Sugar and The Brain (Rebroadcast)

Why is it hard to have just one of those delicious slices of pound cake over the holidays? It turns out it has less to do with the creamy butter and more to do with the way our brains react to those white sweet grains of sugar.

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke discuss the ways our brains respond to sugar by releasing a nice amount of dopamine.

While we may think this dopamine is supposed to make us feel good, what the chemicals in our brains are trying to do is to teach us that this sugar is a good thing and that we want more of it for our survival.

This might have been beneficial to us a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, but with sweets in every candy dish, gas station, and coffee shop around the corner, craving sugar has its consequences.