Sugar and Brain Health

Welcome to Brainhub Podcast where you will discover the top news and tips on keeping your brain healthy.

Hello and welcome to the Brainhub Podcast I am Matthew Holmes and with me today is Dr. Carlo Rinaudo a chiropractor and the owner of Brain Hub Clinic in Sydney.

Matthew: Hi Carlo, how are you doing?

Carlo: Great Matt, thanks for having me on today.

Matthew: It’s always a pleasure that’s for sure.  This month we had Brain Awareness Week which is an event which is organised by the Dana Foundation which is based in the United States.  They focus upon brain awareness and brain research, now obviously being the Brain Hub Podcast all our episodes are about the brain but today we are going to be taking a look specifically at how to look after your brain from a nutritional point of view and within that we are really going to be looking in detail at the effects of sugar upon the brain.  Now, in recent years there has been a trend towards highlighting the damaging effects of sugar on your health, there was a film that came out recently called That Sugar Film which highlighted how with the move away from including fat within our diet with the whole idea that fat was related to heart disease and things like that and manufacturers had to replace the nice taste that fat supplied with something else and most of the time that something else ended up being sugar.  Now, we could probably do a whole episode on why we should be including more fats in our diet and we probably will at some stage in the future but today we are going to focus on sugar.  So first of all Carlo, what role does sugar play in our brains.

Carlo: Ok, sugar, if we sit back for a second the neuron or sort of the nerve cells of the brain have a very high demand for energy compared to any other part of the body.  It needs and requires the most amount of energy to perform its activities and the energy source that it relies on typically is glucose or sugar.  So we need a constant source of sugar for our brains to function properly.  Interestingly whilst the brain actually only counts for about two percent of our total body weight, it consumes about twenty percent of the energy.  So we are certainly dependent upon it and we need a very constant supply of glucose or sugars to be able to maintain properly and because the brain is so dependent upon it, any deviation away from the low or a high state can be a precursor of the brain not functioning properly and diseases can occur later on.

Matthew: Right, so the brain really is very dependent on sugars for energy then?

Carlo: Extraordinarily.

Matthew: Yes and why is sugar so damaging for the brain?  What is it about it?

Carlo: Well, in short it can be toxic in high amounts, as I said, sugar is required but when it’s in huge supplies or an oversupply it can become quite toxic and that sugar is both in a natural form just sucrose or sort of the worst type which is the fructose or sort of the high fructose corn syrups that we often see in our products.  What it does to the brain in many things one of which it’s highly addictive, there has been many studies that have shown that our brain or the brain on addicts whether it be alcohol, a drug or nicotine addicts lights up or shows activity similar to those people that crave sugars.  So there have shown the similarity in brain function and what’s used to what’s not used from the person who crave sugars and a person who is addictive to a lot of the things that we sociably think is not being particularly good.  What it does do with the brain is typically we see people who have brain fog where a lot of the proteins that are involved with developing and communicating within the brain it adversely affects the activities of these proteins, so people often get brain fog.  We also can get over eating, so the hypothalamus which is a part of the brain that controls our appetite, when it gets affected by sugars it doesn’t alert the body to say hey you have had enough sugars in your consumption you better stop.  So people actually when they consume sugar don’t get that feeling of I am full, so they actually continue eating which is very different to those that consume fats and proteins, when you consume fats and proteins, our brain tells us, okay you have had enough we are full at the moment, that’s enough for these meals but when you have sugars you don’t actually get that sensation.  It also affects the way we learn, our memory and some studies are now showing that it could even be a precursor to things like dementia and cognitive decline.

Matthew: Ok, so I suppose that links in quite interestingly perhaps from an evolution point of view when you talk about how the hypothalamus doesn’t inhibit the uptake of sugar or not and inhibit the uptake of sugar, but you know what I meant, in that perhaps when we were out living in the plains and we were trying to survive, if we came across the starchy fruit it was in our interest to stuff as much of that into our bodies as we possibly could and store it away so as to have some reserves as we go into winter and so forth.  Well, that’s perhaps less so for eating meats and fats, is that your understanding?

Carlo: Yeah, exactly.  I guess we can pretty talk about some of the suggesting and recommendations with dietary changes and how are going back to some of those more primitive styles of eating but energy is required for us to revolve as a human species and sugars and carbohydrates are definitely a source of that but it’s a source that in modern world has changed.  We are now not eating a lot of the whole carbohydrates, the unrefined carbohydrates that are actually quite good for us, a lot of those natural forms, we are having now far more processed foods and carbohydrates in just about everything that we eat and you just have to look at the consumption of sugars in soft drinks and packaged foods, I read a stat recently that we consume five times the amount of sugars that we should normally be consuming in a Western diet and that’s pretty frightening and a lot of links to that, it’s not only brain function which is what we are talking about today, you know, in a lot of obesity, in a lot of childhood disorders that we are seeing, developmental to behavioural and a lot of adult conditions that are equally being linked too.

