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How The mediterranean Diet Improves Your Mood - What The Science ShowsCarbohydrate effects on mood -
However, when blood glucose falls to quite low levels, the body does tend to react rather aggressively in order to prevent death. Stress hormones, including catecholamines and glucocorticoids, growth hormone, and glucagon are all released. This high-powered combo would no doubt cause sweating, palpitations, anxiety, weakness, crankiness, and other symptoms traditionally associated with hypoglycemia but can also occur whenever high levels of these hormones are released for any cause 1.
If the blood glucose falls low enough that the brain is impaired, certainly very bizarre behavior such as psychosis can be observed. How common is such low glucose outside very rare insulin-producing tumors or accidental overdoses of diabetic medications? Let's consider the gold standard oral glucose tolerance test.
After an overnight fast, you are given 50 grams of dextrose which is merely glucose. Then blood glucose is measured continuously for up to six hours.
Often the lowest glucose level is missed if the glucose is not measured continuously, but rather at half hour intervals, as is also common. There is a wide range of glucose nadirs in the blood levels of those tested.
That means that 1 in 40 people could expect to have "true" hypoglycemia in the context of a pure carbohydrate snack after a fast. This effect can be accentuated by caffeine and alcohol.
However, when one goes around measuring glucose levels of typical human beings eating mixed meals not participating in oral glucose tolerance tests levels almost never fell below In these healthy subjects, levels pretty much stayed between all day long, before and after meals, and overnight.
It was a combination of these findings and studies of so-called hypoglycemics whose blood glucose levels did not correlate to symptoms that consigned "relative" or "reactive" hypoglycemia to conservative medical never-never land.
However, many people including myself, in full disclosure have predictable "sugar crash" feelings about minutes after a pure sugary snack or after drinking soda. Adding protein and fat to meals and snacks eliminates this problem which I would find odd if it were entirely psychosomatic.
There are other very interesting correlates between hypoglycemia and behavior and mood. A researcher named Bolton studied the Peruvian Quolla tribe he characterized as "perhaps the meanest and most unlikeable people on earth. Bolton did glucose tolerance tests GTTs in many of the men, and he noticed a statistically significant correlation between the most aggressive subjects and those who had the lowest blood glucose values during the GTT 3.
Another researcher, Virkkunen, studied men who had committed serious violent assaults. Their GTTs were also remarkable for higher peak glucose values and subsequently lower glucose nadirs than controls 4. Folks with antisocial personalities have also been noted to have low blood glucose levels, and, once again, it is important to note that many of these men perpetrated the crimes under the influence of alcohol, which will accentuate the hypoglycemic effect.
Similar studies in the general population show that both men and women whose blood glucose fall more rapidly during a glucose tolerance test will tend to have higher ratings of aggression 5 6.
In these studies, a glucose level of 63 or lower was strongly associated with the aggressive tendencies. This is still outside a normal healthy human's blood glucose range eating normal food, but much, much closer to the normal range than I guess rapidly fluctuating blood glucose does cause behavioral changes We can't be sure of one causes the other or if there is another factor or factors that causes both low blood sugar and violent tendencies.
Why is the blood glucose changing more rapidly in certain people than others to the same food or glucose stimuli? Could an underlying mechanism explain both aggression and hypoglycemia?
Virkkunen's more violent reactive hypoglycemics had enhanced insulin response to the oral GGT. And it has been found that impulsive offenders who act aggressively, particularly when intoxicated, have lower levels of serotonin turnover measured low levels of the metabolite of the serotonin metabolite 5-HIAA in the cerebrospinal fluid 7.
Low levels of brain serotonin are associated with enhanced insulin secretion and a tendency to develop low blood glucose levels. The data is a bit tenuous, but at least this mechanism makes some sense in the big picture. So it seems that a diet that predisposes us to violent blood sugar swings meaning high in sugar and low in protein and fat, made worse by caffeine and alcohol can affect moods negatively and perhaps even cause violent behavior in some.
In the next post I'll review the evidence that carbohydrates are essential to good mood. Image credit. Emily Deans M.
Evolutionary Psychiatry. Alcoholism Do Carbs Make You Crazy? Evidence that blood glucose and dietary carbohydrate affect mood. Posted March 1, Share. Alcoholism Essential Reads. The Evolving Evidence on the Health Implications of Alcohol. What Middle-Aged Binge Drinkers Need to Know.
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Back Get Help. Mental Health. Personal Growth. Family Life. And only carbohydrate consumption naturally stimulates production of serotonin.
Antidepressant medications are designed to make serotonin more active in the brain and extend that activity for longer periods of time to assist in regulating moods.
Carbohydrates raise serotonin levels naturally and act like a natural tranquilizer. Wurtman's husband, Richard Wurtman, the Cecil H. Green Distinguished Professor at MIT and the director of the Clinical Research Center, along with former graduate student John Fernstrom, discovered that the brain makes serotonin only after a person consumes sweet or starchy carbohydrates.
But the kicker is that these carbohydrates must be eaten in combination with very little or no protein, the Wurtmans' combined research determined. So a meal like pasta or a snack of graham crackers will allow the brain to make serotonin, but eating chicken and potatoes or snacking on beef jerky will actually prevent serotonin from being made.
This can explain why people may still feel hungry even after they have eaten a ounce steak. Their stomachs are full but their brains may not be making enough serotonin to shut off their appetites.
And what do protein dieters especially women miss most after the second week? Women have much less serotonin in their brains than men, so a serotonin-depleting diet will make women feel irritable. And with this mood change comes a yearning to eat something sweet or starchy.
Thus, it's not just a matter of will power or mind over matter; the brain is in control and sends out signals to eat carbohydrates. According to Wurtman's clinical studies, if the carbohydrate craver eats protein instead, he or she will become grumpy, irritable or restless. Furthermore, filling up on fatty foods like bacon or cheese makes you tired, lethargic and apathetic.
Eating a lot of fat, she said, will make you an emotional zombie. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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