Sweetened Drinks Associated with Increased Depression Risk

Story at-a-glance

• Preliminary study findings report that drinking sweetened beverages – whether they’re sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners – is associated with an increased risk of depression.
• Those who drank more than four cans or glasses of diet soda or other artificially sweetened beverages had a nearly 30 percent higher risk of depression compared to those who did not consume diet drinks. Regular soda drinkers had a 22 percent increased risk.
• Potential mechanisms through which sugar intake could exert a toxic effect on mental health include causing insulin and leptin resistance; suppressing activity of a key hormone called BDNF, which are critically low in depressed patients; and promoting chronic inflammation, which is thought to be a primary cause of depression.
• Previous studies have also shown that aspartame has a detrimental effect on brain function, neurological, cognitive, and behavioral health.

By Dr. Mercola

Foods have an immense impact on your body and your brain, and eating whole foods as described in my nutrition plan is the best way to support your mental and physical health.

Avoiding sugar (particularly fructose) and artificial sweeteners is in my view, based on the evidence, a very important aspect of preventing and/or treating depression. Both contribute to chronic inflammation, and can wreak havoc with your brain function.

Preliminary study findings that will be presented at the 65th annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology reports that drinking sweetened beverages – whether they’re sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners – is associated with an increased risk of depression. Coffee was associated with a slightly reduced risk.

As reported by WebMD:¹

“Researchers say the findings suggest that cutting down on sweetened drinks or replacing them entirely with non-sweetened beverages may help lower depression risk.”

The study included nearly 264,000 American adults over the age of 50, who were enrolled in an AARP diet and health study. At the outset of the study, the participants filled out a detailed dietary survey. At a 10-year follow-up, they were asked whether they’d been diagnosed with depression at any point during the past decade.

• Those who drank more than four cans or glasses of diet soda or other artificially sweetened beverages had a nearly 30 percent higher risk of depression compared to those who did not consume diet drinks
• Regular soda drinkers had a 22 percent increased risk

Meanwhile, those who drank four cups of coffee per day had a 10 percent decreased risk of depression, compared to those who drank none. Researcher Honglei Chen, MD, PhD, of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) told WebMD:

“While our findings are preliminary, and the underlying biological mechanisms are not known, they are intriguing and consistent with a small but growing body of evidence suggesting that artificially sweetened beverages may be associated with poor health outcomes.”

While the featured research does not prove causation, and some have pointed out that those who are depressed may turn to sweets for self-soothing, there is plenty of other evidence indicating that both sugar and artificial sweeteners can have a significant and detrimental impact on mental health, so the findings really are not at all surprising. As for the underlying mechanisms, previous research has offered up a number of compelling clues.

Why Sugar Can Increase Depression Risk

Let’s start with sugar. There are at least three potential mechanisms through which refined sugar intake could exert a toxic effect on mental health:

• Sugar (particularly fructose) and grains contribute to insulin and leptin resistance and impaired signaling, which play a significant role in your mental health
• Sugar suppresses activity of a key growth hormone called BDNF (brain derived neurotrophic factor) which promotes healthy brain neurons. BDNF levels are critically low in both depression and schizophrenia, which animal models suggest might actually be causative
• Sugar consumption also triggers a cascade of chemical reactions in your body that promote chronic inflammation. In the long term, inflammation disrupts the normal functioning of your immune system, which is linked to a greater risk of depression

In 2004, noted British psychiatric researcher Malcolm Peet published a provocative cross-cultural analysis of the relationship between diet and mental illness.² His primary finding was a strong link between high sugar consumption and the risk of both depression and schizophrenia. According to Peet:

“A higher national dietary intake of refined sugar and dairy products predicted a worse 2-year outcome of schizophrenia. A high national prevalence of depression was predicted by a low dietary intake of fish and seafood. The dietary predictors of... prevalence of depression are similar to those that predict illnesses such as coronary heart disease and diabetes, which are more common in people with mental health problems and in which nutritional approaches are widely recommended. Dietary intervention studies are indicated in schizophrenia and depression.”

