Confession: This is How Facebook Steals your Attention

The Facebook Bubble Effect: The user reads what his friends and his ideologically related people send him, concluded a study published in the North American scientific journal PNAS, that analysed 376 million interactions among Facebook users. [image: https://www.americaherald.com/facebook-exec-feels-guilty/29858/]

(The Real Agenda News) The key that opened to door for Facebook is apparently, dopamine.

To get people to stay on Facebook for a long time, you have to generate dopamine discharges.

These discharges are ephemeral instants of happiness and those moments go hand in hand with the LIKES and SHARES.

The Modus Operandi of Facebook is based on its explicit “exploitation of the vulnerability of human psychology,” confesses Sean Parker, one of the inventors of this social network.

“The inventors; me, Mark Zuckerberg, and Kevin Systrom of Instagram and all those people, we knew. Despite this, we did it.”

Parker confessed his discouragement with Facebook in a recent public intervention and declared himself an objector of social networks. He ended his speech with a disturbing phrase:

“Only God knows what is being done with the brains of children.”

There was a time when the one who DISLIKED these platforms was branded by default as resistant to change, as old.

That time passed. A real storm is being unleashed around the role played by social networks in our society.

Facebook and Twitter are accused of having become spaces that tighten the debate and contaminate it with false information.

There is already a belief that if you live in these platforms and spend as much time as possible in them, they will create addiction; the networks combined with mobile devices contaminate people to the point they’ve become addictive inventions, the new tobacco. a public health problem.

Facebook and other social networks are a democratic health problem

On December 12, 2017, a former vice president of Facebook, Chamath Palihapitiya, assured that the networks are “tearing” the social fabric apart.

“The short-term feedback cycles driven by the dopamine we have created are destroying the functioning of society,” he said in a forum at the Stanford School of Business.

On January 23, Tim Cook, CEO of the all-powerful Apple, said he did not want his 12-year-old nephew to have access to social media.

On February 7, actor Jim Carrey sold his shares of the platform and encouraged Facebook to boycott his passivity in the face of alleged Russian interference in the elections.

The perception we have of networks has mutated. They were born as an instrument to connect with friends and share ideas.

The alleged isolation generated by the Internet paled. They became a democratizing force in the heat of the Arab Spring. They seemed like a perfect tool for social change, they empowered the citizen.

“They gave voice to those who did not have a voice,” said Emily Taylor, an executive at Oxford Information Labs, who has been working on governance issues on the Web.

“In just seven years, everything has changed. These political advertising campaigns are aimed at altering the electoral processes. “

The passage through the polls of the Brexit and the election of Donald Trump are two of the phenomena that pushed everyone to ask themselves questions: how did nobody see it arrive? The answer, in part, was sought and found in the networks.

Facebook was cited in October by the Justice Committee of the US Congress to explain its role in the alleged Russian interference in US elections in 2016.

It was admitted that 126 million people had been able to access content generated by alleged Russian agents (the Internet Research Agency), which also posted about a thousand videos on YouTube and 131,000 messages on Twitter.

Among all those messages were news stories that Hillary Clinton had sold arms to ISIS, during her tenance in the 8 years Barack Obama was president of the United States.

A Pew Research study published in October 2016 points out that 49% of North American users consider that political conversations on social networks are more furious than in real life.

Facebook and other social media contribute the tension

“On Twitter,” says researcher Mari Luz Congosto,” the tone is very harsh. The sour tone has increased, before it was more jocular. The messages have become harder. “

But this has not been the only controversy.

The networks have been in focus for the purchase of fictitious followers by influencers; for the public lynching of people who are reported in the networks and are ostracized without trial.

In Myanmar, Facebook experienced one of its worst episodes: last year it was accused of becoming the fundamental vector of propaganda against the Rohingya minority, victim of a genocide.

A research report published last week by Wired magazine highlights the internal hell that the organization has lived in the last two years.

The tension over what to do once embarked on what was a reality – its status as a global information vehicle – disputes over disputes over how to deal with the avalanche of false news and the tension that was flooding its pages has mowed the reigning optimism, including Zuckerberg’s own.

Facebook is the leading platform in redirecting readers towards content since mid-2015, when it surpassed Google.

More than 2,130 million people are part of its community. There are 332 million on Twitter. Two thirds of American adults (67%) report being informed via social networks, according to an August 2017 study conducted by the Pew Research Center.

Facebook does not create content, but it filters it, hides it, censors it and ocassionally organizes it. First it decided to carry out editorial work with a team of journalists who chose the most popular news. Then, after several scandals during the campaign, they bet on the algorithms, but the decision backfired.

The problem is the business model. This is what Emily Taylor points out. The user agrees to transfer data in exchange for a free service.

The algorithms use that information to determine the interests of the user. Advertising firms pay for it.

“Not only are data extracted from what is publicly posted,” says Taylor, “but also from the location of private messages.”

The more time we spend on the platform, the more data can be extracted.

A shocking, sensational, even improbable, news calls more to reading than a calm and balanced analysis. A drift that affects both networks and traditional media.

“Facebook shows you what the algorithm wants, we do not know with what objective, whether perverse or not,” says Mari Luz Congosto, network expert and researcher at the Telematics Group.

“You lose a part of your freedom and the platform does business with that. Manipulates what people read, marks the way. “

And the problem is that the algorithm commands more and more. We have gone from an Internet that was accessed by computers, in which one sought, explored, to one that is reached through applications installed on the mobile. It is something that happens, above all, with a whole generation of young people living inside their phone.

“The Internet comes to you through an algorithm, it is not you who are going to look for something on the Internet,” said Guatemalan lawyer and digital activist Renata Ávila.

“Before we used to operate on the street, the world was ours, we entered and left the buildings. Now we are locked in a mall with strict rules that only seek to maximize the business model. “

For Ávila, the problem is not unique to Facebook, far from it. All platforms work the same: “The problem is the architecture of the mobile, of the apps. The business model. “

The Facebook Bubble Effect

The user reads what his friends and his ideologically related people send him, concluded  a study published in the North American scientific journal PNAS, that analyzed 376 million interactions among Facebook users. It also concluded that people tend to look for information aligned with their political and ideological ideas.

Although Zuckerberg says that he is willing to stop news, brands and memes, even if he is going to tweak the algorithm so that there is less information and more relationship between users, he will not want to lose advertising revenues that come in depending on the time spent in his network

Jonathan Taplin, entrepreneur who published the book Move Fast And Break Things: How Facebook, Google And Amazon Cornered Culture And Undermined Democracy, has all his hopes placed in the EU.

“Europe is leading the world in this,” he states.

“We should thank, for example, that Google will be fined 2,4 million euros for abuse of dominant position.”

“You have to regulate,” says Taplin. “We need laws. It is not the market that is going to solve the problem.”

Taplin advocates reducing the size of these empires by law: forcing Google to sell YouTube; Facebook to get rid of Instagram and WhatsApp; apply competition laws, resize.

