The latest research reveals that sugar can affect brain development. If you eat too much sugar when you are young, it will impair your future learning and memory abilities.

Written | Edited by Wang Cong | Nagashi Typesetting | Shui Chengwen Among the many tastes, sweetness-is popular and suitable for all ages, especially those beverages and foods sold to children often add a lot of sugar , Children have also become the highest consumers of added sugar, even if a high-sugar diet is associated with diseases such as obesity, heart disease and even impaired memory function.

However, at present, little is known about how high-sugar diets in childhood affect brain development, especially the impact on the hippocampus of the brain, which is essential for learning and memory.

On March 31, 2021, researchers from the University of Southern California, University of Georgia, University of California, Los Angeles and other units collaborated to publish a research paper titled: Gut microbial taxa elevated by dietary sugar disrupt memory function in Translational Psychiatry journal.

The study showed that daily consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages during adolescence can impair learning and memory in adulthood.

The changes in intestinal bacteria may be the key to sugar-induced memory impairment.

As soon as the paper was published, it received widespread attention.
As of now, it has been online for less than 4 days, and the number of visits to the paper has reached 50,000 times, and the number of visits to other papers online in the same period is less than 100.

Considering that the hippocampus of the brain plays a role in a variety of cognitive functions, and that the hippocampus is still developing until late puberty, researchers are trying to further understand the vulnerability of the hippocampus to high-sugar diets.

The research team gave the young rats normal food and 11% sugar solution (comparable to commercially available sugary drinks).

The researchers then asked the rats to perform memory tasks that depend on the hippocampus to measure their contextual memory, or to remember familiar objects they had seen before.

The results of the experiment show that the discrimination ability of the rats that eat sugar in the early stage is impaired, while the rats that do not eat sugar can complete the task.

The second basic recognition memory is a hippocampus-independent memory function, involving the ability of animals to recognize what they have seen before.

In this task, sugar had no effect on the rat's recognition memory.

These results indicate that eating sugar early in life seems to selectively impair learning and memory in their hippocampus.

Further analysis determined that the high-sugar diet in the early life of life caused the level of Parabacteroides in the gut microbiome to increase, and the higher the level of Parabacteroides, the more obvious the memory deficit.

The research team also found that similar memory deficits can be observed if Parabacteroides are enriched in the organs of animals that do not consume sugar.

This suggests that changes in bacteria alone are enough to damage memory in the same way as sugar.

The research team said that the problem now is how the changes in these bacteria in the intestine affect brain development, and further research is needed to better determine the specific pathways of this intestinal-brain signal transduction and determine how intestinal bacteria affect brain development.
It will tell us what kind of internal environment the brain needs to grow healthily.

Restricting sugar, no delay The "American Dietary Guidelines" jointly published by the US Department of Agriculture and Health and Human Services recommends limiting added sugar to less than 10% of the daily calories needed.

However, according to statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans between the ages of 9-18 exceed the recommended value, and most of the calories come from sugar-sweetened beverages.

The situation of high-sugar diet is also prominent in our country.
In recent years, Chinese people’s sugar consumption has remained high.
According to statistics, compared with 30 years ago, Chinese people’s sugar intake has increased by more than 5 times, except for those with sugar.
Dishes, sugary drinks such as cola, milk tea, and snacks have become the main sources of edible sugar.

In 2019, the National Health Commission issued the "Healthy Oral Action Plan (2019-2025)".

The plan pointed out that a special action to reduce sugar will be carried out.
Primary and secondary schools and childcare institutions will restrict the sale of high-sugar beverages and snacks, and canteens will reduce the supply of sugar-sweetened beverages and high-sugar foods.

High-sugar diets are significantly associated with diseases such as obesity and heart disease, and a recent study published by Nature Communications showed that even a short-term high-fructose diet can damage the immune system.

This study in the Journal of Translational Psychiatry also found that high-sugar diet impairs brain development and affects learning and memory.
This reminds us once again that it is imperative to limit sugar intake.

Link to the paper: Open for reprint