Quick Fact: Eating Sugar Causes Hyperactivity In Children (The Myth)
The medical research cannot be more clear - sugar does not cause hyperactive behavior in children, including ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). This another urban myth has been inseminated by many popular "health" websites giving all sorts of fallacious parental advise. At least "dozen of studies" have proven that eating sugar has no effect on children's behavior. Ironically, what the studies have found out, is that children's consumption of sugar had effect on the behavior of their parents.
In one research all the kids received sugary drinks while half of the parents were told that their children drank sugar-free beverage. Parents who thought that their children received sugary drink reported their kids behavior as more hyperactive.
In another study one group of children was fed with sugar-rich diet while the other sugar-free. No evidence was found that sugar caused any shift in behavior, regardless if some of the children had already been diagnosed with ADHD. This is typical example of cognitive bias when adult caregivers believe that sugar has negative effect, so they see what they want to see.
On personal note. I have been suffering from ADHD Inattentive Type since I was 6-7 years old. The causes of my cognitive issues are directly traced to my social environment, specifically the unsustainable parenthood given by my adult caregivers (mother and father). My parents' inability to bring me up in sustainable way was rooted in their own unsustainable upbringing/social environment that had conditioned them to be intellectually and emotionally incapable of child caregiving.
References:
"Effects of Diets High in Sucrose or Aspartame on The Behavior and Cognitive Performance of Children", The New England Journal of Medicine, 1994.
"Effects of sugar ingestion expectancies on mother-child interactions", Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 1994.
"The effect of sugar on behavior or cognition in children. A meta-analysis.", The Journal of the American Medical Association , 1996.
"Is Sugar Consumption Detrimental to Health? A Review of the Evidence 1995—2006", Food Science and Nutrition Journal, 2009.
"Festive medical myths", The British Medical Journal, 2008.
-logic
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Great post. I really do not know how this myth was planted in the first place. Unless your a diabetic, the blood sugar is highly regulated, so even if consume a lot of sugar, this does not cause a dramatic rise in blood glucose.
Myths are easily dispersed in society where majority of people are scientifically illiterate :-)
@logic good point about sugar. In fact too much sugar can harm children teeth, affect their well being negetively. Its time for parents to protect their children from too much sugar intake in any form..upped. Thanks for sharing.
Sugar is the new crack
i agree with but and i want to discuss with you my problem my younger brother eats suger so much and we are now helpless that how to stop him to eat suger its so much harmful for him to eat suger he almost eats 10 spoons of suger in aday and he fights with us so much i think due to this habbit his suger level is now so high and he also facing now b.p problem i read your post and thats y commenting here we are so much worried about him plz guide me if you have some remedies to avoid this bad habbit
Educate him as to why he shouldn't eat so much of it. Show pictures of some old messed up teeth, you could show him this video of someone putting a hard-boiled egg in coca-cola (no link but I'm sure a quick google search will do). When I was younger what helped me change my habits was watching "super size me" the movie.
If you want him to change he has to know why he should change and the benefits from it, imo.
Good idea.
Showing someone valid information such as documentaries, lectures or articles are a good way of teaching and changing the behaviour.
Showing an experiment is even greater way of teaching children directly.
Eating sugar compulsively and habitaully like your brother does is a behavioral problem. There is no magical cure for it in the form of medication.
Your brother dietary habits need to be change. I do not know your family's psychological make up, its past and yoru interactions between the memebrs of the family. I do not know dietary habits of other members of the family.
You would need family psychologist.
What I would say is that if you want to eliminate some behaviour, you need to change environmental factors (society, family, natural environment etc.) that are root causes of certain behaviour.
10 spoons of sugar is a lot but not as much considering that 1 can of coke consits over 9 teaspoons of sugar.
I am not sure how old he is (if he is a kid), but most of kids consume dozens of teaspoons of sugar a day from their soft drinks, cereal bars, chocolate bars etc Which is highly dangerous amount that leads to obesity.
thanks a lot for your valueable talk on this
from other hand, sugar gives nothing but only empty calories which could develop obesity
Sucrose and fructose impact on production of fat in our body that leads to hormonal changes, obesity and diabetes is a different topic. But yes, you are right.
My opinion is: the sugar is not an evil but better control its consumption than not
Honestly speaking, people should control a consumption for every food and products
Yes people should control everything that they eat but some products are more dangerous than other. Sucrose or fructose are one of those products.