Matthew: Yes, you mentioned about the sugar being toxic and there is this concept of excitotoxicity out there where potentially too much sugar could drive the brain too hard, is that the case?

Carlo: Yeah, so we spoke that sugars obviously help the metabolism of our nerve cells but again like anything else there is a threshold or a tolerance which everything operates in a nice level, you exceed that then the cells can actually start to produce free radicals and these free radicals are actually quite toxic to the cell itself and this term called excitotoxicity where free radicals form, the cell deforms in its shape, it starts losing its function and it becomes very easily excited, for lack of a better word, where a small amount of stimulus that normally should be well tolerated now becomes too much of a stimulus and that’s very much in line with a lot the conditions that we can see like for migraines to seizures and other conditions that are involved with excitotoxicity.

Matthew: Yes indeed.  Now, many of our listeners have probably heard of things called type 2 diabetes and even metabolic syndrome and all insulin resistance.  What are these conditions and how do they impact upon the brain and sugar regulation and so forth?

Carlo: It starts from, you know, we ingest foods and say in this case carbohydrates, carbohydrates if you are not aware are things like breads and pastas and sugars from fruits and vegetables and so on, so they are deemed as a carbohydrate.  So our digestive system breaks it down with various enzymes that are either in our mouth or in our gut, it breaks it down to a smaller molecule or a smaller fragment that the digestive system can absorb, so it passes from the intestines into our blood stream but the sugar in our blood now is not ideal.  So what happens is as the blood sugar levels increase, our pancreas which is an organ in our abdominal area secretes insulin which is a protein, it’s secreted into the blood streams, insulin then sort of latches onto to the glucose and it moves the glucose from our blood where it’s not ideal into our muscles and other areas where once it’s there that glucose, that sugar is then used as fuel where it’s burned along with oxygen to produce energy.  With that sort of framework, type 2 diabetes is basically a progressive condition, a condition that we develop, it’s not something that we are born with or though there is a genetic component to it.  It’s something that we develop generally through our lifestyle where the body becomes resistant to one or two things, our body cannot produce insulin as well. So we either become insulin resistant or our pancreas no longer produces insulin as well. So we either become insulin resistant or our pancreas no longer produces enough insulin to meet the demand and this is what we describe as sort of type 2 diabetes and as I said it’s very lifestyle based, something that we develop throughout our lives and what was once thought as only an old person or older persons’ disorder, we are seeing that now kids in teens, it’s becoming an epidemic in our society.  Metabolic syndrome is a collection of disorders, so it’s not a disorder itself but it’s a collection. There are various criteria that the medical fraternity use to classify one of which is abdominal fat, so you need to have a large abdomen, a lot of fatty deposits around the abdomen area, you need to have high blood pressure or hypertension, you need to have abnormal cholesterol or LDL level in your blood tests and generally you are either a diabetic or pre-diabetic.  So metabolic syndrome is a combination of at least three of those by classification to be classified as a metabolic syndrome.

Matthew: Right, so it sounds quite complex.

Carlo: Oh yeah, it’s something that obviously a medical practitioner or specialist, I think a medical practitioner would certainly be the first person to diagnose that, first he assesses it and diagnoses it appropriately and then offer you a lifestyle or sometimes medication to help combat that.

Matthew: Right, ok, so given the increase in sugar in our diet and these other conditions like type 2 diabetes where there is issues with even if you are having a normal amount of sugar you are potentially getting issues with regulation of those levels.  The potential for damage to our brains has increased, besides directly reducing that sugar intake what can people do to reduce the effects on their brains?