The Silicon Valley greats, meanwhile, have sent an army of lobbyists to Washington. They fear that the same that happened to Microsoft will happen to them: They’ll be condemned because of their abusive monopoly practices.

There are voices that demand that platforms have to respond for what is published in them, a ridiculous proposal, since social media are mere channels.

Will anyone propose that mainstream media face a court for knowingly lying to the public to advance their interests to make a profit?

There are others that demand that educational programs include practical elements that allow young people to learn to manage the addictive component of networks must be created and added to social media content.

Some people say, finally, in a clear display of anthropological optimism, that people will progressively get of with their lives without them, just as many people got rid of junk food, and that they will choose to devote their reading time to more select bites.

The post Confession: This is How Facebook Steals your Attention appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Confession: This is How Facebook Steals your Attention

The Facebook Bubble Effect: The user reads what his friends and his ideologically related people send him, concluded a study published in the North American scientific journal PNAS, that analysed 376 million interactions among Facebook users. [image: https://www.americaherald.com/facebook-exec-feels-guilty/29858/]

(The Real Agenda News) The key that opened to door for Facebook is apparently, dopamine.

To get people to stay on Facebook for a long time, you have to generate dopamine discharges.

These discharges are ephemeral instants of happiness and those moments go hand in hand with the LIKES and SHARES.

The Modus Operandi of Facebook is based on its explicit “exploitation of the vulnerability of human psychology,” confesses Sean Parker, one of the inventors of this social network.

“The inventors; me, Mark Zuckerberg, and Kevin Systrom of Instagram and all those people, we knew. Despite this, we did it.”

Parker confessed his discouragement with Facebook in a recent public intervention and declared himself an objector of social networks. He ended his speech with a disturbing phrase:

“Only God knows what is being done with the brains of children.”

There was a time when the one who DISLIKED these platforms was branded by default as resistant to change, as old.

That time passed. A real storm is being unleashed around the role played by social networks in our society.

Facebook and Twitter are accused of having become spaces that tighten the debate and contaminate it with false information.

There is already a belief that if you live in these platforms and spend as much time as possible in them, they will create addiction; the networks combined with mobile devices contaminate people to the point they’ve become addictive inventions, the new tobacco. a public health problem.

Facebook and other social networks are a democratic health problem

On December 12, 2017, a former vice president of Facebook, Chamath Palihapitiya, assured that the networks are “tearing” the social fabric apart.

“The short-term feedback cycles driven by the dopamine we have created are destroying the functioning of society,” he said in a forum at the Stanford School of Business.

On January 23, Tim Cook, CEO of the all-powerful Apple, said he did not want his 12-year-old nephew to have access to social media.

On February 7, actor Jim Carrey sold his shares of the platform and encouraged Facebook to boycott his passivity in the face of alleged Russian interference in the elections.

The perception we have of networks has mutated. They were born as an instrument to connect with friends and share ideas.

The alleged isolation generated by the Internet paled. They became a democratizing force in the heat of the Arab Spring. They seemed like a perfect tool for social change, they empowered the citizen.

“They gave voice to those who did not have a voice,” said Emily Taylor, an executive at Oxford Information Labs, who has been working on governance issues on the Web.

“In just seven years, everything has changed. These political advertising campaigns are aimed at altering the electoral processes. “

The passage through the polls of the Brexit and the election of Donald Trump are two of the phenomena that pushed everyone to ask themselves questions: how did nobody see it arrive? The answer, in part, was sought and found in the networks.

Facebook was cited in October by the Justice Committee of the US Congress to explain its role in the alleged Russian interference in US elections in 2016.

It was admitted that 126 million people had been able to access content generated by alleged Russian agents (the Internet Research Agency), which also posted about a thousand videos on YouTube and 131,000 messages on Twitter.

Among all those messages were news stories that Hillary Clinton had sold arms to ISIS, during her tenance in the 8 years Barack Obama was president of the United States.

A Pew Research study published in October 2016 points out that 49% of North American users consider that political conversations on social networks are more furious than in real life.

Facebook and other social media contribute the tension

“On Twitter,” says researcher Mari Luz Congosto,” the tone is very harsh. The sour tone has increased, before it was more jocular. The messages have become harder. “

But this has not been the only controversy.

The networks have been in focus for the purchase of fictitious followers by influencers; for the public lynching of people who are reported in the networks and are ostracized without trial.

In Myanmar, Facebook experienced one of its worst episodes: last year it was accused of becoming the fundamental vector of propaganda against the Rohingya minority, victim of a genocide.

A research report published last week by Wired magazine highlights the internal hell that the organization has lived in the last two years.

The tension over what to do once embarked on what was a reality – its status as a global information vehicle – disputes over disputes over how to deal with the avalanche of false news and the tension that was flooding its pages has mowed the reigning optimism, including Zuckerberg’s own.

Facebook is the leading platform in redirecting readers towards content since mid-2015, when it surpassed Google.

More than 2,130 million people are part of its community. There are 332 million on Twitter. Two thirds of American adults (67%) report being informed via social networks, according to an August 2017 study conducted by the Pew Research Center.

Facebook does not create content, but it filters it, hides it, censors it and ocassionally organizes it. First it decided to carry out editorial work with a team of journalists who chose the most popular news. Then, after several scandals during the campaign, they bet on the algorithms, but the decision backfired.

The problem is the business model. This is what Emily Taylor points out. The user agrees to transfer data in exchange for a free service.

The algorithms use that information to determine the interests of the user. Advertising firms pay for it.

“Not only are data extracted from what is publicly posted,” says Taylor, “but also from the location of private messages.”

The more time we spend on the platform, the more data can be extracted.

A shocking, sensational, even improbable, news calls more to reading than a calm and balanced analysis. A drift that affects both networks and traditional media.

“Facebook shows you what the algorithm wants, we do not know with what objective, whether perverse or not,” says Mari Luz Congosto, network expert and researcher at the Telematics Group.

“You lose a part of your freedom and the platform does business with that. Manipulates what people read, marks the way. “

And the problem is that the algorithm commands more and more. We have gone from an Internet that was accessed by computers, in which one sought, explored, to one that is reached through applications installed on the mobile. It is something that happens, above all, with a whole generation of young people living inside their phone.

“The Internet comes to you through an algorithm, it is not you who are going to look for something on the Internet,” said Guatemalan lawyer and digital activist Renata Ávila.

“Before we used to operate on the street, the world was ours, we entered and left the buildings. Now we are locked in a mall with strict rules that only seek to maximize the business model. “

For Ávila, the problem is not unique to Facebook, far from it. All platforms work the same: “The problem is the architecture of the mobile, of the apps. The business model. “

The Facebook Bubble Effect

The user reads what his friends and his ideologically related people send him, concluded  a study published in the North American scientific journal PNAS, that analyzed 376 million interactions among Facebook users. It also concluded that people tend to look for information aligned with their political and ideological ideas.

