Why ‘good’ sugar is the secret to a slim figure

Why ‘good’ sugar is the secret to a slim figure

Eating fresh fruit and vegetables helps people resist the temptation of  waist-expanding treats, scientists have found.

‘Good’ carbs, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, can help in the battle with obesity

By Nick Collins, Science Correspondent

12:19AM BST 20 Sep 2011

When our supplies of glucose – found in carbohydrates – drop we begin to lose   our ability to control desire, while our urge to eat increases.

The lack of glucose – which is used to power the brain – makes us helpless against the urge to reach for high-calorie foods, researchers said.

Obese people are particularly vulnerable, with even the slightest drop in   glucose prompting irresistible cravings for carbohydrates, from which we get   most of our sugar.

These can be “good” carbs, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, brown   rice and pasta and wholemeal bread, or “bad” varieties which   include white bread and sugar, fizzy drinks, cakes, crisps and other packet   snacks.

Making sure the brain’s glucose levels do not drop could be the secret to   staying slim, a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation   suggested.

Eating less and often could lower the chance of succumbing to the temptation   of high-calorie foods, particularly for obese people, the researchers said.

Prof Rajita Sinha, of Yale University in America, said: “The key seems to   be eating healthy foods that maintain glucose levels.

“The brain needs its food.”

Volunteers were given injections of glucose and their brains were scanned   while they were shown pictures of high and low calorie foods, as well as   other objects.

When glucose levels were lower, two areas of the brain which regulate pleasure prompted the desire to eat while the prefrontal cortex – which gives us self-control – lost its ability to control the impulses.

Related articles

• Why ‘good’ sugar is the secret to a slim figure (telegraph.co.uk)
• Sugar could be key to weight loss (telegraph.co.uk)
• To ditch dessert, feed the brain (eurekalert.org)
• Craving for junk food? Blame it on low sugar in brain (news.bioscholar.com)
• Brains of obese light up for high-calorie foods (cbc.ca)
• What’s so bad about sugar? [Debunkery] (io9.com)
• Junk Food Photos Elicit Different Responses in Brains of Obese, Non-Obese (blisstree.com)
• Feed the Brain to Keep Weight Off (abcnews.go.com)
• Obese People’s Brains Less Able To Control Impulse To Eat Than Thin People (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Why Obese People’s Brains Cave to Cravings (livescience.com)

Scientists find evidence for ‘chronesthesia,’ or mental time travel

Researchers have found evidence for “chronesthesia,” which is the brain’s ability to be aware of the past and future, and to mentally travel in subjective time. They found that activity in different brain regions is related to chronesthetic states when a person thinks about the same content during the past, present, or future.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-scientists-evidence-chronesthesia-mental.html