All ailments and impairments seem to point to problems in the gut. Even the effects of drinking sugary beverages in kids, which are now linked to cognitive functions impairment later in life, are likely produced by imbalance in the intestines, a recent research showed.
The new study puts into question the long-term effects that drinking colas and other sweetened beverages has on younger generations. The reason why some students have trouble with studies in school, apparently, could be caused by their diet, not just genes. experience, or parental upbringing.
Sugary drinks may affect brain development during childhood
Apparently, kids are the most ardent consumers of sweet beverages. A recent study by American scientists suggests that this could pose a bigger problem than just bad teeth. There is also a link to how the memory and executive function operate later in life.
Hippocampus is the area of the brain that is crucial in studying new things and remembering. It is this region that sugar consumption during early life affects, scientists say. Sugary drinks impact the variety and number of certain types of the gut bacteria. This in its turn produces changes in the brain.
One type of gut bacteria in particular called Parabacteroides has been implicated in changes that have a negative impact on successful completion of tasks that require learning certain things and then remembering them.
The experiment was on animals, some of whom were given sugary drinks in early stages of development, which would be equal to childhood years in humans.
The animals who consumed sugar had shown elevated levels of Parabacteroides. Moreover, the higher was the level of this type of bacteria, the worse animals performed in memory tasks.
To check it, some animals were artificially given Parabacteroides, although they didn’t consumed sweet beverages. The memory impairment was noticeable in this group as well.
“We found that the bacteria alone was sufficient to impair memory in the same way as sugar, but it also impaired other types of memory functions as well,” pointed out Emily Noble, one of the authors of the study.
How much sugar is bad for kids?
The current dietary recommendations in the U.S. suggest to limit the amount of calories that a person gets from sugar to 10% per day or less. However, a lot of kids aged 9-18 in the USA get much more than that, with most of the calories coming from sweet drinks.
Hippocampus continues to develop during this stage of life and it could be impacted by diets high in sugar, researchers warn.
Humans have on average about 100 trillion various microscopic organisms inside the gut. When a person’s microbiome is out of healthy balance, it has profound impact on one’s health.
Struggles that sugar causes
By now scientists know what kind of tasks require activity in certain areas of the brain, so in the experiment several variations were tested, aimed to different regions.
- Rats who were given sweet beverages as kids were unable to recall where they had seen a certain object previously. The control group that wasn’t given sweets had no problem with that. This task required activity in hippocampus.
- When the memory task wasn’t related to hippocampus (rats simply needed to remember an object seen previously, without the requirement to keep in mind where it was seen), both groups were able to do that.
This is why scientists point out to hippocampus as the area that sugar consumption affects in kids.
What’s surprising, when researchers artificially increased the level of Parabacteroides in rats’ guts, the animals struggled with both types of tasks: The ones that involved hippocampus, as well as those that that didn’t.
Obviously, people who consume sugar as grownups could be affected by this, too.
The point of the study was to demonstrate how childhood consumption affects long-term performance on cognitive tasks.
So, remember that the best drink for kids is still water and not Coke or Fanta, even though they love the sweetened beverages more.
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