Although Zuckerberg says that he is willing to stop news, brands and memes, even if he is going to tweak the algorithm so that there is less information and more relationship between users, he will not want to lose advertising revenues that come in depending on the time spent in his network

Jonathan Taplin, entrepreneur who published the book Move Fast And Break Things: How Facebook, Google And Amazon Cornered Culture And Undermined Democracy, has all his hopes placed in the EU.

“Europe is leading the world in this,” he states.

“We should thank, for example, that Google will be fined 2,4 million euros for abuse of dominant position.”

“You have to regulate,” says Taplin. “We need laws. It is not the market that is going to solve the problem.”

Taplin advocates reducing the size of these empires by law: forcing Google to sell YouTube; Facebook to get rid of Instagram and WhatsApp; apply competition laws, resize.

The Silicon Valley greats, meanwhile, have sent an army of lobbyists to Washington. They fear that the same that happened to Microsoft will happen to them: They’ll be condemned because of their abusive monopoly practices.

There are voices that demand that platforms have to respond for what is published in them, a ridiculous proposal, since social media are mere channels.

Will anyone propose that mainstream media face a court for knowingly lying to the public to advance their interests to make a profit?

There are others that demand that educational programs include practical elements that allow young people to learn to manage the addictive component of networks must be created and added to social media content.

Some people say, finally, in a clear display of anthropological optimism, that people will progressively get of with their lives without them, just as many people got rid of junk food, and that they will choose to devote their reading time to more select bites.

The post Confession: This is How Facebook Steals your Attention appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Former Facebook Executive: ‘You Don’t Realize It, But You Are Being Programmed’

A former Facebook executive, who openly admits to not using social media, has come out about the role he played in “ripping apart the fabric of society.”  Chamath Palihapitiya has publicly declared that he didn’t really understand “the consequences” of what he was doing.

This isn’t the first time a social media powerhouse has come forward with regret for helping create a social media platform either. Facebook’s first president, Sean Parker, opened up about his regrets over helping create social media as we now know it last month. Parker has said that social media creates “a social-validation feedback loop” by giving people “a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever.”

Palihapitiya, who worked for Facebook from 2005-2011, expressed his concerns during a recent public discussion at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He told the audience, “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.” 

“So we are in a really bad state of affairs right now, in my opinion. It [social media] is eroding the core foundation of how people behave by and between each other. And I don’t have a good solution. My solution is I just don’t use these tools anymore. I haven’t for years,” said Chamath Palihapitiya, the former vice president of user growth. “I don’t know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying, because of the unintended consequences of a network when it grows to a billion or 2 billion people and it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other,” Parker said. “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”

Palihapitiya, who is a millionaire thanks to his role in Facebook’s growth, also admitted it wasn’t about the Russian ads. We’ve done this damage to ourselves and fueled an addiction of sorts. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he told the audience said. “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem—this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem.” And Palihapitiya admitted to feeling guilty for his role. “I feel tremendous guilt. I think we all knew in the back of our minds—even though we feigned this whole line of, like, there probably aren’t any bad unintended consequences. I think in the back, deep, deep recesses of, we kind of knew something bad could happen. But I think the way we defined it was not like this.”

Palihapitiya said he doesn’t use social media because he “innately didn’t want to get programmed.” As for his kids: “They’re not allowed to use this sh*t.” That seemed to strike a nerve too.  Palihapitiya admitted that social media is “programming” the behaviors of users. “Your behaviors—you don’t realize it but you are being programmed. It was unintentional, but now you gotta decide how much you are willing to give up, how much of your intellectual independence,” he told the students in the crowd. “And don’t think, ‘Oh yeah, not me, I’m fucking genius, I’m at Stanford.’ You’re probably the most likely to f*cking fall for it. ‘Cause you are f*cking check-boxing your whole Goddamn life.”

The consequences of a social media addiction were unknown until recently. Now, it certainly seems almost as harrowing as an alcohol addiction. With one in six Americans now on anti-depressants and desperately seeking attention through social media, could Palihapitiya be onto something? Has social media damaged the social fabric of our society?

Mind Hack — How Corporations Took Over Our Bodies and Brains (VIDEO)

The science is in: Processed food is addictive, can make you extremely unhappy and will prematurely kill you. How did this happen? And how have food manufacturers been able to deceive the world about these facts? Dr. Robert Lustig has written a new book, “The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains,” in which he explains how and why this occurred.

He is perhaps most well-known for his brilliant research into sugar and obesity, and his previous book, “Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity and Disease,” was a New York Times Best Seller. Lustig is an emeritus professor of pediatrics in the division of endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies. Since the last time I interviewed him, he’s also completed a master’s in public health law.

The Genesis of ‘Hacking of the American Mind’

The motivation for “The Hacking of the American Mind” began some 30 years ago, while still a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience at Rockefeller University. There, he learned about the interaction between dopamine and serotonin in the brain. At the time, only basic correlational data existed, but there appeared to be a very specific interaction going on between these two neurochemicals.

“As I was researching the data for ‘Fat Chance,’ four years ago, it became very clear that the data had come in on the role of diet and behavioral health,” Lustig says. “In addition, we also now had neuroimaging studies. I realized everything was falling into place — that this issue, dopamine and serotonin, was actually at the core of what had now become our depression and opiate crises.

At the same time, I was giving Psychiatry Grand Rounds at a U.S. medical school in 2014. The woman who ran their outpatient treatment program took me on a tour of their facility. She was a recovered addict herself. She said something to me that was so jarring. She said, ‘When I was shooting up, I was happy. What my new life has brought me is pleasure.’

I thought to myself, ‘That’s wrong. That’s exactly turned around.’ But I didn’t say anything to her. I went home and talked to some psychiatry friends. They said, ‘Oh yeah, a lot of people seem to get addicted with this concept in mind.’ I said, ‘Well, there’s a book there.’ That was the genesis of this book.”

Why Processed Food Diets Fuel Depression

Tryptophan, which is the precursor for serotonin, is one of the rarest amino acids in our diet. But it’s a mistake to think the answer to depression is as simple as taking tryptophan to boost serotonin. The reason for this is because most of the tryptophan is converted to serotonin in your gut, and it does not freely travel into your brain. Lustig explains:

“Tryptophan is the only amino acid that can be converted into serotonin. Tryptophan is the rarest amino acid in our diet. Eggs have the most. Certain poultry and other avian species have some [tryptophan]. There’s very little in vegetables. Obviously, carbohydrates have virtually no tryptophan whatsoever.

It’s actually pretty hard to get tryptophan into your body to start with. Take processed food on top of that, then it’s even harder because it tends to be tryptophan-depleted. [Moreover], 99.9 percent of the tryptophan you ingest either gets turned into serotonin in the gut for your gut’s purposes, or it goes into your platelets to help your platelets help you clot. [So] very little tryptophan actually gets to the brain.

Top that off with the fact that tryptophan has to share an amino acid transporter with two relatively common amino acids: phenylalanine and tyrosine, which, by the way, are the precursors for dopamine. You can see that the more processed food you eat, the more dopamine you will make because you will have the precursors for that.