One of the key predictors of heart disease and diabetes is in fact chronic inflammation, which, as Peet mentions, is also associated with poor mental health. And sugar consumption is a primary driver of chronic inflammation in your body, so consuming excessive amounts of sugar can truly set off an avalanche of negative health events – both mental and physical.

Following my recently revised nutrition plan is a simple way to automatically reduce your intake of sugar from all sources. Another previous study published in the International Breastfeeding Journal,³ found that inflammation may be more than just another risk factor. It may in fact be THE risk factor that underlies all others... According to the researchers:

“The old paradigm described inflammation as simply one of many risk factors for depression. The new paradigm is based on more recent research that has indicated that physical and psychological stressors increase inflammation. These recent studies constitute an important shift in the depression paradigm: inflammation is not simply a risk factor; it is the risk factor that underlies all the others.

Moreover, inflammation explains why psychosocial, behavioral and physical risk factors increase the risk of depression. This is true for depression in general and for postpartum depression in particular.”

Omega-3 Fats are Also Vital for Your Optimal Brain Function and Mental Health

Another major culprit that encourages inflammation in your body is rancid or oxidized omega-fats (think trans fats), whereas a diet rich in omega-3 fats helps to reduce inflammation. Healthy omega-6 fats like gamma linoleic acid (GLA), found in evening primrose, black currant seed and borage oil can also help counteract inflammation.

As you may already know, I recommend taking animal-based omega-3 supplements for many types of inflammation, and for optimal brain health. Most alternative health practitioners are also well aware of the benefits of omega-3’s for depression. While all omega-3 fats possess immune-boosting qualities, omega-3 fats from marine sources (EPA and DHA) are more biologically potent than omega-3 fat ALA found in plant sources such as flax seeds, and are more potent inflammation fighters. My favorite source of omega-3 fats is krill oil, as it has several advantages over fish oil.

Artificial Sweeteners and Depression

The artificial sweetener aspartame is the number one source of side-effect complaints to the FDA, with over 10,000 complaints filed and over 91 symptoms documented that are related to its consumption. Among them are mental adverse effects such as depression and panic attacks. The following video will familiarize you with some of the terrifying side-effects and health problems you could encounter if you consume products containing this chemical. Unfortunately, aspartame toxicity is not well-known by doctors, despite its frequency.

A number of studies have shown that aspartame has a detrimental effect on brain function, neurological, cognitive, and behavioral health. For a listing of such studies, please see my Aspartame Studies page. For example:

• In a 1986 evaluation of reactions to food additives,⁴ aspartame (in commonly consumed amounts) was linked to mood alterations (anxiety, agitation, irritability, or depression), headaches, insomnia, dizziness, and fatigue
• A 1993 study⁵ found that individuals with mood disorders are particularly sensitive to aspartame, suggesting its use in this population should be discouraged. In the clinical study, the project was halted by the Institutional Review Board after a total of 13 individuals had completed the study because of the severity of reactions within the group of patients with a history of depression
• A 2006 study⁶ found that high concentrations of aspartame can cause neurological symptoms, including memory and learning problems
• In 2008, researchers asserted that excessive aspartame ingestion might be involved in the pathogenesis of certain mental disorders (DSM-IV-TR 2000) and also in compromised learning and emotional functioning⁷

Humans Cannot Compensate for Methanol Toxicity

Aspartame is primarily made up of aspartic acid and phenylalanine. The phenylalanine has been synthetically modified to carry a methyl group, which provides the majority of the sweetness. That phenylalanine methyl bond, called a methyl ester, is very weak, which allows the methyl group on the phenylalanine to easily break off and form methanol. (This is in sharp contrast to naturally-occurring methanol found in certain fruits and vegetables, where it is firmly bonded to pectin, allowing the methanol to be safely passed through your digestive tract.)

Methanol acts as a Trojan horse; it's carried into susceptible tissues in your body, like your brain and bone marrow, where an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) converts it into formaldehyde, which wreaks havoc with sensitive proteins and DNA. Interestingly, and most importantly, humans are the only animals that do NOT have a protective mechanism to compensate for methanol toxicity...

