I know it sounds like somebody’s idea of a cruel jest, but perfectly serious researchers at the University of Kansas say folks who are prone to the holiday blues should consider staying away from any foods that contain added sugars. Alas, that’s a lot of what we love the holidays for!
Krispy Kreme’s Holiday special Doughnuts and many other seasonal treats
are like Sugar Bomb booby traps for those prone to depression,
University of Kansas researcher claims…
Psychiatrists say that the end of the year – the Christmas-New Year’s holiday – is the hardest time of year for those who suffer depression. No surprise, then, that it’s also the time when the most suicides take place. Short days (lack of sunlight) and corresponding disruption of normal sleep patters are bad enough for many, but add unusually large doses of excess Sugar in Holiday treats and you get what one researcher calls a perfect storm for depression.
“For many people, reduced sunlight exposure during the winter will throw off circadian rhythms, disrupting healthy sleep and pushing five to 10% of the population into a full-blown episode of clinical depression,” said Dr. Stephen Ilardi, an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology. “One common characteristic of winter-onset depression is craving sugar,” he said. “So, we’ve got up to 30% of the population suffering from at least some symptoms of winter-onset depression, causing them to crave carbs – and now they’re constantly confronted with holiday sweets.”
Ilardi says sweets and depression are polar opposites on a viscious circle.
“When we consume sweets, they act like a drug.” Ilardi explained”They have an immediate mood-elevating effect, but in high doses they can also have a paradoxical, pernicious longer-term consequence of making mood worse, reducing well-being, elevating inflammation and causing weight gain.”
What they did
Researchers came to their unhappy conclusions after data mining the results of several surveys including the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study, the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, a study of Spanish university graduates, and studies of Australian and Chinese soda-drinkers, comparing subject’s levels of Sugar consumption with the contemporaneous reports on their physiological and psychological well being.
What they found
Of particlar interest to Ilardi’s team was the discovery that depression often occurs in tandem with high levels of systemic inflammation.
“A large subset of people with depression have high levels of systemic inflammation,” said Ilardi. “When we think about inflammatory disease we think about things like diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis — diseases with a high level of systemic inflammation. We don’t normally think about depression being in that category, but it turns out that it really is – not for everyone who’s depressed, but for about half. We also know that inflammatory hormones can directly push the brain into a state of severe depression. So, an inflamed brain is typically a depressed brain. And added sugars have a pro-inflammatory effect on the body and brain.”
The takeaway
Ilardo suggests, “it might be appropriate to view added Sugar, at high enough levels, as physically and psychologically harmful, akin to drinking a little too much liquor.”
He recommends a minimally processed diet rich in plant-based foods and Omega-3 fatty acids for optimal psychological benefit. As for sugar, he recommends caution – not just during the holidays, but year-round.
My take
I can see how the crash following a sugar high could make existing depression much worse, and lead to eating more sweets to get the high back. That’s just asking for more trouble! Not to m,ention that a constant pattern of added Sugar consumption can also make one overweight or obese. And those all-too common conditions bring with then a whole raft of serious ills including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and higher risk of getting some cancers.
I’d like to see a whole town put on a low-sugar diet for a couple of months, and then compare their road rage and homicide levels with folks from a similar town who went ahead and kept eating their usual high doses of excess Sugar…
~ Maggie J.