’re working with. Every sugary breakfast you skip, every whole food meal you choose, every craving you ride out instead of indulging – these aren’t acts of deprivation. They’re acts of self-respect. You’re choosing long-term vitality over short-term pleasure.

Sarah’s story doesn’t have to be your story. You can start right now – not tomorrow, not Monday, not after the holidays. Right now. Don’t wait for the perfect moment. Because let’s be honest, the perfect moment never comes. You have to create it.

Your future self – the one who wakes up refreshed, thinks clearly, moves without pain, and has energy left over for the things that truly matter – is waiting for you to take that first step.

Stop guessing, start knowing.

This is Your Space Today – delivering the science-backed clarity you need every week because your health journey deserves expert guidance.

If you found value in this article, I’d really appreciate it if you’d share it with friends or family who might be struggling with similar issues. Sometimes, understanding that we’re not alone in this struggle, and that there are real, science-based explanations for what we’re experiencing – that knowledge alone can be incredibly empowering.

This article  is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with your healthcare provider regarding any health concerns. You can find detailed information here.

Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. Until next time, take care of yourself. You deserve it.

Scientific References

If you’d like to explore the research behind this article, here are selected peer-reviewed studies supporting the key points discussed

  1. Caronia LM, Dwyer AA, Hayden D, Amati F, Pitteloud N, Hayes FJ. Abrupt decrease in serum testosterone levels after an oral glucose load in men: implications for screening for hypogonadism. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2013 Feb;78(2):291-6. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2265.2012.04486.x. PMID: 22804876.
    Abrupt decrease in serum testosterone levels after an oral glucose load in men: implications for screening for hypogonadism – PubMed
  1. Avena, N. M., Rada, P., & Hoebel, B. G. (2008). Evidence for sugar addiction: behavioral and neurochemical effects of intermittent, excessive sugar intake. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 32(1), 20-39. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907/
  2. Beilharz, J. E., Kaakoush, N. O., Maniam, J., & Morris, M. J. (2018). The effect of short-term exposure to energy-matched diets enriched in fat or sugar on memory, gut microbiota and markers of brain inflammation and plasticity. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 57, 304-313. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0889159116303609
  3. Christ, A., Günther, P., Lauterbach, M. A., Duewell, P., Biswas, D., Pelka, K., … & Latz, E. (2018). Western Diet Triggers NLRP3-Dependent Innate Immune Reprogramming. Cell, 172(1-2), 162-175.e14. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867417314939#:~:text=Summary,trained%20immunity%20in%20inflammatory%20diseases.
  4. Di Nicolantonio, J. J., O’Keefe, J. H., & Wilson, W. L. (2018). Sugar addiction: is it real? A narrative review. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 52(14), 910-913. Available at: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/14/910
  5. Hsu, CY., Ahmad, I., Maya, R.W. et al. The potential therapeutic approaches targeting gut health in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS): a narrative review. J Transl Med 23, 530 (2025). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-025-06527-x 
  6. Freeman, C. R., Zehra, A., Ramirez, V., Wiers, C. E., Volkow, N. D., & Wang, G. J. (2018). Impact of sugar on the body, brain, and behavior. Frontiers in Bioscience, 23, 2255-2266. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29772560/
  7. Gearhardt, A. N., Hebebrand, (2021)The concept of “food addiction” helps inform the understanding of overeating and obesity: Debate Consensus.The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,113(2):274-276. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqaa345
  8. Gomez-Pinilla, F. (2008). Brain foods: the effects of nutrients on brain function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(7), 568-578. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2421
  9. Hu, D., Cheng, L., & Jiang, W. (2019). Sugar-sweetened beverages consumption and the risk of depression: A meta-analysis of observational studies. Journal of Affective Disorders, 245, 348-355. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2018.11.015
  10. Johnson, R. J., Sanchez-Lozada, L. G., Andrews, P., & Lanaspa, M. A. (2017). Perspective: A Historical and Scientific Perspective of Sugar and Its Relation with Obesity and Diabetes. Advances in Nutrition, 8(3), 412-422. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3945/an.116.014654
  11. Knüppel, A., Shipley, M. J., Llewellyn, C. H., & Brunner, E. J. (2017). Sugar intake from sweet food and beverages, common mental disorder and depression: prospective findings from the Whitehall II study. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 6287. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-05649-7
