Sugar Addiction Is Real, A Form Of Drug Abuse

A cup of coffee in the morning, a few sweets to start your day with, fruit juice for a healthy living, tea breaks during work -- they seem quite normal to our routine. Unfortunately, these are times when we are consuming sugar, which has recently been identified as a drug.

According to Huffington Post, the typical American diet holds nearly 13 percent calories from sugar. Sugar addiction is now considered to be like any other drug addiction.

Sugar affects the brain and causes other ailments just like cocaine. Masoor Shariff studied sugar along with other drugs and came to the conclusion that they both have similar effects on a person's mental and physical health. Eating sugar and using drugs change the functionality of our brain cells in much the same way, as per the Herald Sun.

The research was actually meant to study the effect of alcohol addiction. However, this led to studying sugar and its effects. The researchers were totally shocked on seeing the unexpected findings.

There are many ways in which sugar affects the body. Too much sugar intake also results to an increase in sucrose, which leads to change in behavioral patterns in the human body. Taking too much sugar will slowly reduce the dopamine levels in the body. This, in turn, will make the person want to have more and more to get to the point of satisfaction, Independent reports.

It's an obvious fact that high levels of sugar can make you gain weight. Even animals that focus on a high sugar diet may also face neurological and psychiatric problems. Professor Selena Bartlett, a neuroscientist, points out that drugs used to treat nicotine addiction could also be used to treat addiction to sugar.

"Like other drugs of abuse, withdrawal from chronic sucrose exposure can result in an imbalance in dopamine levels and be as difficult as going 'cold turkey' from them," Bartlett said.