Both animals and humans have small structures called peroxisomes in each cell. There are a couple of hundred in every cell of your body, which are designed to detoxify a variety of chemicals. Peroxisome contains catalase, which help detoxify methanol. Other chemicals in the peroxisome convert the formaldehyde to formic acid, which is harmless, but this last step occurs only in animals. When methanol enters the peroxisome of every animal except humans, it gets into that mechanism. Humans do have the same number of peroxisomes in comparable cells as animals, but human peroxisomes cannot convert the toxic formaldehyde into harmless formic acid.

So, in humans, methanol is allowed to be transported in your body to susceptible tissues where this enzyme, ADH, then converts it to formaldehyde, which damages your protein and DNA, which of course can lead to all sorts of health issues.

Don’t Be Fooled by the Aspartame Propaganda

Aspartame proponents claim it’s harmless, pointing out that phenylalanine and aspartic acid can be readily found in whole foods. However, comparing aspartame to whole food is really comparing apples to oranges.

In a normal protein like meat, fish or eggs, phenylalanine and aspartic acid comprise 4-5 percent each of the total amino acid profile. This is how nature intends the human body to encounter these two amino acids and there is nothing wrong with these substances if they occur naturally in a proper balance with other amino acids. But in aspartame the ratio of these two amino acids is 50 percent phenylalanine and 40 percent aspartic acid (with 10 percent methyl ester bond, aka wood alcohol, a known poison).

In other words, on a percentage basis this is a massive quantity of two unnaturally isolated amino acids that are simply not found in this ratio in nature, bonded together by a known poison. The result of this chemical cocktail is a sweet tasting neurotoxin.

As a result of its unnatural structure, your body processes the amino acids found in aspartame very differently from a steak or a piece of fish. The amino acids in aspartame literally attack your cells, even crossing the blood-brain barrier to attack your brain cells, creating a toxic cellular overstimulation, called excitotoxicity. MSG is another excitotoxin, and works synergistically with aspartame to create even more damage to your brain cells.

The truth is, aspartame should never have been approved, and it should not be on the market, considering how many complaints the FDA has received by people who experienced frightening and devastating side effects from it. (To get the back-story of how it got approved in the first place, please see my previous article Proven Unsafe But FDA-Approved: Are YOU Still Consuming This Man-Made Poison?)

The only way to put pressure on the FDA to address the very real hazards of aspartame (and other artificial sweeteners) is to keep adding to the mounting pile of complaints. So please, if you experience an adverse reaction to any aspartame product, I urge you to call the FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator in your area, and file an adverse event report.

Key Factors to Overcoming Depression

There’s no doubt in my mind that radically reducing or eliminating all forms of sugar and artificial sweeteners from your diet is a crucial step to prevent and/or address depression. Quite simply, if you fail to address the root of the problem, you could be left floundering and struggling with ineffective and potentially toxic band-aids for a long time. Your diet does play a huge part in your mental health so please do not ignore the impact sugar and artificial sweeteners might be having. Here are six additional strategies that can help you even further:

1. Exercise – If you have depression, or even if you just feel down from time to time, exercise is a MUST. The research is overwhelmingly positive in this area, with studies confirming that physical exercise is at least as good as antidepressants for helping people who are depressed. One of the primary ways it does this is by increasing the level of endorphins, the "feel good" hormones, in your brain. It also helps to normalize your insulin and leptin signaling.
2. Eat a healthy diet – A factor that cannot be overlooked is your diet. Foods have an immense impact on your mood and ability to cope and be happy, and eating whole foods as described in my nutrition plan will best support your mental health. Avoiding sugar and grains will help normalize your insulin and leptin levels, and eliminating artificial sweeteners will eliminate your chances of suffering its toxic effects.
3. Optimize your gut health– Fermented foods, such as fermented vegetables are also important for optimal mental health, as they are key for optimizing your gut health. Many fail to realize that your gut is literally your second brain, and can significantly influence your mind, mood, and behavior. Your gut actually produces more mood-boosting serotonin than your brain does.
4. Support optimal brain functioning with essential fats– I also strongly recommend supplementing your diet with a high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fat, like krill oil. This may be the single most important nutrient to battle depression.
5. Get plenty of sunshine – Making sure you're getting enough sunlight exposure to have healthy vitamin D levels is also a crucial factor in treating depression or keeping it at bay. One previous study found that people with the lowest levels of vitamin D were 11 times more prone to be depressed than those who had normal levels. Vitamin D deficiency is actually more the norm than the exception, and has previously been implicated in both psychiatric and neurological disorders.
6. Address your stress– Depression is a very serious condition, however it is not a "disease." Rather, it's a sign that your body and your life are out of balance. This is so important to remember, because as soon as you start to view depression as an "illness," you think you need to take a drug to fix it. In reality, all you need to do is return balance to your life, and one of the key ways to doing this is addressing stress.

