Sugar-sweetened beverages suppress cortisol, stress responses in brain

Sugar sweetened beverages suppress cortisol,stress responses in brain.

Tyron MS, et al. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2015;doi:10.1210/jc.2014*4353.April 16, 2015

The hormone cortisol and stress responses were suppressed with the consumption of sugar* sweetenedbeverages, according to recent study findings published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology &Metabolism.Diet beverages sweetened with aspartame did not produce the same effects, according to the researchers.“This is the first evidence that high sugar — but not aspartame — consumption may relieve stress inhumans,” Kevin D. Laugero, PhD, of the University of California, Davis, and the U.S. Department ofAgriculture's Agricultural Research Service, said in a press release.

“The concern is psychological or emotional stress could trigger the habitual overconsumption of sugar and amplify sugar's detrimental effects, including obesity.”Laugero and colleagues evaluated 19 women aged 18 to 40 years with a BMI range of 20 kg/m to 34kg/m to determine the effect of sucrose* or aspartame* sweetened beverage consumption on the effect of cortisol and responses to stress. Eight participants were assigned to consume aspartame *sweetened beverages, and 11 were assigned to sucrose* sweetened beverages.22 Participants drank one of the assigned beverages at breakfast, lunch and dinner and were instructed not to consume other sugar*sweetened beverages for a 12*day period. Participants consumed a standardized low sugar diet and stayed at a clinical research center for 3.5 days before and after the study. After the 12*day period, participants underwent MRI screening after performing math tests to gauge the brain's stress response. Saliva samples also were provided to measure cortisol levels.

Higher stress *induced activity in the left hippocampus was revealed after 2 weeks of consumption of sucrose *sweetened beverages compared with aspartame* sweetened beverages (P = .001). Cortisol response was diminished after 2 weeks of consumption of sucrose* sweetened beverages and was elevated after consumption of aspartame* sweetened beverages.“The results suggest differences in dietary habits may explain why some people underreact to stressful situations and others overreact,” Laugero said. “Although it may be tempting to suppress feelings of stress,a normal reaction to stress is important to good health. Research has linked over* and under*reactivity in neural and endocrine stress systems to poor mental and physical health.”

Tyron MS, et al. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2015;doi:10.1210/jc.2014-4353.

ON A BRISK SPRING Tuesday in 1976, a pair of executives from the Sugar Association stepped up to the podium of a Chicago ballroom to accept the Oscar of the public relations world, the Silver Anvil award for excellence in " the forging of public opinion." The trade group had recently pulled off one of the greatest turnarounds in PR history. For nearly a decade, the sugar industry had been buffeted by crisis after crisis as the media and the public soured on sugar and scientists began to view it as a likely cause of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Industry ads claiming that eating sugar helped you lose weight had been called out by the Federal Trade Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration had launched a review of whether sugar was even safe to eat. Consumption had declined 12 percent in just two years, and producers could see where that trend might lead. As John "JW" Tatem Jr. and Jack O'Connell Jr., the Sugar Association's president and director of public relations, posed that day with their trophies, their smiles only hinted at the coup they'd just pulled off.
Their winning campaign, crafted with the help of the prestigious public relations firm Carl Byoir & Associates, had been prompted by a poll showing that consumers had come to see sugar as fattening, and that most doctors suspected it might exacerbate, if not cause, heart disease and diabetes. With an initial annual budget of nearly $800,000 ($3.4 million today) collected from the makers of Dixie Crystals, Domino, C&H, Great Western, and other sugar brands, the association recruited a stable of medical and nutritional professionals to allay the public's fears, brought snack and beverage companies into the fold, and bankrolled scientific papers that contributed to a "highly supportive" FDA ruling, which, the Silver Anvil application boasted, made it "unlikely that sugar will be subject to legislative restriction in coming years."
The story of sugar, as Tatem told it, was one of a harmless product under attack by " opportunists dedicated to exploiting the consuming public." Over the subsequent decades, it would be transformed from what the New York Times in 1977 had deemed " a villain in disguise" into a nutrient so seemingly innocuous that even the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association approved it as part of a healthy diet. Research on the suspected links between sugar and chronic disease largely ground to a halt by the late 1980s, and scientists came to view such pursuits as a career dead end. So effective were the Sugar Association's efforts that, to this day, no consensus exists about sugar's potential dangers. The industry's PR campaign corresponded roughly with a significant rise in Americans' consumption of " caloric sweeteners," including table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This increase was accompanied, in turn, by a surge in the chronic diseases increasingly linked to sugar. Since 1970, obesity rates in the United States have more than doubled, while the incidence of diabetes has more than tripled. (The chart below uses sugar "availability" numbers rather than the USDA's speculative new consumption figures.)

http://www.alternet.org/does-sugar-kill-how-sugar-industry-hid-toxic-truth

Only two weeks of modest consumption of high-fructose corn syrup causes cholesterol and triglycerides levels to rise, and the more consumed, the greater the increases.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2015/04/27/high-fructose-heart-risks/?referrer=

NewScientist.com, June 26, 2008 Rresearchers at the University of California at Davis have found that fructose, but not glucose, causes alarming changes in increased intra-abdominal fat (belly fat), triglyceride levels, and insulin sensitivity.

The researchers suggest that people with metabolic syndrome (a blend of conditions including belly fat and insulin resistance) should avoid fructose-containing beverages. Fructose is found in fresh fruit, fruit juice, and preserves. But much of it sneaks into our diets though high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in soft drinks.

Both sucrose (table sugar) and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) are broken down into fructose and glucose when eaten, and both have been under suspicion as contributing to obesity and insulin resistance. (This study looked only at pure fructose, not HFCS or sucrose.)

In the study, overweight and obese volunteers ate identical balanced diets for two weeks and then spent ten weeks with 25% of their calories coming from either fructose or glucose. While both groups gained an average of 3.3 pounds, only the fructose group had increased intra-abdominal fat (internal fat linked to disease risk).

The fructose group also had raised levels of fatty triglycerides (which gets deposited as intra-abdominal fat) and cholesterol, and they had 20% less insulin sensitivity. The glucose group showed none of these negative results.

In a separate study, the researchers tested blood triglyceride levels after people consumed a meal with 25% of the calories from HFCS, sucrose, fructose or glucose. All sugars except for glucose caused elevated levels 24 hours after the meal.

[h=2]That's what scientists have concluded from a first-of-its-kind diet study involving overweight kids[/b]



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Fat was the food villain these past few decades but sugar is quickly muscling in to take its place. As rates of sugar-related disorders such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease climb, many experts believe that when Americans rid themselves of fat, they simply replaced it with sugarin all its forms.
But proving that the rise of the chronic diseases was actually linked to higher sugar consumption is a challenge. Dr. Robert Lustig, from the department of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, who has made a name for himself publishing books and research addressing the question of sugar's effects on the body, wanted clearer answers. Now, in a paper published Tuesday, he and his colleagues believe they have come up with the definitive evidence that sugar, as Lustig says, “is toxic.”