How sugar affects the brain with Tom Mitchell

ARTICLE

1 November 2024

4 min read

Our quest for brain health continues with the experts at Monash Biomedical Imagery, as we investigate the effects of sugar on the brain.

Ever wondered why the sugary option feels so much more appealing than the healthy one? Well, it has a lot less to do with self-control, and a lot more to do with the control centres in your brain.

But what exactly happens when we eat sugar and how does it impact what goes on upstairs? Together with Collingwood midfielder Tom Mitchell, we visited the team at Monash Biomedical Imagery (MBI) to find out.

The Brain on Sugar with Tom Mitchell - Full episode

Testing sugar’s effects on the brain

It all starts with a gustometer. This innovative piece of technology, developed at Monash’s School of Psychology, allows researchers at MBI to measure how the brain reacts to food, by administering a range of healthy and unhealthy meals to participants within an MRI scanner.

Here’s what they learned when sugar entered our systems:

Lesson one: There’s a reason we crave sugar

Our brain likes sugar. It even lights up when we eat it. Research found that our hypothalamus, a small area in the back of the brain responsible for regulating our body’s energy, increased in activity when we consume sugary foods, compared to healthier ones.

But it doesn’t stop there. Sugar also floods our brain’s pleasure centre, driving our sense of reward and leading us to crave more of it; a desire that only increases with hunger and gets harder to avoid the more we indulge it. Hence why we want the burger when lunchtime strikes, not the salad.

Lesson two: Sugar changes our brain activity

Sugar can impact how glucose is metabolised in the brain, impacting our brain’s overall health and decision processes.

When we are healthy, we are more sensitive to insulin, (a hormone that keeps our blood glucose levels within the normal range) and can thus process glucose effectively. But when we eat a high-sugar diet, particularly over a long period of time, we can develop insulin resistance. Not only can this make us more susceptible to various health complications like diabetes, but it can also reduce our brain’s cortical thickness, hindering our brains’ processes like problem solving, memory, attention and more.

Lesson three: Small things add up

Avoiding high-fat, sugary foods can have an immediate, positive impact on the brain, and these choices add up over time. This doesn’t mean you should quit sugar entirely (fad diets can do more harm than good), but it does suggest you should enjoy the sweet stuff in moderation, opting for a soft drink on-occasion, as opposed to every day. Remember, all or something.

Like the rest of our body, what we eat has a significant impact on our brain. By making small, conscious decisions every day to choose healthier, low-sugar foods, we can not only fuel our body for the better, but improve our brain health too.

As an AIA Vitality member, you can get to know your health with one free Health Check per membership year. Completing four quick tests can tell you a lot about your overall health: test your body composition, blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol. When you achieve a result within healthy range for all categories, you earn 7,000 AIA Vitality Points, which gets you well on your way to earning Silver Status and unlocking great rewards and benefits.

Tom Mitchell

Tom is deemed one of the AFL’s elite midfielders. He won the 2018 Brownlow Medal and holds the VFL / AFL record for most disposals in a game. Off the field Tom has a love for health and fitness, travel, sport, fashion, and animals.

Copyright © 2024 AIA Australia Limited (ABN 79 004 837 861 AFSL 230043). This is general information only, without taking into account factors like the objectives, financial situation, needs or personal circumstances of any individual and is not intended to be financial, legal, tax, medical, nutritional, health, fitness or other advice. The source information of the articles is current as of the date of publication and may be subject to change. While the information contained herein is believed to be accurate, AIA Australia expressly disclaims any and all liability for representations or warranties, expressed or implied, contained in, or for omissions from, the information.

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