Well I’ve started week 2 of quitting sugar (as of today). So, I thought I’d better try and understand more about why I am ‘quitting sugar’ and not simply ‘cutting back on the old Allens Party Mix’. You quit something that you are addicted to, so by talking about quitting, I’m suggesting (I’m not the first) that sugar is addictive. I think the language we (or I?) use to talk about sugar is interesting. A sugar fix. Sugar cravings. Sweet relief. Ok that last one is not talking about sugar, but I’m sure it can apply. Here’s what I have come to realise about sugar cravings: They are real.
Simply, eating sugar creates a chemical response in the brain which is similar to a fix from an addictive drug. In fact, in a review of research (including their own) into sugar, fat and the possibility of food addiction, Drs Avena, Rada, and Hoebel revealed that sugar bingeing leads rats to show “behaviors and neurochemical changes that are characteristic of drug abuse” (p. 626). Drug abuse, yes. I feel sick. Without going into too much detail about receptors, dopamine and other stuff which, tell the truth, I don’t fully understand myself, the Drs Three suggest that the observed brain chemistry when sugar is withdrawn is scarily similar to the brain chemistry of withdrawal from morphine, nicotine, and alcohol. (They don’t say scarily, I added that).
Their paper goes on to describe the behaviours observed in laboratory rats when they were first given sugar ‘fixes’ and then had their food taken away for 24 hours. These behaviours included: teeth chattering, hand (well, paw) tremor, and signs of anxiety. Well, you might argue that this was just because they were hungry - they hadn’t eaten for 24 hours, remember. I’d be a bit shaky too. The interesting thing is if you let a rat binge on fat instead of sugar, and then withdraw food for 24 hours, it does not show these behaviours. Sugar is addictive. Fat is not. At least to rats.
You may be surprised by how much of the evidence about food’s effects on the body generally comes from animal models, rather than human experiments. No, not from slim, tall rats who look good in clothes, but from animals used in laboratory experiments as ‘models’ of what would happen in humans. This happens a lot, particularly when the research is too new or dangerous to try on humans, and/or where humans are too complicated or too prone to do their own thing, to really get a clean result. For example, if you wanted to do the above experiment (feeding sugar vs feeding fat and then withdrawing it and observing the effects) on humans, you would have to get ethical permission (this may be difficult, given that you’d have to argue that fat/ sugar bingeing wasn’t going to harm the participants), and then ensure that the participants actually ate the food, and only that food, so that you were sure that the effect (e.g., the withdrawal) was due to that food, and not to something else they ate. You would probably also want to monitor their environment and things that they did, in case these things affected the results. Complicated, no?
You could try to answer the same question in another way: perhaps with two groups of people, one group who already have a high fat diet, another group who already have a high sugar diet. But you couldn’t discount the effect of the other foods they eat, their health and food history, their environment, and whether or not there were differences (e.g., psychological) between the groups- maybe more of those who chose to eat a lot of sugar already have more ‘addictive personalities’ and therefore are likely to show more signs of withdrawal . It’s just easier with rats, trust me. I’m not going to engage in the animal welfare debate here- I’m sorry, I’m just not. But I think we should all give our rodent friends some thanks, because without them, we would know very very little about how food (not to mention drugs and other chemicals) affect the body.
If the animal model is good, the results will approximate what would happen if we did the same experiment with humans. Sometimes (as in the development of new medicines) researchers will then conduct a human trial. With food, as demonstrated above, it’s more complex than this, but some researchers have tried other ways to understand the effect of food directly on humans. For example, scanning the brains of people who are obese has shown that there are observable changes to their brain anatomy, similar in type and amount to what has been seen in the brains of people with drug addictions. While this particular research (find it here) doesn’t prove a sugar addiction, it does show that something addictive, or very similar to addiction is going on for these people.
However, I should point out that in a review of the literature on fructose, these Kiwis argued that while there is evidence for a link between sugar and addiction, there is a need for more research. They state that “In humans, carbohydrade craving has often been reported in obese people, although a full withdrawal syndrome has not been described”. I think David Gillespie and others who have followed the Sweet Poison Quit Plan would disagree- they have described it- but of course, until it is in the medical literature in a well-validated form (and even probably then) sugar as an addictive substance, rather than a rather yummy and mostly harmless sweetener will remain controversial.
What does this mean for you or me? (Selfishly, I’m more concerned about me at the moment). Well, I think that sugar is (very probably) addictive, and that if I take sugar out of my diet for more than a short amount of time, I am likely to experience withdrawal symptoms. God help me: I am a stay at home mum with a 1 year old to take care of, shaking hands ain’t going to be fun (on the other hand, withdrawal when having to go to work would not be fun either, so I won’t complain, promise). I mentioned in my first post that I have withdrawn from nicotine before, so when I stopped sugar (1 week ago today!) I knew to some extent what to expect when. I expected to want want WANT it. I expected to be antsy, needing distraction, unable to focus. I expected headaches, a funny feeling behind the eyes. I expected to be a bit snappy (or a lot snappy).
Maybe this is one of those times when expecting the worst has been for the best. I’ve not experienced much of the above, at least not to the level that I expected it. Reading the forums on the Sweet Poison and How Much Sugar websites shows me that there are varied experiences with the withdrawal phase, which seems to last about a month. My worst times this week have been when I inadvertently ate some sugar in food and felt horrible (and with all the symptoms above) afterwards- once I didn’t even realise I had eaten the sugar until I felt yuck and then checked the label on what I had eaten.
But overall, so far (touch wood) I seem to be having a fairly easy run. Maybe my practice with cigarettes has been helpful? (so perhaps I should smoke again, to reinforce my fantastic quitting abilities??) (Just kidding mum!). I think my experience has also been helped by my conviction that this is the right thing for me to do. I’m not eating sugar because I don’t want to eat sugar, so the neurochemicals can do their worst, I’m not listening (la la la). I’ll probably have to revisit the addiction topic later though, at least to update you on whether things change over the next few weeks, but also because as my hilarious remark above proves, just because one is not currently chemically addicted to something (like cigarettes) doesn’t mean that one is free from them either. I always want a cigarette and perhaps I always will. I don’t know if it will be the same for sugar. Hope not.
Overall, I believe that the rats are on the right track with this. We should listen to them more, maybe.
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