This Is What Sugar Does To Your Brain

 By Carolyn Gregoire

We know that too much sugar is bad for our waistlines and our heart health, but now there's mounting evidence that high levels of sugar consumption can also have a negative effect on brain health -- from cognitive function to psychological wellbeing.

While sugar is nothing to be too concerned about in small quantities, most of us are simply eating too much of it. The sweet stuff -- which also goes by names like glucose, fructose, honey and corn syrup -- is found in 74 percent of packaged foods in our supermarkets. And while the Word Health Organization recommends that only 5 percent of daily caloric intake come from sugar, the typical American diet is comprised of 13 percent calories from sugar.

“Many Americans eat about five times the amount of sugar they should consume,”Natasa Janicic-Kahric, an associate professor of medicine at Georgetown University Hospital, told The Washington Post.

It's easy to see how we can get hooked on sugar. However, we should be aware of the risks that a high-sugar diet poses for brain function and mental well-being.

Here's what you need to know about how overconsumption of sugar could wreak havoc on your brain.

It creates a vicious cycle of intense cravings.

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.

"Over-activating this reward system kickstarts a series of unfortunate events -- loss of control, craving, and increased tolerance to sugar," neuroscientist Nicole Avena explained in a TED-Ed video.

In fact, research has shown that the brains of obese children actually light up differently when they taste sugar, reflecting an elevated "food reward" response. This suggests that their brain circuitry may predispose these children to a lifetime of intense sugar cravings.

It impairs memory and learning skills.

A 2012 study on rats, conducted by researchers at UCLA, found that a diet high in fructose (that's just another word for sugar) hinders learning and memory by literally slowing down the brain. The researchers found that rats who over-consumed fructose had damaged synaptic activity in the brain, meaning that communication among brain cells was impaired.

Heavy sugar intake caused the rats to develop a resistance to insulin -- a hormone that controls blood sugar levels and also regulates the function of brain cells. Insulin strengthens the synaptic connections between brain cells, helping them to communicate better and thereby form stronger memories. So when insulin levels in the brain are lowered as the result of excess sugar consumption, cognition can be impaired.

"Insulin is important in the body for controlling blood sugar, but it may play a different role in the brain," Dr. Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, the study's lead author, said in a statement. "Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new."

It may cause or contribute to depression and anxiety.

If you've ever experienced a sugar crash, then you know that sudden peaks and drops in blood sugar levels can cause you to experience symptoms like irritability, mood swings, brain fog and fatigue. That's because eating a sugar-laden donut or drinking a soda causes blood sugar levels to spike upon consumption and then plummet. When your blood sugar inevitably dips back down (hence the "crash"), you may find yourself feeling anxious, moody or depressed.

Sugar-rich and carb-laden foods can also mess with the neurotransmitters that help keep our moods stable. Consuming sugar stimulates the release of the mood-boosting neurotransmitter serotonin. Constantly over-activating these serotonin pathways can deplete our limited supplies of the neurotransmitter, which can contribute to symptoms of depression, according to Dr. Datis Kharrazian, functional medicine expert and author of Why Isn't My Brain Working?.

Chronically high blood sugar levels have also been linked to inflammation in the brain. And as some research has suggested, neuroinflammation may be one possible cause of depression.

Teenagers may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of sugar on mood. A recent study on adolescent mice, conducted by researchers at Emory University School of Medicine, found a diet high in sugar to contribute to depression and anxiety-like behavior.

Research has also found that people who eat a standard American diet that's high in processed foods -- which typically contain high amounts of saturated fat, sugar and salt -- are at an increased risk for developing depression, compared to those who eat a whole foods diet that's lower in sugar.

It's a risk factor for age-related cognitive decline and dementia.

A growing body of research suggests that a sugar-heavy diet could increase risk for developing Alzheimer's disease. A 2013 study found that insulin resistance and blood glucose levels -- which are hallmarks of diabetes -- are linked with a greater risk for developing neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's. The research “offers more evidence that the brain is a target organ for damage by high blood sugar,”endocrinologist Dr. Medha Munshi told the New York Times.

Some researchers, in fact, have even referred to Alzheimer's as "Type 3 Diabetes" -- which suggests that diet may have some role in an individual's risk for developing the disease.