They will actually crowd out the ability to get tryptophan across the blood-brain barrier … Yet, serotonin is the nidus of contentment, of happiness. It explains why diet is so problematic … “

Face-to-Face Interaction Has Neurochemical Effects

Many try to bolster their happiness through certain food choices, but this actually does not work, and Lustig provides compelling arguments that the foods you crave drive up dopamine and drive down serotonin. Rather, it’s experiences that make you happy. People can make you happy. You can make yourself happy. In his book, Lustig outlines a number of different strategies to become happier.

“Ultimately, the goal is [to increase] your serotonin,” he says. There are four ways to boost your serotonin, and they’re all free. They’re also things your grandmother likely told you to do. First and foremost is making human connections.

“Turns out that Facebook does not count as connection. When we’re talking about interpersonal connection, we’re talking about eye-to-eye,” Lustig says. “The facial emotions of the person you’re talking with activate a set of neurons in your brain called ‘mirror neurons,’ which are the drivers of empathy and specifically linked to serotonin.

To be able to generate a feeling of empathy, which ultimately turns into contentment/happiness, you actually have to connect. You can’t do it over the internet. You can’t have a connection with ‘anonymous.’ It just doesn’t work.”

On the contrary, social media generate dopamine, associated with pleasure, and hence can drive addiction. The main problem is that when dopamine goes up, serotonin goes down. So, online communication is actually a major causative factor of unhappiness.

Lustig also elaborates on how companies — both food manufacturers and electronics companies — capitalize on the biology of dopamine versus serotonin to get us addicted to their products. There’s even a book on this topic written by Nir Eyal, called, “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.”

Dopamine Versus Serotonin

It’s important to realize that the dopamine (or reward-generating) pathway is the same no matter what your source of pleasure is. It can be a substance, such as nicotine, alcohol, heroin or junk food; or it can be behavior, such as internet surfing, shopping or pornography. The problem, in a nutshell, is that dopamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter, and in excess is neurotoxic.

When dopamine is released, and the neuron on the other side accepts the signal, it can damage that neuron.  Over time, excitatory neurotransmitters can cause cell death. To protect itself from damage, the postsynaptic neuron employs a self-protective mechanism — it downregulates its receptors.

By having fewer receptors, the dopamine cannot do as much damage. So, each time you get a “hit” or rush of dopamine, the number of receptors decrease. As a result, you need increasingly larger doses or “hits” to get the same rush. Eventually, you end up with tolerance, a state where even a large dose produces no effect. Once the neurons start to actually die off, you’re a full-blown addict.

“The point that you need to know is that it takes three weeks for the receptors to repopulate. The cravings can go on for upwards of a year when you’re addicted. This is a long-term process that sometimes requires medical intervention and medical management by physicians who understand addiction medicine,” Lustig says.

Serotonin, on the other hand, is not an excitatory neurotransmitter. When it acts on the serotonin-1a receptor (the “contentment” receptor), no damage occurs. Hence, happiness does not lead to addictive behavior. Keep in mind that dopamine downregulates serotonin, so it’s basically impossible to achieve happiness (related to serotonin) through pleasure-seeking behavior (related to dopamine).

One of the cheapest pleasures that stimulates dopamine is sugar. Many reach for sweet junk food when they feel down, thinking it’ll help them feel better, but neurochemical science reveals this simply cannot happen. Add the stress hormone cortisol to the mix, which downregulates the serotonin-1a receptor, and you have a recipe for both addiction and depression. “That’s what we’re seeing throughout all of civilized society, not just in America, but around the world,” Lustig says.

Other Serotonin Boosters

There are three other ways, besides connecting, that boost serotonin and happiness. The remaining three of the four Cs are:

1.Contribute: Meaning the act of contributing to something greater than yourself; making a contribution to society. “You can get happiness and contentment from your job, but there are certain criteria that have to be met,” Lustig says. “Most people, unfortunately, have a boss who is not contributing to their happiness. The workplace is not usually the best place to achieve meaningful contentment.”

2.Cope: Lack of sleep, insufficient exercise and multitasking are all causes of unhappiness. Sleep is extremely important for healthy serotonin production. Here, avoiding exposure to electronic screens is important, as blue light inhibits melatonin production, thereby making sleep more elusive. Electronics will also disrupt your sleep and deteriorate your health by exposing you to unnecessary microwaves, discussed in this recent article on depression.

3.Cook: If you cook, you’re likely going to increase your tryptophan, reduce your refined sugar intake and increase your omega-3 fats (anti-inflammatory) and fiber. Overall, this will result in improved gut health, which has tremendous impact on your mood and mental health.

“Numerous investigators … have shown that your gastrointestinal flora tell your brain what they want through signals that go through the bloodstream, and potentially even neural ones as well. If you do not feed your bacteria, you cannot get happy. Eating real food you prepare yourself is super important,” Lustig says.

Eating Real Food Helps Optimize Tryptophan and Other Vital Brain Nutrients

As mentioned, a big part of the happiness equation is to increase serotonin by optimizing tryptophan. However, the dilemma is that most of the serotonin produced in the gut is used there locally. It does not enter your brain. Lustig explains:

“There are many diversions for tryptophan away from the brain. It can be metabolized in the intestine itself. It can be metabolized in the platelets. It can be turned into kynurenine, which is a secondary metabolite in the liver. It may not be transported across the blood-brain barrier because of phenylalanine and tyrosine taking up the aromatic amino acid transporter.

In addition, of course, your serotonin neurons must be functional. There are things that will kill off serotonin neurons, including party drugs. For instance, MDMA, or Ecstasy, is a famous dopamine and serotonin killer … Once you’ve lost those serotonin neurons, it’s pretty hard to get any sort of happiness signal.”

So, how do you boost systemic tryptophan? One of the keys is to eat real food, and to make sure you include high-tryptophan foods, the highest of which is egg whites. You also need omega-3 fatty acids, especially DHA, which is a component of every cell in your body. More than 90 percent of the omega-3 fat found in brain tissue is DHA.

“Omega-3s are probably the single most beneficial thing you can put in your body. They are anti-inflammatory. They are anti-Alzheimer’s. They increase membrane fluidity. Therefore, they increase neuronal distensibility, which means it’s less likely that any given neuron will die,” Lustig says.

“The problem, of course, is that when we took the fat out of the food, we took ALL the fat out of the food. It’s been a real chore to get the medical cognoscenti to turn around on this. I do want to do a shoutout to the American Heart Association, because they have now debunked their long-standing cholesterol-fat hypothesis.

They now recognize that saturated fat was not the demon they made it out to be, and that there are seven classes of fats, and that you actually have to consume omega-3s. You have to consume monounsaturated fats. In fact, you do have to consume some saturated fat because it’s a major component of membranes.”

The Corporate Takeover

So, how have food companies contributed to the problems of food and drug addiction? According to Lustig, “If you look at the Supreme Court decisions that took place between the mid-’70s and mid-’80s, they took away individual rights and loaded up corporate rights in a very distinct fashion.” In his book, he describes four specific Supreme Court decisions, one of which basically deregulated corporate speech.