Sugar is bad for everyone. I was able to quite on added sugars more than 20 years ago and really happy about that. I never crave for sugar anymore.
I can imagine how well it benefited your health.
I can myself when I stop consuming sucrose products for a week or two. After I cannot put a piece of chocolate in my mouth as it tastes too sweet to handle.
Most of what I eat that contains sucker, I find to sweet. So mostly I dont eat food that suppose to be sweet. Of course, a lot of food contains sucker, like even ketchup or even salami. But luckily that is very small quantities. I'm building down last years on salt as well, cooking without salt and fewer and fewer times I add salt when the food is on my plate. The result is that I grave less for salt, and most food in restaurants, at friends places, and something prepared bought in shops, I find to salty. Interesting to see how our minds can get so addicitive to this 'supplements' that we don't really need. Also great to see that we can re-program our brains. It takes tremendous effort (sucker craving I lost in two years only), but my secret is to take one substance at the time. When it takes 10 years to get rid of a set of 'supplements' that in the end does do our bodies and mind no good, it takes 10 years. But better to get rid of them over time, then trying all at ones and not able to follow through :)
Yeah I am the same with salt. I do not use salt when cooking at all.
Now, every processed food product from the shop tastes oversalted to me, ughh.
I think ADHD is more due to our lifestyle change but I'm not encourage sugar.
Complex bio-psycho-social influences contribute to development of such disorders. Lifestyle during child development is one of the factors.
Great post!
Another delicious experience ! <3 @logic
Have you actually even read at least the title of the post? lol
Now that's unexpected...makes me feel better about the big ice cream my son just had...thanks for sharing this.
(Patiently waiting until it is discovered that sugar doesn't make you fat either - had a big ice cream myself!)
I have to dissapoint you here. Sucrose and fructose do make you fat :-)
Ironically, fat does not really make you fat.
So the problem are the parents? lol
They are one of the factors. It's whole social environment which includes both parents as well as whole society, and also natural environment.
Amazing thanks upvoted!
You sure you did? :-)
"Maybe it's your diet" is the most annoying/insulting thing a personal with clinically-diagnosed ADHD has to hear too often.
But it doesn’t surprise me that there is a link between eating sugar and hyperactivity, especially that many researchers consider sugar as a drug, so influences the nervous system.
Please read the article :-)
I read your article, but I've given my opinion: I think it's good to share opinions and ideas.
For this experience, the doctors didn’t administer large amount of sugar for children, and experience didn't last long. So, some of other researchers still think that it can have an affair between sugar and hyperactivity, and I agree with them, (and this is what I wrote in my comment).
Thanks for the comment.
I have provided an extensive list of scientific studies including meta analysis. Please provide your peer reviewed, coherent studies that support the idea that sugar has link to ADHD. Meta analysis would be the best.
There is the study of Langseth and Dowd. There isn’t much research published for political and economic reasons. You imagine if you stop buying the sweets how many factory will close!
This is exactly what happened with tobacco, since 17th century doctors have shown that it is dangerous for health, but only in 1950 states accepted this reality.
You are right that there may be "political or economic reason".
The thing is that science and Scientific Method does not care about politics. You cannot pay all these scientists to falsify information. These studies are from all over the world. They are peer-reviewed and even meta-analysis.
Tobacco companies treid to falsify science by buying credentials from corrupted "scientists" (semi-scientists). Scientific truth came up anyway, regardless of tobacco companies' manipulation of facts, science denialism and science confusionism.
The same happens now with climate change denialism from fossil fuel industry. Science comes up sooner or later and debunks the bullshit.
Science has debunked the bullshit of link between ADHD and sugar, same as it debunked anti-vaxxer delusions of linke between vaccines and autism.
Also, pleaase do not mix influence of sugar on obesity with ADHD. These are two separate things. Sugar indeed makes you fat and is factor in diabetes.
"There is the study of Langseth and Dowd"
Please provide it. That one study that allegedly disproves dozens of other.
This post received a 4.0% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @logic! For more information, click here!
Any indication as to who funded the research cited in your post?
There have also been some very good posts written here on Steemit about "confirmation bias".
These are studies from all over the world from different universities, institutions and countries. It is impossible to corrupt such information.
So called corporate conspiracy does not work here.
Did you forget a ;-) there?
;-)
Thank the heavens. ;-)