How Playing an instrument benefits Your Brain

How Playing an instrument benefits Your Brain

Dark Chocolate Could Improve Memory By 25%, But You’d Have to Eat Seven Bars a Day

For years, scientists have been trying to prove that chocolate is good for us. The idea was based on more than the desires of a sweet-toothed scientist—cocoa is high in antioxidants known as flavanols. But proving those hypothetical health benefits hasn’t been easy.

Now, there’s new evidence to suggest that chocolate dramatically improves the memory skills that people lose with age. When healthy people between the ages of 50 and 69 drank a mixture high in cocoa flavanols for three months, they performed about 25% better on a memory test compared to a control group of participants.

Dr. Scott A. Small, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center, led the study, which was funded by the chocolate company Mars, the National Institutes of Health, and two other research foundations. The results were published yesterday in Nature Neuroscience.

When healthy people ages 50 to 69 drank a mixture high in cocoa flavanols for three months, they performed about 25% better on a memory test.

Here’s Pam Belluck, writing for The New York Times:

The findings support recent research linking flavanols, especially epicatechin, to improved blood circulation, heart health and memory in mice, snails and humans. But experts said the new study, although involving only 37 participants and partly funded by Mars Inc., the chocolate company, goes further and was a well-controlled, randomized trial led by experienced researchers.

Besides improvements on the memory test — a pattern recognition test involving the kind of skill used in remembering where you parked the car or recalling the face of someone you just met — researchers found increased function in an area of the brain’s hippocampus called the dentate gyrus, which has been linked to this type of memory.

While the study supports the idea that cocoa flavanols help reverse age-related memory decline, it probably won’t ward off Alzheimer’s. The participants didn’t show any marked difference in the functioning of the entorhinal cortex, which is impaired in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The distinction shows that age-related and Alzheimer’s-related memory loss are not the same thing, and that flavanols won’t have an effect on cognitive disease.

Even if you don’t have Alzheimer’s, though, binging on any old chocolate this Halloween will help you remember where you left your keys. Milk chocolate won’t help since processing usually removes the key flanvanol epicatechin. Eating dark chocolate may not help much, either. To ingest the same amount of epicatechin as the study group, you’d have to consume the equivalent of about seven average-sized bars a day, which would probably invite other health problems.

Experts have other qualms about the study, including whether or not participants’ overall diet was account for, but the new study is at least a step forward in understanding dark chocolate’s rich rewards.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/seven-bars-dark-chocolate-improve-memory-25/

Sharpen The Brain For Memory

Sharpen The Brain For Memory

Naturally Improve ADHD Symptoms in Children with This Single Herb

BY CHRISTINA SARICH
According to the CDC, ADHD, the ‘disease’ that causes children to have difficulty focusing and to act hyper is rising every year. Millions of parents put their children on medications to try to help them do better in school and to tame their unruly behavior, but a what everyone should know is that dietary adjustments is often the only solution necessary. In some cases, a single herb – Ginkgo biloba – can help to lessen ADHD symptoms in very little time.

The CDC states that:
About 11% of children 4-17 years of age (6.4 million) have been diagnosed with ADHD as of 2011.
The percentage of children with an ADHD diagnosis has increased, from 7.8% in 2003 to 9.5% in 2007 and to 11.0% in 2011.
Rates of ADHD diagnosis increase an average of 3% per year from 1997 to 2006 and now approximately 5% per year.
Ginkgo biloba is a natural herb that can replace many medications that leave children in a fog, causing them to feel unlike their true selves. It has been used for centuries as a neurological supporter, with both children and adults having enjoyed its brain boosting power in years past.

Now, there is clinical proof from the University of Tübingen’s Center for Medicine, Society and Prevention in Germany, that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can rely on Ginkgo for better cognitive functioning and a more focused mind. Ginkgo biloba extract was used on 20 children diagnosed with ADHD in the trial:

“The children were given the Ginkgo extract for three to five weeks at a dosage of up to 240 milligrams. This maximum dosage was given to those children who did not have immediate effective responses to a lower dose over the initial period of three weeks.

