4 Ways Sugar Makes You Fat

#1 It’s As Addictive as Cocaine

In fact, it might even be more addictive than cocaine. The war on drugs? Where is the war on sugar? It’s fairly simple to imagine how this could be a problem for those affected. An addictive substance like sugar that doesn’t have many noticeable effects can be very insidious.

So, not only will one continue to eat it without thinking that it is the culprit to their health issues, their brain will encourage them to eat it. The ill effects of sugar consumption are then exacerbated by a steady intake. Once sugar is consumed, dopamine is released, and the user is satisfied. Once the insulin response clears the blood of the sugar, you become ‘hungry’ again, but the hunger experienced is typically a craving for more sugar.

#2 It Prevents Your Satiety

Perhaps the reason that sugar has been dubbed the ‘White Devil’ in some circles is due to its sneakiness. When you consume foods with fructose sugar the signal normally sent to your brain to let it know that you are full is suppressed. This allows people to overeat very easily.

Fructose sugars just simply do not make you feel full. In a recent study, researchers found that while glucose made the brain feel sated, fructose did not. Even though the calories and everything else was the same.

#3 It Tricks Your Brain into Making You Eat More

If it wasn’t bad enough that sugar played tricks on you during meal time, it also increases the frequency of your meal times. We have a hormone in us called leptin. Leptin is responsible for telling the brain that we have stored enough fat, in turn the brain turns off the feeling of hunger and raises the metabolism. Fructose makes the brain resistant to leptin, it no longer sees that we have filled our fat reserves, so we keep eating, and our metabolism slows to preserve energy. This leptin resistance caused by excessive sugar consumption causes us to starve for more sugar, and just keep eating and eating.

#4 Insulin resistance

When refined fructose enters the bloodstream it causes the largest insulin spikes. Insulin’s job is to clear the bloodstream of glucose, which has been converted from carbohydrates. If the level of glucose rises too high, it can become toxic; insulin is important. Excessive sugar consumption causes the body to need more insulin to get the job done.

Once this happens, we have insulin pumping all of the time. Insulin stores the cleared glucose as fat, and if you have insulin working overtime, you become a fat producing machine. If you really push things too far, type 2 diabetes can develop out of this.

It is important to look after a healthy and balanced nutrition. For more information on sugar and its consequences you can get in contact with our Nutrition Coaches.

Reprinted with permission from DailyHealthPost.com