Heathline featured Dr. Teralyn in their discussion about how sugar is negatively impacting your brain health especially during covid-19. She is featured discussing the impact of sugar as a dietary stress that impacts your overall stress and is a key component to brain health.
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Eating Excess Sugar Is Worse for You During COVID-19: 6 Ways to Cut It
- During stressful times, sugar can bring comfort.
- Sugar affects neurotransmitters in the brain.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that people with underlying health conditions, including metabolic syndrome, are at increased risk for complications from COVID-19.
No doubt 2020 has been packed with stress, and for many turning to food is one way to cope.
According to a Ball State University study, 31 percent of the 838 respondents found that the pandemic increased stress, which affected their eating behaviors and decreased their diet quality.
Stress levels were significantly higher for people who reported having unhealthy eating practices and for those whose diet had worsened.
Teralyn Sell, PhD, psychotherapist and brain health expert, says sugar stresses out the brain because it is a dietary stress.
“When we talk about reduction of stress, people often think of work stress and home life stress, but they also have to think of dietary stress, and part of that is sugar because of the way it impacts the brain’s reward center, and because it’s inflammatory, and causes blood sugar dysregulations,” Sell told Healthline.
She says understanding sugar’s effect on blood is essential to understanding why you may reach for sugar when stressed.
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