The researchers utilized clinical assessments to rate the improvement in symptoms along with the Continuous Performance Test (Cue-CNV in the CPT) that tested the brain’s electrical activity among the children. The researchers also assessed the children with quality of life testing and the Side Effect Rating Scale.”
Read: 3 Powerful, Natural Remedies for ADHD

The researchers found that every single child’s ADHD symptoms improved with the use of Ginkgo biloba.

“Overall, the results from both objective, standardized, neuropsychological tests and a subjective, follow-up self-report questionnaire provided complementary evidence of the potential efficacy of Ginkgo biloba EGb 761 in enhancing certain neuropsychological/memory processes of cognitively intact older adults, 60 years of age and over.”

The study abstract concludes:

“This preliminary evidence suggests that EGb 761® at a maximal dosage of 240 mg daily might be a clinically useful alternative treatment for children with ADHD, but further evidence is required before firm conclusions can be made.”
These findings echo earlier studies conducted more than a decade ago at the Virginia’s Liberty University, only on the elderly instead of ADHD children. Utilizing just 180 milligrams of Ginkgo biloba daily, the participants in the non-placebo group experienced improvement in memory response and visual recognition.

http://naturalsociety.com/naturally-improve-adhd-symptoms-children-single-herb/#ixzz3O62ht4zv

Did You Realize Your Brain Could Actually Be Affected By These 15 Things?

http://9gag.com/gag/ae3Arg5?ref=fsidebar

Does Exercise Really Make Us Smarter?

Exercise seems to be good for the human brain, with many recent studies suggesting that regular exercise improves memory and thinking skills. But an interesting new study asks whether the apparent cognitive benefits from exercise are real or just a placebo effect — that is, if we think we will be “smarter” after exercise, do our brains respond accordingly? The answer has significant implications for any of us hoping to use exercise to keep our minds sharp throughout our lives.

In experimental science, the best, most reliable studies randomly divide participants into two groups, one of which receives the drug or other treatment being studied and the other of which is given a placebo, similar in appearance to the drug, but not containing the active ingredient.

Placebos are important, because they help scientists to control for people’s expectations. If people believe that a drug, for example, will lead to certain outcomes, their bodies may produce those results, even if the volunteers are taking a look-alike dummy pill. That’s the placebo effect, and its occurrence suggests that the drug or procedure under consideration isn’t as effective as it might seem to be; some of the work is being done by people’s expectations, not by the medicine.

Recently, some scientists have begun to question whether the apparently beneficial effects of exercise on thinking might be a placebo effect. While many studies suggest that exercise may have cognitive benefits, those experiments all have had a notable scientific limitation: They have not used placebos.

This issue is not some abstruse scientific debate. If the cognitive benefits from exercise are a result of a placebo effect rather than of actual changes in the brain because of the exercise, then those benefits could be ephemeral and unable in the long term to help us remember how to spell ephemeral.

Studying this issue, however, is difficult. There is no placebo for exercise and no way to blind people about whether they are exercising. They know if they are walking or cycling or not.

So researchers at Florida State University in Tallahassee and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign came up with a clever workaround. They decided to focus on expectations, on what people anticipate that exercise will do for thinking. If people’s expectations jibe closely with the actual benefits, then at least some of those improvements are probably a result of the placebo effect and not of exercise.

The scientists had seen this situation at work during an earlier study of video games and cognition. Past research had suggested that playing action-oriented video games improves players’ subsequent thinking skills. But when scientists in the new study asked video-game players to estimate by how much the games would improve their thinking, the players’ estimates almost exactly matched the gains seen on cognitive tests after playing. In other words, the cognitive benefits of playing video games appear to be largely a result of a placebo effect.

For the new study, which was published last month in PLOS One, the researchers repeated this experiment but focused on exercise. Recruiting 171 people through an online survey system, they asked half of these volunteers to estimate by how much a stretching and toning program performed three times a week might improve various measures of thinking, including memory and mental multitasking.

The other volunteers were asked the same questions, but about a regular walking program.

In actual experiments, stretching and toning regimens generally have little if any impact on people’s cognitive skills. Walking, on the other hand, seems to substantially improve thinking ability.