Corporations can say anything they want, whenever they want, regardless of whether it’s actually true. Our current epidemics of opioid and food addiction are outgrowths of corporate dishonesty.

“We are now seeing the advent of the post-truth society because of how the Supreme Court chipped away at our own individual rights,” Lustig says. “By doing so, corporations have affected our ability to experience pleasure and happiness. They’ve actually inserted propaganda into our limbic system, our reward generating system, so that we constantly seek reward at the expense of our own happiness.

This is why we currently live in the world we live in. The late political philosopher from Princeton, Sheldon Wolin, wrote a poignant book called ‘Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism,’ [in which] he envisioned that corporations and government … would become one and the same.

If you look at what’s going on in the White House today, you can see that Wolin’s nightmare scenario has been realized. It’s fascism in the sense that we don’t seem to have a voice of our own. It’s not fascism in the sense that it’s corporations that’s told us what to do. It’s that we’ve basically abdicated our own responsibility for our own health and safety.”

The EatREAL Trust Mark

Speaking of living in a post-truth society, you might not realize there’s no regulation against restaurants blatantly lying about what they’re serving you. Larry Olmsted, in his book “Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It,” addresses this. There are no consequences, no regulatory action, for lying to customers. The deception will only enrich them — until or unless they’re publicly outed and perhaps boycotted.

One way to protect your interests when eating out is to make sure the restaurant is affiliated with Responsible Epicurean and Agricultural Leadership, better known as EatREAL, a nonprofit Lustig helped create. It teaches restaurants what they “should be doing,” and provides a trust mark to the public — a green fork.

The High Cost of Added Sugar

Processed fructose, mostly in the form of corn syrup, has become a major contributor to the $3 trillion health care budget in the United States, and there’s clear data linking sugar consumption to de novo lipogenesis — a disease process associated with fat accumulation in the liver, causing insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, metabolic syndrome and associated diseases. That includes Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, lipid problems, cardiovascular disease, cancer and dementia.

“We have the mechanism by which this occurs. In fact, our paper in Gastroenterology¹ demonstrates that if you take sugar out of the diet of children with metabolic syndrome and substitute starch — calorie for calorie exchange, glucose for fructose exchange with no change in calories … — in 10 days, you can reverse metabolic syndrome.

You can reverse the insulin resistance. You can reverse the liver fat. You can reverse the burden on the pancreas. Basically, all of the metabolic perturbations go away. This is the smoking gun,” Lustig says. “In addition, we have a paper in BMJ Open2 which models what could happen in terms of health care expenditures and disease rates if we reduced our sugar consumption by 20 percent, which is what taxes would do.

Or if we reduce sugar consumption by 50 percent (which is what the United States Department of Agriculture suggested we do), for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease alone … the United States, over the next 20 years, could save $103 billion, just on that disease alone. Ultimately, this is where the money goes. This is why health care will be defunct. This is why Medicare will be broke by the year 2026 …

We have to deal with health. Health is going down the tubes. There’s no amount of health care that can fix what’s wrong with our diet, unless we fix the diet first … The bottom line is we are in trouble. But you can’t fix a problem until you recognize what the problem is. This book, ‘The Hacking of the American Mind,’ demonstrates how the science, how the biology, ultimately has influenced not just our health, but in fact, our policy.”

More Information

In the past, people had a much better understanding of happiness and pleasure. Lustig’s book describes how these terms have been purposely conflated and confused by businesses and governments because it helped sales. To turn the trends of addiction around, you have to understand the difference between the two.

“So, what’s the difference between pleasure and happiness? There are seven differences: Pleasure is visceral; happiness is ethereal. Pleasure is short-term; happiness is long-term. Pleasure is usually achieved alone; happiness is usually achieved in social groupings. Pleasure is taking; happiness is giving. Pleasure can be achieved with substances; happiness cannot be achieved with substances.

The extremes of pleasure all lead to addiction, whereas there is no such thing as being addicted to happiness. Finally, pleasure is dopamine and happiness is serotonin.

Understanding the difference between the two is something, for some reason, that the American public just never got. We have to make them get it in order to turn this problem around. Academics don’t get it. Businesses don’t get it. The federal government certainly doesn’t get it. We have to make them get it. That’s why this book is so crucial.”

I couldn’t agree more, and “The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains” will certainly help you understand the distinction between dopamine, serotonin and the variables that help optimize these neurotransmitters. Most importantly, the way he explains it all has the power motivate healthy behavior.

“The bottom line is it’s about the science,” Lustig says. “There will be detractors who will say this is garbage. But the bottom line is there are 600 references to the primary literature to demonstrate that this is not gobbledygook. The science actually predicts the phenomena that we see and the society we’ve become.”

Sources and References

 

Mind Hack — How Corporations Took Over Our Bodies and Brains (VIDEO)

The science is in: Processed food is addictive, can make you extremely unhappy and will prematurely kill you. How did this happen? And how have food manufacturers been able to deceive the world about these facts? Dr. Robert Lustig has written a new book, “The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains,” in which he explains how and why this occurred.

He is perhaps most well-known for his brilliant research into sugar and obesity, and his previous book, “Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity and Disease,” was a New York Times Best Seller. Lustig is an emeritus professor of pediatrics in the division of endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies. Since the last time I interviewed him, he’s also completed a master’s in public health law.

The Genesis of ‘Hacking of the American Mind’

The motivation for “The Hacking of the American Mind” began some 30 years ago, while still a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience at Rockefeller University. There, he learned about the interaction between dopamine and serotonin in the brain. At the time, only basic correlational data existed, but there appeared to be a very specific interaction going on between these two neurochemicals.

“As I was researching the data for ‘Fat Chance,’ four years ago, it became very clear that the data had come in on the role of diet and behavioral health,” Lustig says. “In addition, we also now had neuroimaging studies. I realized everything was falling into place — that this issue, dopamine and serotonin, was actually at the core of what had now become our depression and opiate crises.

At the same time, I was giving Psychiatry Grand Rounds at a U.S. medical school in 2014. The woman who ran their outpatient treatment program took me on a tour of their facility. She was a recovered addict herself. She said something to me that was so jarring. She said, ‘When I was shooting up, I was happy. What my new life has brought me is pleasure.’

I thought to myself, ‘That’s wrong. That’s exactly turned around.’ But I didn’t say anything to her. I went home and talked to some psychiatry friends. They said, ‘Oh yeah, a lot of people seem to get addicted with this concept in mind.’ I said, ‘Well, there’s a book there.’ That was the genesis of this book.”

Why Processed Food Diets Fuel Depression

Tryptophan, which is the precursor for serotonin, is one of the rarest amino acids in our diet. But it’s a mistake to think the answer to depression is as simple as taking tryptophan to boost serotonin. The reason for this is because most of the tryptophan is converted to serotonin in your gut, and it does not freely travel into your brain. Lustig explains:

“Tryptophan is the only amino acid that can be converted into serotonin. Tryptophan is the rarest amino acid in our diet. Eggs have the most. Certain poultry and other avian species have some [tryptophan]. There’s very little in vegetables. Obviously, carbohydrates have virtually no tryptophan whatsoever.

