Sugary drinks can damage brain proteins
Sugar is brain rot — but if you have even a little piece of your own brain left, you don’t need me to tell you that.
Just about every study NOT conducted by snack industry stooges has shown time and again how sugar, especially soda, is toxic to the brain. And now, we’ve got one more study to add to the mix — one that shows in great detail how sugar alters hundreds of critical proteins inside the brain.
Outwardly, it’s what leads to the “sugar high” — the hyperactive behavior some people (especially kids) show when they’ve glugged a soda or gobbled down a candy bar.
But that’s nothing compared to what’s going on inside, because many of these damaged and altered proteins play a key role in major diseases of the brain, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and even cancer.
In the study, some rats were given plain water while others were given sugar water with the same concentration of sweet stuff found in soda and other soft drinks. After nearly a month of this, the researchers compared rodent brains — looking specifically at the orbital frontal cortex.
Of the 1,373 proteins they identified, 290 had been altered in rats given the sugar. And 30 percent of those proteins are involved in the diseases and conditions I just mentioned.
Don’t be distracted by the word “rats” here. We’re not rats, but what’s toxic to them and their brains is usually toxic to us (which is why we can experiment on them, not people, PETA be darned).
The researchers say they need to do more research on this to see if the sugar itself is the real cause of those changes, but don’t wait around for the results of that one. If you have a sugar habit — whether it’s soda, candy, pastries or all of the above — quit while you still can.