  12. Lennerz, B. S., Alsop, D. C., Holsen, L. M., Stern, E., Rojas, R., Ebbeling, C. B., … & Ludwig, D. S. (2013). Effects of dietary glycemic index on brain regions related to reward and craving in men. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 98(3), 641-647. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.113.064113
  13. Ludwig, D. S., & Ebbeling, C. B. (2018). The Carbohydrate-Insulin Model of Obesity: Beyond “Calories In, Calories Out”. JAMA Internal Medicine, 178(8), 1098-1103. Available at: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2686146
  14. Malik, V. S., & Hu, F. B. (2019). Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Cardiometabolic Health: An Update of the Evidence. Nutrients, 11(8), 1840. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6723421/
  15. Mantantzis, K., Schlaghecken, F., Sünram-Lea, S. I., & Maylor, E. A. (2019). Sugar rush or sugar crash? A meta-analysis of carbohydrate effects on mood. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 101, 45-67. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763418309175
  16. Mazur, A., Maier, J. A., Rock, E., Gueux, E., Nowacki, W., & Rayssiguier, Y. (2007). Magnesium and the inflammatory response: potential physiopathological implications. Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 458(1), 48-56. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.abb.2006.03.031
  17. Pase, M. P., Himali, J. J., Jacques, P. F., DeCarli, C., Croce, J. C., Beiser, A., … & Vasan, R. S. (2017). Sugary beverage intake and preclinical Alzheimer’s disease in the community. Alzheimer’s & Dementia, 13(9), 955-964. Available at: https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1016/j.jalz.2017.01.024
  18. Reichelt, A. C., Killcross, S., Hambly, L. D., Morris, M. J., & Westbrook, R. F. (2015). Impact of adolescent sucrose access on cognitive control, recognition memory, and parvalbumin immunoreactivity. Learning & Memory, 22(4), 215-224. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4371171/
  19. Rogers, M., Banks, N.F.,Jenkins N.D.M. (2023). The effects of sleep disruption on metabolism, hunger, and satiety, and the influence of psychosocial stress and exercise: A narrative review. Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews, 40(2), e3667. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/dmrr.3667
  20. Satokari, R. (2020). High Intake of Sugar and the Balance between Pro- and Anti-Inflammatory Gut Bacteria. Nutrients, 12(5), 1348. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7284805/
  21. Spiegel, K., Tasali, E., Leproult, R., & Van Cauter, E. (2009). Effects of poor and short sleep on glucose metabolism and obesity risk. Nature Reviews Endocrinology, 5(5), 253-261. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrendo.2009.23
  22. Spreadbury, I. (2012). Comparison with ancestral diets suggests dense acellular carbohydrates promote an inflammatory microbiota, and may be the primary dietary cause of leptin resistance and obesity. Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy, 5, 175-189. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3402009/
  23. St-Onge, M. P., Mikic, A., & Pietrolungo, C. E. (2016). Effects of Diet on Sleep Quality. Advances in Nutrition, 7(5), 938-949. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5015038/
  24. Stanhope, K. L. (2016). Sugar consumption, metabolic disease and obesity: The state of the controversy. Critical Reviews in Clinical Laboratory Sciences, 53(1), 52-67. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822166/
  25. Suez, J., Korem, T., Zeevi, D., Zilberman-Schapira, G., Thaiss, C. A., Maza, O., … & Elinav, E. (2014). Artificial sweeteners induce glucose intolerance by altering the gut microbiota. Nature, 514(7521), 181-186. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13793
  26. Tappy, L., & Lê, K. A. (2010). Metabolic effects of fructose and the worldwide increase in obesity. Physiological Reviews, 90(1), 23-46. Available at: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.00019.2009
  27. Volkow, N. D., Wang, G. J., Fowler, J. S., & Telang, F. (2008). Overlapping neuronal circuits in addiction and obesity: evidence of systems pathology. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 363(1507), 3191-3200. Available at: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2008.0107
  28. Wiss, D. A., Avena, N., & Rada, P. (2018). Sugar Addiction: From Evolution to Revolution. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 9, 545. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30464748/
  29. Yang, Q., Zhang, Z., Gregg, E. W., Flanders, W. D., Merritt, R., & Hu, F. B. (2014). Added sugar intake and cardiovascular diseases mortality among US adults. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(4), 516-524. Available at: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1819573
  30. Yau, Y. H., & Potenza, M. N. (2013). Stress and eating behaviors. Minerva Endocrinologica, 38(3), 255-267. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4214609/
  31. Zeevi, D., Korem, T., Zmora, N., Israeli, D., Rothschild, D., Weinberger, A., … & Segal, E. (2015). Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Responses. Cell, 163(5), 1079-1094. Available at: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(15)01481-6
Scroll to Top