   Meditation or yoga can sometimes help. If weather permits, get outside for a walk. But in addition to that, I also recommend using a system that can help you address emotional issues that you may not even be consciously aware of. For this, my favorite is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). However, if you have depression or serious stress, I believe it would be best to consult with a mental health professional who is also an EFT practitioner to guide you.

Related:

The Aspartame Trap: You May Be Unknowingly Ingesting this Toxic Sweetener

America's Deadliest Sweetener Betrays Millions, Then Hoodwinks You With Name Change

Dumbing Down Society Part I: Foods, Beverages and Meds

12 Food Additives to Remove From Your Diet

Health Tip For 2013: Go All Natural — Ditch The Artificial Sweeteners!

The 76 Dangers of Sugar

The Aspartame Trap: You May Be Unknowingly Ingesting this Toxic Sweetener

America's Deadliest Sweetener Betrays Millions, Then Hoodwinks You With Name Change

Technorati Tags: aspartame,sugar,sugars,depression,Dr. Mercola,sodas

EFT – Tapping to Help Unemployment and the Fears and Panic that go with Scarcity… (Part III)

Fear Limits Our Brilliance

Guess what?

The World Tapping Summit group has a complimentary gift for you.

It's a special tapping session with Margaret Lynch.

Topic? Very timely… Overcoming economic anxiety.

So if you're having challenges with the economy -- perhaps you've been laid off or are afraid you will be, or you're having feelings of scarcity or you're just generally worried about the economy – whatever your concerns about the economic climate, here’s a helpful tool to overcome your economic challenges.

It's yours (f.r.e.e.)! You can download it here and keep it forever, as our gift to you:

Tapping World Summit Margaret Lynch Economy Bonus

I got astoundingly positive feedback from Margaret's session about clearing debt… this is the perfect piece to go with her session.
I've already received literally hundreds of great stories about major breakthroughs made by many of you, from using the techniques from the Tapping World Summit.

Dr. Mercola

Related Resources:

• Tapping or EFT – (Part 1)
• Tapping World Summit - (Part II)
• YouTube - Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) Introduction

The 3 Only Things - Book overview

There are three things we routinely say are "only" this or that, but may be of incalculable importance in our lives: "it was only a dream", "only a coincidence", "only my imagination." According to Robert Moss, it is ONLY through dreams, coincidence, and the workings of imagination that we begin to remember that there is a world beyond the obvious one, a world where we reawaken to who we are and what we are meant to become. Reawakening to this world, and living fully in it, is like awakening to a world of color from black and white. The Three "Only" Things offers practical ways to make our dreams, imagination, and coincidences more powerful and active in our lives. The techniques take only a few minutes a day, but have amazing results. In everyday circumstances, caught up in hurry and stress and other people's schedules and expectations, we lose touch with the deeper meaning of life and become strangers to magic, the art of reaching into a deeper reality and bringing gifts from it into the ordinary world. Using historic dreamers such as Winston Churchill, Lincoln, and Mark Twain, Moss shows that this magic can easily be used day by day. With clear language and entertaining examples, the book explores the nine powers of dreaming, including: solving problems; staying healthy; discovering our best work; understanding relationships; putting our divided selves back together; connecting with our life's purpose. Moss calls coincidence "secret handshakes from the universe," and teaches readers how to pay attention and work with the "lessons" and opportunities brought to us by coincidence. Imagination offers a way to "see" and create the future through visualization, teaching us that "believing is seeing". Using the skills that made him a best-selling fiction writer, Moss relates stories of famous and well-respected figures who use these methods. It's a page-turner combined with immediate, useful advice. The suggestions have all been tested in workshops and personal consultations, and the book is destined to become a major success.

