We all know that excessive amounts of sugar are not healthy period. But many times we have no idea of how bad sugar can really get.
With overwhelming amounts of sugar in more than the typical soft drinks, such as fast food places, and almost everywhere around us, it gets harder to resist.
Perhaps having a better idea of what it really does to your health can open our eyes and allow us to make more informed decisions when it comes to the consumption of sugar.
When a person consumes sugar, just like any food, it activates the tongue’s taste receptors. Then, signals are sent to the brain, lighting up reward pathways and causing a surge of feel-good hormones, like dopamine, to be released.
Sugar “hijacks the brain’s reward pathway,” neuroscientist Jordan Gaines Lewis explained.
And while stimulating the brain’s reward system with a piece of chocolate now and then is pleasurable and probably harmless, when the reward system is activated too much and too frequently, we start to run into problems.
