Looks like diabetes isn't the only thing us sugar-addicts have to fear. A new study has found that eating lots of sugar can affect your brain in as little as six weeks.



The study from UCLA have found that eating a diet high in high-fructose corn syrup (a cheap, hyper-saccharine liquid sweetener found in many sodas and processed foods) can lead to long term memory and cognition problems.

For the study, looked at two groups of rats that were each given a fructose solution to drink instead of water for six weeks. The second group of rats was also give flaxseed oil, for omega-3 fatty acids and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). This is a type of good fat that also helps protect the brain's synapses from damages. By the way, synapses are also what enables our brain to learn new things and remember old ones. So there more sugar in your diet, the more harder your brain has to work.

The rats were trained on a maze twice a day for five days before they began the diet. The researchers would test how well the rats could navigate the maze. After the six week course, the rats were tested again for their ability to remember the route and find their way out of the maze.

They found that the rats fed the omega-3 diet navigated the maze much faster than sugar-loaded counterparts whose brains showed a decline in synaptic activity, which affected their ability to think clearly and recall the route they'd learned six weeks earlier.

via Medical Xpress