The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Tapping World Summit – (Part II)

What is Tapping or EFT???

EFT is an alternative healing technique that requires no special training or equipment, and using only your hands, can produce incredible and instantaneous results.

EFT is an emotional acupressure technique that utilizes meridian energy points across the body to 'discharge' past emotional trauma. While the concept itself may seem dubious, it has consistently demonstrated such amazing results that many psychiatrists and doctors have begun utilizing it as a part of their healing arsenal. What makes it particularly noteworthy is its high success rate for phobias and anxiety. EFT has been said to work where often nothing else will.

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Tapping is the Key to the Secret

The Secret is a revolutionary Self-Improvement DVD sweeping the planet, that explains how our thoughts create our reality. Tapping is a powerful acupressure technique that eliminates negativity. Using them together you can literally achieve anything you want.

The Secret is the Law of Attraction. It says that thoughts become things, whether they are negative or positive thoughts. We are always creating our reality, whether we know it or not. It's just that as often as we create what we want - positive thoughts, we also create what we don't want - negative thoughts.

Tapping is a meditation/self-hypnosis technique that helps you let go of negative thoughts and feelings. Every negative thought has a feeling attached to it. That feeling is an imbalance in your body's nervous system. You tap various acupressure points on your body to release that feeling, and the negative thought starts to change.

Whatever positive thought you try to focus on, negative thoughts jump up to get in the way. This is due to the body's survival mechanism being over-enthusiastic about it's job. Based on past experience, it perceives danger in what you are wanting to do. It's warning you that the last time you did something even remotely similar, it resulted in feeling bad - so it brings up the negative feelings ahead of time to make sure you don't do it. Negative feelings lead directly to negative thoughts.

The survival mechanism is doing its job, but a little bit too well - it gets confused with the complexities of modern life, and starts matching situations to past experiences that aren't really relevant, and bringing up feelings of danger when there are none.

Tapping literally removes the feeling attached to the past experience. That way the irrelevant warning feelings don't come up, and you don't think negative thoughts, and it becomes much easier to hold a positive mental picture of what you want, and take appropriate action.

This is extremely powerful - Tapping is the Key to the Secret.

How to Do Anything

This is simplified from The Secret, and also inspired by The Science of Getting Rich:

1. Make a PICTURE of what you want
2. Take the FIRST STEP towards making it happen

When you think about it, we follow this process to do anything, whether it's making a cup of tea or building a skyscraper. For big tasks we often chunk it down and make mental pictures of various milestones along the way, but this is just a detail.

So why does this process fail?... Negative thoughts, of course!

When we go to take that first step, that's when most negative feelings come up. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of what other people might think, fear of it just being hard work. Our sub-conscious mind is reminded of a previous time when we took a similar step and it ended badly. So naturally it's bound to warn you not to do that again... even though this time it's a totally different situation.

The feeling comes up, and we rationalise it with negative thoughts. We talk ourselves out of what it is we want to do, and go and watch television instead, or smoke a cigarette, or eat, or drink, or maybe just lie down and stare at the ceiling, wondering why we are such a failure.

The other option is to Tap away the feeling. Work out at which point the feeling was the strongest, and what that feeling reminds you of - when have you felt it before? When you find the first time, use Tapping to wipe the slate clean. Then take that next step again, and find that it's effortless to do so.

When you think about your mental picture, of when you've got where you want to be - what does it feel like to be there? Hopefully it feels pretty good... But maybe there are negative feelings lurking beneath the good feelings. Jump right into the picture, and look for fears, worries, self-doubts. What's the worst that could happen in that picture?