But the survey respondents believed the opposite, estimating that the stretching and toning program would be more beneficial for the mind than walking. The volunteers’ estimates of the likely cognitive improvements from gentle toning averaged about a three on a scale from one to six. The estimates of benefits from walking were lower.

These data, while they do not involve any actual exercise, are good news for people who do exercise. “The results from our study suggest that the benefits of aerobic exercise are not a placebo effect,” said Cary Stothart, a graduate student in cognitive psychology at Florida State University, who led the study.

If expectations had been driving the improvements in cognition seen in studies after exercise, Mr. Stothart said, then people should have expected walking to be more beneficial for thinking than stretching. They didn’t, implying that the changes in the brain and thinking after exercise are physiologically genuine.

Of course, this study was small and involved a self-selected group of people who happen to like completing online surveys. Some said they exercised, others said they did not. None claimed to be familiar with the science related to exercise and the brain, but it is impossible to know if people were being forthright.

Still, the findings are strong enough to suggest that exercise really does change the brain and may, in the process, improve thinking, Mr. Stothart said. That conclusion should encourage scientists to look even more closely into how, at a molecular level, exercise remodels the human brain, he said. It also should spur the rest of us to move, since the benefits are, it seems, not imaginary, even if they are in our head.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/does-exercise-really-make-us-smarter/

HOW LAUGHTER IMPROVES YOUR MEMORY

Dr. Victor Marchione MD

You don’t need a doctor to tell you that a giggle session is good for the soul, but new research shows that it can also be good for your brain.

A recent study of people with diabetes (rising numbers in North America) found that laughter could reduce age-related memory loss.

I’m all for it! Life is short, after all, and if can’t have a bring-you-to-tears laughter session now and again, well, what’s it all for?

COULD YOU PASS A MEMORY TEST (WITH FLYING COLORS)?

The study, presented at San Diego’s Experimental Biology meeting, involved 20 healthy individuals aged 66 to 72. Researchers at Loma Linda University in California had one group of test subjects sit quietly in a room and had the other, which included both people with diabetes and those without, watch a short comedy video.

Immediately after, they tested the patients’ memory and found that those who had watched the funny video performed better on all of its measures – memory recall, learning ability and visual recognition. The researchers found that memory recall and learning ability were up by about 40 percent in the group that watched the funny video, compared to 20 percent for the group that watched nothing.

The study subjects also showed lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone known to negatively impact brain neurons, after watching the video. Measured at the start and end of the test via saliva samples, the cortisol levels decreased in the humor group for those both with and without diabetes, but stayed constant in the control group.

The subject group with diabetes showed both the greatest improvements in the memory test and the greatest reductions in cortisol levels after watching the comedy video. So watching those crazy YouTube videos your friends and family email you might do you and your brain a world of good.

STRESS CAN HARM YOUR BODY AND YOUR BRAIN

Too much stress is hard on your body, we all know that. But recent research has shown that stressful emotions could make the brain more susceptible to mental illness and previous studies have shown that stress increases cortisol production. This lends credit to the idea that stress can damage memory and the ability to learn in older people.

The recent California study shows that a person’s memory performance should improve as they encounter less stress, co-author Dr. Lee Burk told Medical News Today. “Humor reduces detrimental stress hormones like cortisol that decrease memory hippocampal neurons, lowers your blood pressure, and increases blood flow and your mood state,” Burk explained. All good!

Laughter causes your body to release more endorphins and dopamine to the brain, which makes us feel good and improves memory by increasing gamma wave band frequency, he said.

The research could be used to improve rehabilitation and wellness programs for the elderly. Cognitive abilities like learning and memory recall get more difficult as we age, but are essential for our quality of life. Burk says, “Although older adults have age-related memory deficits, complementary, enjoyable and beneficial humor therapies need to be implemented for these individuals.”

ABC News recently reported that laughter also has the potential to improve immune function and change brain wave activity toward the “gamma frequency” that improves memory and recall. However, the study group was small, which limits the degree to which the results can be applied to the population as a whole.

Regardless, it is always a good idea to make a point out of having a good laugh every day, but the added bonus of improved memory might sell the idea to you even more!

http://www.the-open-mind.com/how-laughter-improves-your-memory/

5 Ridiculously Easy Ways to Improve Memory

June 21, 2014

By Mariam Jehangir

Viewing this on a mobile device? Scroll down to read the reasons why these things help your memory!