It’s actually pretty hard to get tryptophan into your body to start with. Take processed food on top of that, then it’s even harder because it tends to be tryptophan-depleted. [Moreover], 99.9 percent of the tryptophan you ingest either gets turned into serotonin in the gut for your gut’s purposes, or it goes into your platelets to help your platelets help you clot. [So] very little tryptophan actually gets to the brain.

Top that off with the fact that tryptophan has to share an amino acid transporter with two relatively common amino acids: phenylalanine and tyrosine, which, by the way, are the precursors for dopamine. You can see that the more processed food you eat, the more dopamine you will make because you will have the precursors for that.

They will actually crowd out the ability to get tryptophan across the blood-brain barrier … Yet, serotonin is the nidus of contentment, of happiness. It explains why diet is so problematic … “

Face-to-Face Interaction Has Neurochemical Effects

Many try to bolster their happiness through certain food choices, but this actually does not work, and Lustig provides compelling arguments that the foods you crave drive up dopamine and drive down serotonin. Rather, it’s experiences that make you happy. People can make you happy. You can make yourself happy. In his book, Lustig outlines a number of different strategies to become happier.

“Ultimately, the goal is [to increase] your serotonin,” he says. There are four ways to boost your serotonin, and they’re all free. They’re also things your grandmother likely told you to do. First and foremost is making human connections.

“Turns out that Facebook does not count as connection. When we’re talking about interpersonal connection, we’re talking about eye-to-eye,” Lustig says. “The facial emotions of the person you’re talking with activate a set of neurons in your brain called ‘mirror neurons,’ which are the drivers of empathy and specifically linked to serotonin.

To be able to generate a feeling of empathy, which ultimately turns into contentment/happiness, you actually have to connect. You can’t do it over the internet. You can’t have a connection with ‘anonymous.’ It just doesn’t work.”

On the contrary, social media generate dopamine, associated with pleasure, and hence can drive addiction. The main problem is that when dopamine goes up, serotonin goes down. So, online communication is actually a major causative factor of unhappiness.

Lustig also elaborates on how companies — both food manufacturers and electronics companies — capitalize on the biology of dopamine versus serotonin to get us addicted to their products. There’s even a book on this topic written by Nir Eyal, called, “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.”

Dopamine Versus Serotonin

It’s important to realize that the dopamine (or reward-generating) pathway is the same no matter what your source of pleasure is. It can be a substance, such as nicotine, alcohol, heroin or junk food; or it can be behavior, such as internet surfing, shopping or pornography. The problem, in a nutshell, is that dopamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter, and in excess is neurotoxic.

When dopamine is released, and the neuron on the other side accepts the signal, it can damage that neuron.  Over time, excitatory neurotransmitters can cause cell death. To protect itself from damage, the postsynaptic neuron employs a self-protective mechanism — it downregulates its receptors.

By having fewer receptors, the dopamine cannot do as much damage. So, each time you get a “hit” or rush of dopamine, the number of receptors decrease. As a result, you need increasingly larger doses or “hits” to get the same rush. Eventually, you end up with tolerance, a state where even a large dose produces no effect. Once the neurons start to actually die off, you’re a full-blown addict.

“The point that you need to know is that it takes three weeks for the receptors to repopulate. The cravings can go on for upwards of a year when you’re addicted. This is a long-term process that sometimes requires medical intervention and medical management by physicians who understand addiction medicine,” Lustig says.

Serotonin, on the other hand, is not an excitatory neurotransmitter. When it acts on the serotonin-1a receptor (the “contentment” receptor), no damage occurs. Hence, happiness does not lead to addictive behavior. Keep in mind that dopamine downregulates serotonin, so it’s basically impossible to achieve happiness (related to serotonin) through pleasure-seeking behavior (related to dopamine).

One of the cheapest pleasures that stimulates dopamine is sugar. Many reach for sweet junk food when they feel down, thinking it’ll help them feel better, but neurochemical science reveals this simply cannot happen. Add the stress hormone cortisol to the mix, which downregulates the serotonin-1a receptor, and you have a recipe for both addiction and depression. “That’s what we’re seeing throughout all of civilized society, not just in America, but around the world,” Lustig says.

Other Serotonin Boosters

There are three other ways, besides connecting, that boost serotonin and happiness. The remaining three of the four Cs are:

1.Contribute: Meaning the act of contributing to something greater than yourself; making a contribution to society. “You can get happiness and contentment from your job, but there are certain criteria that have to be met,” Lustig says. “Most people, unfortunately, have a boss who is not contributing to their happiness. The workplace is not usually the best place to achieve meaningful contentment.”

2.Cope: Lack of sleep, insufficient exercise and multitasking are all causes of unhappiness. Sleep is extremely important for healthy serotonin production. Here, avoiding exposure to electronic screens is important, as blue light inhibits melatonin production, thereby making sleep more elusive. Electronics will also disrupt your sleep and deteriorate your health by exposing you to unnecessary microwaves, discussed in this recent article on depression.

3.Cook: If you cook, you’re likely going to increase your tryptophan, reduce your refined sugar intake and increase your omega-3 fats (anti-inflammatory) and fiber. Overall, this will result in improved gut health, which has tremendous impact on your mood and mental health.

“Numerous investigators … have shown that your gastrointestinal flora tell your brain what they want through signals that go through the bloodstream, and potentially even neural ones as well. If you do not feed your bacteria, you cannot get happy. Eating real food you prepare yourself is super important,” Lustig says.

Eating Real Food Helps Optimize Tryptophan and Other Vital Brain Nutrients

As mentioned, a big part of the happiness equation is to increase serotonin by optimizing tryptophan. However, the dilemma is that most of the serotonin produced in the gut is used there locally. It does not enter your brain. Lustig explains:

“There are many diversions for tryptophan away from the brain. It can be metabolized in the intestine itself. It can be metabolized in the platelets. It can be turned into kynurenine, which is a secondary metabolite in the liver. It may not be transported across the blood-brain barrier because of phenylalanine and tyrosine taking up the aromatic amino acid transporter.

In addition, of course, your serotonin neurons must be functional. There are things that will kill off serotonin neurons, including party drugs. For instance, MDMA, or Ecstasy, is a famous dopamine and serotonin killer … Once you’ve lost those serotonin neurons, it’s pretty hard to get any sort of happiness signal.”

So, how do you boost systemic tryptophan? One of the keys is to eat real food, and to make sure you include high-tryptophan foods, the highest of which is egg whites. You also need omega-3 fatty acids, especially DHA, which is a component of every cell in your body. More than 90 percent of the omega-3 fat found in brain tissue is DHA.

“Omega-3s are probably the single most beneficial thing you can put in your body. They are anti-inflammatory. They are anti-Alzheimer’s. They increase membrane fluidity. Therefore, they increase neuronal distensibility, which means it’s less likely that any given neuron will die,” Lustig says.