If there are any negative feelings in that picture, then guess what... your sub-conscious mind will find ways to avoid it. It will sabotage you, probably by convincing you that the next step you want to take is one that will actually take you further from your goal.

So tap away any negative feelings you find in your mental picture. The positive feelings that are there are your motivation to get there, positive feelings can't be tapped anyway. But underneath those, find each negative feeling, trace it back to find when you first felt it, and tap away the feelings stored in that memory.

If you apply this process repeatedly and thoroughly, all negative thoughts relating to your goals are vanquished. You can literally do anything you want.

YouTube - Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) Introduction

There are several versions of tapping and tapping points. Here is a quick little cheat sheet drawing, but the points are a little different than in the videos above, which is how I learned.

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

Tapping or EFT – (Part 1)

How Tapping Works

Before you read this, realize that you don't need to know precisely how Tapping works. If you try it, and watch your body and mind carefully to see what happens, you will realize that it does.

You just have a set of beliefs that say you need to fully understand something before you can use it! So you could try tapping those beliefs, because they probably hold you back in other areas.

You will still be left with unanswered questions after reading this explanation. My suggestion is that you experiment with Tapping and find your own answers. You don't really know how electricity works - no-one really does! But you still switch on a light, and you still cook your dinner with it. It's really true, even the most knowledgeable scientists don't know precisely how electricity works.

A Belief is a Thought that we are Emotionally Attached to

If I tell you that above my bed I have a painting of a tree, your mind will accept that information. If I then tell you actually it's not a painting of a tree, it's a painting of a boat, your mind will accept that information too. A thought is like that - easy to change. You receive new information and your mind accepts it.

If however, you touch a hot stove and feel pain, your mind will receive the programming that stoves are not safe to touch. If someone tells you that the glowing red stove is safe to touch, you will not accept what they are telling you. The difference is the emotion of physical pain, which is attached to the information.

This is the difference between a thought and a belief. An emotion becomes attached to the thought, as a signal to the mind that the thought is necessary for survival, and as a result the thought can not be easily changed.

Tapping removes Negative Beliefs. In fact, there is no difference as far as the body is concerned between a Negative and a "Positive" Belief. A Negative belief is just one that you have judged is unhelpful to your wellbeing, and a Positive one is a belief you have judged to be helpful.

In fact, we don't need the thought "Hot Stoves Give Pain" to be a belief in order to follow it. Thoughts that are not beliefs fit into our Understanding of the world and we live our life through them. In fact, when that becomes a strong belief we start to behave irrationally. For example someone might be burned by a stove as a child and when they are older still be very afraid of lighting a gas hob. There's no rational reason for them to be afraid of that, but it affects their life in a negative way - a positive belief becomes a negative one.

Bad Emotions are imbalances in the Nervous System

Good emotions occur when nervous energy can roam freely in the body. Bad emotions occur when nervous energy gets stuck. You can picture it as a standing wave of energy formed in one of the nerve channels in the body.

This is why we feel different emotions in different parts of our body. Sometimes we feel nervous in our stomachs, stress in our shoulders, fear in our hands, etc. Energy is trapped in nerve channels that run through those parts of the body.

Sometimes we tap on a feeling, and sometimes on an actual belief. In fact there is no difference. The emotion that is attached to a particular belief might be very strong, so we don't even notice the belief, just the feeling. It might be very weak so we don't even notice that there is a feeling attached to the words. But the feeling is there, otherwise we would not hold the belief.

Tapping Balances the Nervous System

When we tap, we say the belief out loud to bring up the corresponding emotion in the nervous system. Then we tap the various points to reset the system. Each point is the end of a nerve channel in the body. Tapping sends a shockwave down that channel.

There is no easy way to know which nerve channel is holding a particular emotion, so we just tap them all. Sometimes when you have done a lot of tapping you'll be able to just feel where it is, and you'll feel it clear as you tap it.

When the emotion is gone, your mind is no longer attached to the belief. Suddenly your mind is free to re-process it, and realize it isn't true or that there are easy ways around it.

YouTube - Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) Introduction

Posted: True Health Is True Wealth