Monday morning haziness, mid-week brain drain, Friday frazzle. We all experience that scatterbrained feeling when we just can’t seem to think straight or make simple mistakes that usually don’t happen. Most of us have learned to live with that as a way of life but when it starts to negatively affect your memory, that’s when things become really problematic. From missing appointments, to forgetting to pack an essential item for a business meeting and more, poor memory can wreck havoc on anyone’s day.

That’s when you need to start thinking about doing something about the problem. Fortunately, there are a few simple things you can start with that can you you remember things much better. And none of them involve sticky notes!

Susan Hall from Health.com offers the latest on how to keep your noggin in tip-top shape. From including certain fruits in your diet to hitting the hay sooner and more, these are simple things you can start incorporating in your life today and reap major benefits. How do we know it works? Aside from the scientific studies and research backing these claims, we have taken these tips to heart and have been practicing them ourselves — and let’s just say, we haven’t “misplaced” our car keys or forgotten an important date recently!

So what are you waiting for? Check out these 5 easy tips below and never forget another moment.

1. Sleep more
Getting at least six hours of sleep every night will help retaining information much better, suggests a study in the Journal of Learning and Memory. Researchers think sleep improves memory by consolidating and organizing information in your brain so that it comes back correctly. So turn off the TV and get your Zzz’s on.

2. Look up some Italian recipes
Research suggests people who have a consistent Mediterranean diet have a 36% less likelihood of suffering from the damage linked with thinking impairment and memory loss associated with aging. So cook some fish and veggies, drizzle on some olive oil and enjoy a cup of wine for dinner tonight.

3. Munch on some blueberries
A study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry looked into the antioxidant-rich fruit and found that the high supply of anthocyanins can encourage the neuron communication in the brain, which in turn can help prevent memory loss.

4. Play brain games
Numerous neuroscience studies confirm what your mom always told you: Exercising your word skills helps to keep it all together and prevents memory loss. Whether you’re playing online brain training games or reading a new book, just keep your mind working.

5. Just relax!
A study from the University of Rochester suggests a busy, anxiety-inducing lifestyle makes it nearly impossible for your brain to take in new information. In order to help you relax, try regular deep breathing for a while, or take a stroll in the park during your lunch break to help ease your mind.

http://firsttoknow.com/nurture-your-noggin-5-simple-ways-to-improve-memory/

Laughing Makes Your Brain Work Better, New Study Finds

By SARAH FIGALORA

Ever have trouble remembering where you just left your keys? Just laugh it off. New research suggests that humor can improve short-term memory in older adults.

In a recent small study conducted at Loma Linda University in Southern California, 20 normal, healthy, older adults watched a funny video distraction-free for 20 minutes, while a control group sat calmly with no video. Afterwards, they performed memory tests and had saliva samples analyzed for stress hormones.

You guessed it; those who got to laugh the 20 minutes away with the funny video scored better on short-term memory tests, researchers said. And salivary levels of the stress hormone cortisol -- a memory enemy of sorts -- were significantly decreased in the humor group.

"Learning ability and delayed recall become more challenging as we age," said study author Dr. Gurinder S. Bains, a Ph.D. candidate in Rehabilitation Sciences. "Laughing with friends or even watching 20 minutes of humor on TV, as I do daily, helps me cope with my daily stressors."

The less stress you have, researchers said, the better your memory. It works like this: humor reduces stress hormones, lowers your blood pressure, and increases your mood state, according to Dr. Lee Berk, a co-author of the study and associate professor of Allied Heath.

The act of laughter -- or simply enjoying some humor -- increases endorphins, sending dopamine to the brain to provide a sense of pleasure and reward, Berk said.

That, in turn, makes the immune system work better and changes brain wave activity towards what's called a "gamma frequency," amping up memory and recall.

Want to lower your stress levels?

"Begin by laughing more daily," Bains said. "It will improve your quality of life."

So, maybe you don't have to feel bad about all that time you spend watching funny videos at work?

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/laughing-makes-brain-work-study-finds/story?id=23393053