“The problem, of course, is that when we took the fat out of the food, we took ALL the fat out of the food. It’s been a real chore to get the medical cognoscenti to turn around on this. I do want to do a shoutout to the American Heart Association, because they have now debunked their long-standing cholesterol-fat hypothesis.

They now recognize that saturated fat was not the demon they made it out to be, and that there are seven classes of fats, and that you actually have to consume omega-3s. You have to consume monounsaturated fats. In fact, you do have to consume some saturated fat because it’s a major component of membranes.”

The Corporate Takeover

So, how have food companies contributed to the problems of food and drug addiction? According to Lustig, “If you look at the Supreme Court decisions that took place between the mid-’70s and mid-’80s, they took away individual rights and loaded up corporate rights in a very distinct fashion.” In his book, he describes four specific Supreme Court decisions, one of which basically deregulated corporate speech.

Corporations can say anything they want, whenever they want, regardless of whether it’s actually true. Our current epidemics of opioid and food addiction are outgrowths of corporate dishonesty.

“We are now seeing the advent of the post-truth society because of how the Supreme Court chipped away at our own individual rights,” Lustig says. “By doing so, corporations have affected our ability to experience pleasure and happiness. They’ve actually inserted propaganda into our limbic system, our reward generating system, so that we constantly seek reward at the expense of our own happiness.

This is why we currently live in the world we live in. The late political philosopher from Princeton, Sheldon Wolin, wrote a poignant book called ‘Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism,’ [in which] he envisioned that corporations and government … would become one and the same.

If you look at what’s going on in the White House today, you can see that Wolin’s nightmare scenario has been realized. It’s fascism in the sense that we don’t seem to have a voice of our own. It’s not fascism in the sense that it’s corporations that’s told us what to do. It’s that we’ve basically abdicated our own responsibility for our own health and safety.”

The EatREAL Trust Mark

Speaking of living in a post-truth society, you might not realize there’s no regulation against restaurants blatantly lying about what they’re serving you. Larry Olmsted, in his book “Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About It,” addresses this. There are no consequences, no regulatory action, for lying to customers. The deception will only enrich them — until or unless they’re publicly outed and perhaps boycotted.

One way to protect your interests when eating out is to make sure the restaurant is affiliated with Responsible Epicurean and Agricultural Leadership, better known as EatREAL, a nonprofit Lustig helped create. It teaches restaurants what they “should be doing,” and provides a trust mark to the public — a green fork.

The High Cost of Added Sugar

Processed fructose, mostly in the form of corn syrup, has become a major contributor to the $3 trillion health care budget in the United States, and there’s clear data linking sugar consumption to de novo lipogenesis — a disease process associated with fat accumulation in the liver, causing insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, metabolic syndrome and associated diseases. That includes Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, lipid problems, cardiovascular disease, cancer and dementia.

“We have the mechanism by which this occurs. In fact, our paper in Gastroenterology¹ demonstrates that if you take sugar out of the diet of children with metabolic syndrome and substitute starch — calorie for calorie exchange, glucose for fructose exchange with no change in calories … — in 10 days, you can reverse metabolic syndrome.

You can reverse the insulin resistance. You can reverse the liver fat. You can reverse the burden on the pancreas. Basically, all of the metabolic perturbations go away. This is the smoking gun,” Lustig says. “In addition, we have a paper in BMJ Open2 which models what could happen in terms of health care expenditures and disease rates if we reduced our sugar consumption by 20 percent, which is what taxes would do.

Or if we reduce sugar consumption by 50 percent (which is what the United States Department of Agriculture suggested we do), for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease alone … the United States, over the next 20 years, could save $103 billion, just on that disease alone. Ultimately, this is where the money goes. This is why health care will be defunct. This is why Medicare will be broke by the year 2026 …

We have to deal with health. Health is going down the tubes. There’s no amount of health care that can fix what’s wrong with our diet, unless we fix the diet first … The bottom line is we are in trouble. But you can’t fix a problem until you recognize what the problem is. This book, ‘The Hacking of the American Mind,’ demonstrates how the science, how the biology, ultimately has influenced not just our health, but in fact, our policy.”

More Information

In the past, people had a much better understanding of happiness and pleasure. Lustig’s book describes how these terms have been purposely conflated and confused by businesses and governments because it helped sales. To turn the trends of addiction around, you have to understand the difference between the two.

“So, what’s the difference between pleasure and happiness? There are seven differences: Pleasure is visceral; happiness is ethereal. Pleasure is short-term; happiness is long-term. Pleasure is usually achieved alone; happiness is usually achieved in social groupings. Pleasure is taking; happiness is giving. Pleasure can be achieved with substances; happiness cannot be achieved with substances.

The extremes of pleasure all lead to addiction, whereas there is no such thing as being addicted to happiness. Finally, pleasure is dopamine and happiness is serotonin.

Understanding the difference between the two is something, for some reason, that the American public just never got. We have to make them get it in order to turn this problem around. Academics don’t get it. Businesses don’t get it. The federal government certainly doesn’t get it. We have to make them get it. That’s why this book is so crucial.”

I couldn’t agree more, and “The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains” will certainly help you understand the distinction between dopamine, serotonin and the variables that help optimize these neurotransmitters. Most importantly, the way he explains it all has the power motivate healthy behavior.

“The bottom line is it’s about the science,” Lustig says. “There will be detractors who will say this is garbage. But the bottom line is there are 600 references to the primary literature to demonstrate that this is not gobbledygook. The science actually predicts the phenomena that we see and the society we’ve become.”

Sources and References

 

Study Reveals Link Between Sugar and Depression (and Mental Disorders)

A 30-year study published in Scientific Reports suggests that people who consume high amounts of sugar intake may be more likely to experience mental health problems, especially men. Further, the study reveals a link between sugar and depression, which should be intriguing to everyone given the amount of sugar Americans consume. [1]

Nitty Gritty Study Details

More than 10,000 British civil servants between the ages of 35 and 55 were recruited for the University College of London’s Whitehall II study, which launched in 1985. In the study, researchers monitored the participants’ health and behavior, conducting surveys with each volunteer over 10 phases, 3 years apart.

Of the participants, 66.9% were men and 33.1% were women.

The researchers surveyed the participants’ diets at the 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th phases of the study. The team looked at 15 kinds of foods placed in the “sweet food and beverage” category, including cakes, cookies, and sugar-sweetened coffees, and teas.

The food intake surveys were then compared with a general health questionnaire designed to measure symptoms of depression and other common mental disorders (CMDs), such anxiety and insomnia.

The researchers wrote:

“The present long-term prospective study is the first to investigate the association of sugar consumption from sweet food/beverages with prevalent, incident and recurrent mood disorders, while also examining the effect these disorders might have on subsequent sugar intake.”

They added:

“Further, we found an increased likelihood for incident CMD in men and some evidence of recurrent depression in both sexes with higher intakes of sugar from sweet food/beverages.”