Carlo: Moderation is always best, we are certainly not advocating a no carbohydrate diet but I would encourage people to look at good quality carbohydrates, look at foods that aren’t processed, looked at raw foods, low carbohydrates, look at whole meal foods, things that have a lower GI or glycemic index foods and I often encourage patients to be well versed, stack in some books or join forums or look online at what defines a low or a high glycemic food and particularly for your family, the kids you want to be looking at things that have a low glycemic, so you get that constant sugar hit or short sugar delivery I should say rather than the higher hit you get from high glycemic food.  Also be aware of educating yourself that low fat is not necessarily good, so if they are taking out fats they normally need to make it taste better by lighting it up with high sugars and generally with high salts at the same time.  So getting educated about reading the label and what a normal daily intake should look like, look at the ingredients, you know, when you start seeing things like high fructose corn syrup and agave syrup, those sort of things are damned good to the person but aren’t good at all, in fact the high fructose corn syrup the American FDA is on the border of actually defining it as being a toxic ingredient which should be banned, companies are looking at ways of covering it up with calling it something else but probably another discussion.  I guess other things, things like fruit juices, people go to the health food bar and get fruit juices of watermelon and apple and pineapple, again they taste great, don’t get me wrong, but we should be looking at maybe substituting fruit juices for vegetable juice, some are still quite sweet, they have the nutrients in there that make it more digestible and make them more tolerable.  Look at again low glycemic fruits, so look at berries as opposed to say pineapple or watermelon and obviously have the whole fruit rather than just the juice, there is many properties including fibre which make that sugar delivery more tolerable. As you said, you know, avoid over processed foods because we want to have more raw foods and whole foods in our diet.  Have plenty of fat in our diet with the exception of trans fats or oxygenated fats.  So we want to increase our omega 3 fatty acids, things like salmon and nuts and flax seed are really good in themselves but they also counter against fructose’s harmful effects particularly with kids substituting a lot of the sweet things like lollis with macadamias and nuts and cashews and better alternatives as well as the berries are great way of helping.  Make sure you have protein in your diet and there is a push now I mentioned this earlier that paleo diets which are high in nuts and seeds, high in proteins, good quality proteins that are generally fed and reducing a lot of the high glycemic carbohydrates and I think a big thing now that I would suggest here also is don’t have artificial sweeteners, we are talking about excitotoxicity I don’t think you need to sweeten with any of those artificial sweeteners in my opinion and I think it’s well documented as well are actually more harmful to the brain as those found in many products than sugar itself.  So I would actually put them on top of in terms of severity than sugar. So please don’t substitute sugar for a sweetening product but also, you know, you want to reduce natural sugars at the same time as well.

Matthew: Yes, so the artificial sweeteners you mean yes, I was reading an article recently, it was sort of talking about how these artificial sweeteners actually change they have got bacteria as well, so with all the talk that’s coming out now about how the gut brain axis and how gut health affects what’s happening in your brain, you know, that they are potentially coming at it from two ways there.  You mentioned about increasing fats, does that even include saturated fats and cholesterol?

Carlo: My opinion on this I think there is now a shift in the last few years away from avoiding animal fats, so what that means is that we should be including more animal fats in our diet and I include if you want to have dairy I think certainly you can have a full fat dairy, that includes things like batter and good quality animal fats that you will find in meats.  When I say good quality fats I mean sources that are from grass fed meats as opposed to maybe grain fed meats, there is a lot of good fats in there that our brain requires as well.  So that’s my opinion and something that I think we are moving more towards now in the media and certainly research is showing that to be the case as well.

Matthew: Yes, so I suppose that links back in with what you were talking about with trans fatty acids in terms of these saturated fats when they get heated they tend to turn into these trans fatty acids and become damaging at that stage.

Carlo: Yes, another word you might see on the ingredient list is hydrogenated fats and it’s those hydrogenated fats and oxidised fats and the trans fats which are not to be confused with saturated fats, there are the ones that could be really avoided because once the fat gets oxidised or it’s hydrogenated it becomes quite toxic to the body.

Matthew: Good, well I think that kind of wraps up what we are going to talk about today, was there anything else you wanted to touch on?

Carlo: No, look I think it’s a great topic, it’s something that when I start working with clients on getting their body and brains to work better we certainly look at diet because it can be an uphill battle for me to help them if they are feeding their bodies the wrong thing and I think many times we certainly go through it and some of the other suggestions that I made are also included in that discussion to help people  ensure that they get the most out of their care, ensuring that they get most out of their exercise and they get benefits from what we do.  You know, even just cleaning this up with a lot of people when we see it with kids parents and patients report back general improvement, not only in the health but also their brain function.

Matthew: Some great advice there, I mean, so if we are going summarise today’s episode we would really be advising people to reduce their sugar intake unless you are diabetic in which case you should speak to your medical practitioner before acting on any advice like that and we would also be saying that you need to be potentially increasing the good fats within your diet, trying to include things like complex carbohydrates if you are going to include sugars in your diet so that you get that sustained sugar relays rather than direct sugar hits and be looking at other energy sources like proteins and so forth.  So if you have got any questions about today’s episode on brain health or just that in general be sure to live a comment at this episode which can be found at brainhub.com.au/blog.  In addition you will also find a full transcript of today’s episode, so be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or whatever platform that you are listening to so that you don’t miss any upcoming episodes but do be sure to pop along to our blog as well to catch that additional information.  So until next time take care and we will see you then.

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