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High refined sugar intake linked to a 23% higher risk of mental disorders

ucl.ac.uk

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Re: High refined sugar intake linked to a 23% higher risk of mental disorders

#31

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

kolinko wrote: post #5

It might be just as well that increased sugar intake is caused by mental disorders, as a form of self-medication. In my case for example, my sugar consumption fell drastically since I received ADHD medications. It turns out I was using sugar as a stimulant/calming agent for years, and no doctor properly figured it out.

> no doctor properly figured it out.

You wanted a doctor to figure out you ate too many donuts and candy because of your ADHD?

That's pretty tough considering most people eat too much sugar just because.... it is good. Also it is easy as hell for EVERYONE to give up sugar once you are ADHD meds because they have a great appetite suppression effect.

That's not a special effect of mental disorders.

Re: High refined sugar intake linked to a 23% higher risk of mental disorders

#32

Post by scottLobster »

cageface wrote: post #28
shirro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nurtitionfacts.org is run by Michael Greger who is a vegan animal welfare crusader. Many of the articles have a factual basis but there is cherry picking to promote animal free diets so it is not an unbiased source.

He backs up all his claims with extensive citations from recent, peer reviewed studies. The link between meat and heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer is very well established now. Anecdotally, keto diet did absolutely nothing for me except make me feel even worse, whereas I’ve noticed dramatic improvements in mood and health after three weeks of a purely plant based diet.

Does your plant-based diet include bread/carbs, and did you stick with the keto diet for more than a few days?

Usually when people feel like crap (initially) on keto it's their bodies switching over from primarily burning sugar to primarily burning fat, but it subsides after a few hours/days depending on the person/diet (look up "keto flu").

Note that keto does not necessarily include meat. You'd get the same effect eating nothing but raw vegetables for a week.

Re: High refined sugar intake linked to a 23% higher risk of mental disorders

#33

Post by icanhackit »

dahoramanodoceu wrote: post #11
rybosome wrote: post #3

I'm curious if this includes unprocessed fructose, glucose, lactose, etc. I eat quite a bit of fruit, but my refined sugar intake is much lower than it used to be due to making an effort to cut sugary things out of my life (unless eaten with intention).

The more refined the source the faster it enters your bloodstream. That said, You should eat the fruit rather than consuming a juice. At any rate the glucose uptake is generally lower with fruits, even if juiced (but whole fruits with fiber still intact are best). The rate at which simple sugars enter the blood is considered one of the primary problems, as this leads to a number of metabolic problems and higher gener…

> At any rate the glucose uptake is generally lower with fruits, even if juiced

Fruit is typically a source of fructose, which uses a different metabolic pathway to glucose. Fructose is processed via the liver and converted into glycogen for energy storage.

That said, juice is definitely worse than whole fruit as you typically use several serves of fruit for a single serve of juice. Rarely would anyone eat 3-5 whole oranges in a single sitting. The sugars in a serve of fruit are also locked in a cellulose matrix (fibre) which limits the rate of release, whereas juice is effectively predigested food lacking the slow-release mechanism of the fibre. You're going to be loading your liver with an unnatural amount of sugar, not unlike pouring a jar of honey down your gullet.

It's a reason you should avoid mixing strong alcohol and juice or fructose-heavy soft drinks - you're hitting your liver with both barrels. Add paracetamol to the mix, which in even relatively low doses is toxic to the liver, to cure the morning headache and you're going to feel very unwell.

Re: High refined sugar intake linked to a 23% higher risk of mental disorders

#34

Post by stevenwoo »

nessup wrote: post #23

While I am all for reducing sugar consumption, this one sentence lead me to completely distrust this paper: > The study found no link between sugar intake and new mood disorders in women and it is unclear why. More research is needed to test the sugar-depression effect in large population samples. There is literally no further comment on why this effect was not observed in women. Why? To me, this means it's possible…

IIRC the study that led to people carbo loading for endurance events was first only done with males and that follow up studies found no effect in women. So we don't know the reason for the gender response difference but it exists. For a separate semi tangential on gender differences, the presence of testosterone in males appears to increase the red blood cell count and oxygen carrying ability slightly (versus testosterone deficient or females who doped in a prior era without testing versus clean females) so there is definite precedent for there being a difference in response to diet/ability due to gender/gender specific hormones.

Re: High refined sugar intake linked to a 23% higher risk of mental disorders

#35

Post by shlant »

tzamora wrote: post #19
surrey-fringe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animal products are bad for you. Not me though, I'm just trying to reduce demand.

I guess you are talking processed, adultered meat. If you have normal organic meat there is no problem at all. Likely we have been eating meat from the beginning of our existance. The problem is that the anti meat lobby like peta or sugar-bread industry want us to buy more of their products. Keto is a really good healthy diet its just that requires that you educate yourself and also is really hard to mantain because…

> If you have normal organic meat there is no problem at all

Source?

Because all of this seems to show otherwise:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23306319

http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1957

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/85/2/518.full

http://cancerpreventionresearch.aacrjournals.org/content/can...

> Likely we have been eating meat from the beginning of our existance

Just because we have evolved eating meat, doesn't necessarily mean it is the most optimal. Appeal to Nature.

> The problem is that the anti meat lobby like peta or sugar-bread industry want us to buy more of their products

What "products" is PETA selling??? I have a lot of qualms with PETA, but I have never seen them vindicated in this way...

> Keto is a really good healthy diet its just that requires that you educate yourself

You seem to be really invested in the diet. Maybe you have some bias?