To see if there might be other underlying reasons for the participants’ depression, researchers also accounted for other factors besides sugar intake, including marital status, age, ethnicity, and smoking.

The Not-so-Sweet Findings

The study found that men who consumed more than 67 grams of sugar a day were 23% more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, or other CMDs 5 years later, compared with men who consumed less than 40 grams. [2]

Additionally, both men and women with a mood disorder and a high intake of sugar were found to have a higher risk of developing depression again 5 years later, compared with participants who consumed less sugar. This association, however, was partly explained by their overall diet.

What’s more, the researchers found no evidence that participants changed their sugar intake after suffering mood disorders. In other words, if a person ate more sugar during a particularly low point in their lives, they didn’t cut their sugar intake once they were feeling better.

So What Might be the Link Between Sugar and Depression?

Anika Knüppel, a PhD candidate in epidemiology and public health at University College London, and the study’s lead author, explained:

“We are still not sure what causes depression, but some researchers believe that biological changes are at the root of it. Some of these changes could be influenced by sugar and sweet taste.”

She uses the example of a study in rats which found that diets high in sugar and fat can reduce BDNF, a protein which influences the growth and development of nerve cells in the brain. This protein is believed to play a role in the development of depression and anxiety.

In addition, high-sugar diets can increase inflammation. While inflammation protects the body against microorganisms and foreign substances, it can also zap people of energy and their ability to concentrate. Ongoing research suggests that some mood disorders may be linked to inflammation.

Read: 12 Tips for Extinguishing Disease-Causing Inflammation

Knüppel said another possible culprit is the feel-good hormone dopamine. This theory also comes from a study of rats, which found that sweet foods are as addictive as cocaine.

In fact, several studies have shown that sugar is addictive. Processed foods – one of the sources, if not the source of added sugars – has been shown to be addictive. Some studies are very specific, such as this one from 2013, which showed that Oreo cookies are addictive.

Dopamine is a brain chemical involved in the reward system, and it is believed to affect mood. Many people become addicts due to mental disorders because they use substances to self-medicate themselves. However, addiction itself is linked to a greater likelihood of developing a mood disorder.

Lastly, Knüppel said the link between sugar and depression could also be explained due to an association with obesity – a condition related to mood – and other conditions.

She wrote:

“But these associations could also reflect a reverse phenomenon: Low mood could make people change their diet. Sweet foods could be used to soothe bad feelings by providing a short-term mood boost. And low mood and anxiety could make simple tasks, such as grocery shopping or cooking, so difficult and exhausting for the sufferer that they might start to avoid them. Instead, they might opt for junk food, takeout and ready meals – all of which have a high sugar content.”

The link between sugar and depression (actually, mental health overall) is far from clear-cut, but it goes to show, yet again, that there is no redeeming health value to sugar.

We should also point out that it’s possible more men than women were found to suffer mood disorders simply because there were more men than women in the study.

Sources:

[1] Newsweek

[2] UPI

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.

“Diet” Artificial Sweeteners may Actually Expand Your Waistline

In a new analysis of studies involving more than 406,000 patients, researchers found that people who substitute artificial sweeteners for sugar – even the natural kinds – actually gained weight, instead of losing it. [1]

Published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the study looked at the long-term effects of artificial sweeteners on heart health, weight, stroke incidence, and blood pressure levels.

The researchers wrote:

“We found that consumption of nonnutritive sweeteners was associated with modest long-term weight gain in observational studies.”

Artificial sweeteners were once touted by doctors as healthy for diabetics who didn’t want to give up sweets, but who also realized that continuing to eat sugar could cause serious complications or death. But the analysis showed that the consumption of artificial sweeteners may increase a person’s risk for developing the disease, and other potentially serious health conditions.

The team says:

“Our results also extend previous meta-analyses that showed higher risks of type 2 diabetes and hypertension with regular consumption.”

Some of the Findings

For the analysis, researchers reviewed 30 studies that followed groups of people that used artificial sweeteners, including aspartame (Equal), sucralose (Splenda), and stevioside (Stevia). The studies involved in the review including longer, larger studies with follow-ups every 4-9 years. Study participants not only gained weight using artificial sweeteners, they also had higher risks of obesity, high blood pressure, and stroke.

Read: The Dangers of Sucralose/Splenda Revealed Again by Extensive New Review

Specifically, the observational studies noted a small increase in body mass index (BMI) associated with consumption of artificial sweeteners, a 14% greater chance of developing Type 2 diabetes for those who consumed the most artificial sweeteners, and a 32% higher risk of cardiovascular events for those who ate the most, compared to those who ate the least. [2]

Those who had hoped to lose weight in the short-term were met with disappointment; participants in the 7 shorter randomized, controlled studies reviewed in the analysis didn’t show consistent weight-loss after 6 months.

Lead author Meghan Azad, of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, said:

“From all that research, there was no consistent evidence of a long-term benefit from the sweetener, but there was evidence for weight gain and increased risks of other cardiometabolic outcomes.” [2]

Tricked into Poor Health

The fact that sugar causes obesity and a host of other health problems is fairly common knowledge these days, but the reason why artificial sweeteners appear to do the same things is less understood. To put it in simple terms, artificial sweeteners “trick” the brain into thinking the body is consuming real sugar.

See, artificial sweeteners are chemically different than sugar. When you taste something containing artificial sweeteners, receptors are activated on the tongue that lets the brain know you are eating or drinking something sweet. [3]

When you eat something sweet, the brain’s reward center is activated by a surge of dopamine. Leptin, an appetite-regulating hormone, is also released. When you eat something with calories, leptin eventually signals to your brain that you are full.

However, when you eat something sweet but with no calories, your brain’s pleasure pathway still gets activated, but the lack of calories means there is nothing to shut it off.

Watch: How Diet Sodas Mess With Your Brain (Video)

In turn, your body signals that it needs more calories, which results in carb cravings. In the end, you wind up eating more than you should, taking in more calories than you should, and those carbohydrates get converted into sugar.

Artificial sweeteners have been shown to alter gut microbes, some of which have been linked to obesity.

Furthermore, researchers have discovered that artificial sweeteners alter metabolic pathways linked to metabolic disease.

Stevia is considered the “safest” artificial sweetener, because it is natural. However, if you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, or extra weight, then you have insulin sensitivity issues, and you should probably avoid artificial sweeteners entirely.

According to a study published earlier in 2017, 1/4 of U.S. children and 41% of American adults consume artificial sweeteners, most of them at least once per day. Though people likely consume more artificial sweeteners than they realize, since they’re in everything from granola bars to yogurt. [2]

Your safest bet is to learn to enjoy your coffee black, and choose foods free of sugar and artificial sweeteners.

Easier said than done, I know, but you can do it!

Sources:

[1] ABC News

[2] NPR

[3] Mercola.com

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About Mike Barrett:
	Mike is the co-founder, editor, and researcher behind Natural Society. Studying the work of top natural health activists, and writing special reports for top 10 alternative health websites, Mike has written hundreds of articles and pages on how to obtain optimum wellness through natural health.