It doesn’t take much effort to see that there are a myriad of “sugar-free” food products available to consumers today. In fact, for many of the regular food items available, there is likely an alternative option that is sugar-free. In addition, all your favorite drinks, including teas, coffees, sodas, even flavored water, can all be purchased without added sugar. Thanks to artificial sweeteners, consumers everywhere can access food and beverages that are sweetened without added sugar or calories from sugar. Thanks to artificial sweeteners, consumers everywhere can access food and beverages that are sweetened without added sugar or calories from sugar. Sound too good to be true? It just may be. Research is showing a dark side of artificial sweeteners that may cause you to reconsider if and how you use them. What are artificial sweeteners? Simply put, artificial sweeteners are synthesized chemicals created to mimic the taste of sugar by adding sweetness to food products; but unlike sugar, they have virtually no calories. Artificial sweeteners are also referred to as “non-nutritive sweeteners”, meaning that they contribute to the taste of a food or drink product without adding any nutritional value. Some of the most common artificial sweeteners used by the food industry that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration include:
These artificial sweeteners are chemical compounds, and while they may be used to provide sweetness to various food and beverage products without added calories, there is some concern about ingesting these ingredients, especially over a long-term. How Artificial Sweeteners Can Affect Your Body As a consumer, it is important to understand what you are putting in your body, especially artificial chemicals that could potentially have adverse effects. It has been thought, by both professionals and consumers, that utilizing artificial sweeteners could be a way for decreasing sugar intake and thereby preventing certain health conditions, like diabetes mellitus. However, research on the use of artificial sweeteners has uncovered controversial findings, where some of these chemicals have been found to actually have damaging effects in the body. One recent study on the artificial sweetener acesulfame potassium discovered that this chemical could not be processed by the body and created a harmful effect on the cells that line blood vessels [1]. Researchers also found that replacing regular sugars with non-caloric artificial sweeteners led to negative changes in fat and energy metabolism. Ultimately, artificial sweeteners are foreign substances to the body, and the body is better equipped to deal with consuming real sugar versus chemical substitutes. Other research has found that artificial sweeteners in the form of diet sodas could contribute to adverse health issues, including mood changes, headaches, difficulting concentrating, hypertension, dehydration, kidney issues, and more [2]. What About Sugar in My Diet Food and beverage products that have been marketed as “sugar-free” are also conveying another message: sugar is bad for you. The food industry has skewed the reality of what sugar is and has offered a replacement as a “better” option. However, when removing real ingredients from food and replacing them with synthesized chemicals, there is more potential for harm rather than a benefit. Chronic consumption of artificial sweeteners can also contribute to negative health outcomes. The bottom line is that moderation is key both with artificial sweeteners and natural sugar. Food is something that should be both nourishing and pleasurable, and feeling worried about how sugar might hurt your body can be detrimental to you in many different ways. Ultimately, eating real food vs fake food is the best line of defense to good health. As always, trust your body as the best guide for what you need and how much of any food and drink you are enjoying. With the many nutrition fads that are marketed today, it can be confusing to know what to eat to be healthy. However, your body intuitively knows the foods you need to stay healthy and well, and learning to listen and honor your own body's needs will always guide you in the right direction. To live a nourished life, eat a variety of the foods you love and enjoy and feed your body well (fake sugar not necessary). What are your thoughts about using artificial sweeteners in place of real sugar? The Meadows Behavioral Healthcare family of treatment programs treat more than just the symptoms of addiction, trauma and the co-occurring conditions, we treat the whole person from the inside out. This includes promoting all aspects of wellness as well as nutrition. Our holistic approach helps patients create a healthy, satisfying lifestyle for long-term healing. Content Source
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Video games are great escapes from the world. If as a young adult you struggle with real life relationships, feel pressure from unrealistic expectations, feel powerless, or defeated and inadequate, games are hypnotizing, allowing you to dissociate from real life stresses at home, school, and work. Gaming offers many rewards, from escape from reality, satisfying curiosity, providing a purpose, heightening a sense of invincibility, feeding the ego, offering companionship, satisfying the need for challenges, gratifying the need to be a leader, fulfilling sexual fantasies and meeting the need for acceptance. In the early days of video games, most games were available only on arcade machines, which were not accessible 24-hours a day. These days, games are one of the most popular features of social network sites and can be played almost continuously on handheld game devices, personal computers, or smartphones. Video games have become much more elaborate, with rich alternate worlds, multiple characters, and complicated storylines. Young adults often turn to games to be challenged, enhance their arousal, diminish their sense of defeat and helplessness, and feel connected with others who live with social isolation. They use games to distract and anesthetize emotional pain. Game creators are incentivized to develop and program games to keep you playing. Humans are incentivized to avoid pain. The nature of these games is that they give immediate rewards and reinforcements and in time, change the neurochemistry of the brain. Similar to the behavioral conditioning experiments performed by BF Skinner with rats and pigeons, the gamer is being trained to push buttons for their digital reward, which becomes digital heroin for the mind. As said eloquently by one young gamer, “I was the rat in the Skinner box. The lever I pushed was attached to a computer and screen and my reward was digital images that provided me with amazing rushes of dopamine.” With chronic gaming, the brain has adapted to high levels of dopamine by developing a tolerance. As a consequence, the brain on its own produces less dopamine and/or reduces the number of dopamine receptors in the reward circuit, which decreases the enjoyment of the behavior requiring one to play longer and more frequently to have any good feelings. It’s only a matter of time before the gamer begins to neglect major aspects of his life such as social relationships, school, work, self-care, and hygiene. Once they become pathological gamers, they become more depressed, anxious, socially phobic and less productive. Jason came to the Claudia Black Young Adult Center at The Meadows for treatment for his depression. He was in his second year of college, had failing grades, was dropping classes, was isolating in his dorm room, had lost weight and was not attending to basic hygiene. Jason’s family intervened, taking these signs of depression seriously as his biological father had committed suicide when Jason was just seven. What the family didn’t recognize was that Jason had a gaming addiction. At the Claudia Black Center, it is protocol when we work with a male who is depressed and isolating to assess the possibility of some type of screen addiction. We find it is most likely to be gaming or porn and often times both. (Should this be a female, their screen addiction is more likely to be related to social media.) Nearly all gamers who come to us do not identify gaming as their primary problem. Part of our role is to help them explore this part of their life through motivational interviewing techniques. And we also address their depression, looking at any developmental trauma and grief issues. With Jason we worked on the trauma of losing his father to suicide and the unresolved grief that spread throughout his family, evaluating his depression and exploring his gaming behavior. Like most of our clients, he came to recognize that gaming was a primary issue for him. At the Claudia Black Center, we were able to help detox him, work to identify unhealthy core beliefs, do the needed grief and trauma work regarding his fathers’ suicide, and facilitate an after-care plan with the focus predominantly on his gaming addiction. Compared to other addictive disorders, video game addiction may not seem very serious; however, when it is addictive, it leads to all of the same potential consequences of other addictions, impacting every aspect of one’s life and even becoming life-threatening. We are increasingly hearing stories of gamers dying, due to dehydration, not eating, even cardiac arrest. While video games have their place in a healthy, well-rounded life, when gaming begins to take precedence over school, work, relationships, or basic self-care the individual needs professional help. Content Source |
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