Re: High refined sugar intake linked to a 23% higher risk of mental disorders

#36

Post by cageface »

scottLobster wrote: post #32
cageface wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He backs up all his claims with extensive citations from recent, peer reviewed studies. The link between meat and heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer is very well established now. Anecdotally, keto diet did absolutely nothing for me except make me feel even worse, whereas I’ve noticed dramatic improvements in mood and health after three weeks of a purely plant based diet.

Does your plant-based diet include bread/carbs, and did you stick with the keto diet for more than a few days? Usually when people feel like crap (initially) on keto it's their bodies switching over from primarily burning sugar to primarily burning fat, but it subsides after a few hours/days depending on the person/diet (look up "keto flu"). Note that keto does not necessarily include meat. You'd get the same effect…

I eat complex carbs like brown rice. I avoid refined carbs. I did keto for two weeks and finally had to stop because I felt worse and hated what I was eating. To be clear I was eating the kind of keto diet I usually see people endorse which is very heavy in animal fat and protein.

In contrast I’ve been purely plant based for three weeks now and I’ve noticed dramatic improvements in my mood and energy levels. I’ve lost a bit of weight and I really enjoy what I’m eating. The numbness and swelling I’ve struggled with for over a year as a result of surgery for a broken leg has also massively improved, which I didn’t expect.

Re: High refined sugar intake linked to a 23% higher risk of mental disorders

#37

Post by skylark »

Regist wrote: post #24

Seems like a pretty worthless study that indicates almost nothing. Lazy journalists, who are honestly worse than worthless, pick these lame correlation studies up and propegate weird misconceptions about increasing "risk factors". It's intellectually dishonest to even call the correlation increased "risk" when the cause of the link cannot be feasibly confirmed. The sane assumption from this study is that depression o…

I think you worded it a bit strongly, but I tend to agree with you.

Science: Aspartame consumption is correlated with weight gain.

Journalists: Does aspartame cause weight gain?

Readers: Aspartame causes weight gain.

I know it's up to the readers to draw the correct conclusions, but it feels a little bit dishonest for journalists to "let the cards fall where they may" so to speak.

Re: High refined sugar intake linked to a 23% higher risk of mental disorders

#38

Post by Regist »

wutbrodo wrote: post #8
kolinko wrote: post #5

It might be just as well that increased sugar intake is caused by mental disorders, as a form of self-medication. In my case for example, my sugar consumption fell drastically since I received ADHD medications. It turns out I was using sugar as a stimulant/calming agent for years, and no doctor properly figured it out.

From the beginning of the article... > Although previous studies have found an increased risk of depression with higher consumption of added sugars, none examined the role of ‘reverse causation’. If people with anxiety and/or depression tended to consume more sugary foods and drinks, this could be the real reason why a link between sugar intake and poorer mental health is observed. Although the study looked for this…

That really doesn't mean much.

Let group S be sugar eaters.

Let group A be all people w/o mental disorders.

Let group B be all people w/ mental disorders.

We have the main correlation between sugar and mental disorder:

p[A/S] Using bayes rule:

p[A]p[S/A] We also have "men and women with mental disorders were not more likely to consume more sugar":

p[S/A] >= p[S/B]

Comparing the inequalities gives us:

p[A] So you're more likely to have a mental dissorder than not according to this study???

Re: High refined sugar intake linked to a 23% higher risk of mental disorders

#39

Post by shirro »

cageface wrote: post #28
shirro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nurtitionfacts.org is run by Michael Greger who is a vegan animal welfare crusader. Many of the articles have a factual basis but there is cherry picking to promote animal free diets so it is not an unbiased source.

He backs up all his claims with extensive citations from recent, peer reviewed studies. The link between meat and heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer is very well established now. Anecdotally, keto diet did absolutely nothing for me except make me feel even worse, whereas I’ve noticed dramatic improvements in mood and health after three weeks of a purely plant based diet.

The site is very good at sourcing articles and it is an excellent resource as long as you realise he is probably ethically inclined not to promote any study which might increase the suffering of animals.

I don't think that makes him a bad person or the website valueless but it is hard to argue it does not have a strong ethical vegan bias.

At the moment I would claim that overconsumption of highly processed, mostly plant based foods is the real nutritional disaster. Meat consumption is falling in many places but obesity and related diseases are still getting worse.

If you don't have ethical concerns I think low to moderate consumption of animal protein as part of a balance diet is still probably sensible. You probably want to avoid processed meats and charring. But we are all going to die from something and statistically it probably isn't going to be from eating an occasional steak.

Re: High refined sugar intake linked to a 23% higher risk of mental disorders

#40

Post by nessup »

stevenwoo wrote: post #34
nessup wrote: post #23

While I am all for reducing sugar consumption, this one sentence lead me to completely distrust this paper: > The study found no link between sugar intake and new mood disorders in women and it is unclear why. More research is needed to test the sugar-depression effect in large population samples. There is literally no further comment on why this effect was not observed in women. Why? To me, this means it's possible…

IIRC the study that led to people carbo loading for endurance events was first only done with males and that follow up studies found no effect in women. So we don't know the reason for the gender response difference but it exists. For a separate semi tangential on gender differences, the presence of testosterone in males appears to increase the red blood cell count and oxygen carrying ability slightly (versus testost…

I'm with you there -- it's possible there could be some gender difference and it could be environmental/genetic/etc. But the author spent no more than a single sentence on what is a very glaring issue. That's sketch.
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