Sweet things make your heart broaden? Surprising relevance of sugar and human relations

The sweet with plenty of sugar is an enemy of diet, cause of decayed teeth ... etc ... and it is still treated as a bad guy, but the positive effect of sugar on the mental face became clear.

By ingesting sugar, impulsive actions such as strangulation to others and shouting at a hesitancy can be suppressed. It also seems that people who have diabetes tend to be driven by anger urges at the same time, so it can be said that sugar has the effect of calming the person's heart.

Details of the experiment are as follows.Feeling angry? Why a spoonful of sugar sweetens your mood | Mail Online

According to this article, researchers discovered that when a person's blood glucose (energy supplying to the brain, monosaccharide contained in blood flow) concentration is high, it can suppress offensive mood is.

Professor Brad Bushman at the Ohio State University who worked on the research said, "To conserve and avoid aggressive impulses requires a lot of energy, but if you raise the concentration of glucose in the blood, for example by drinking sweet lemonade, "As energy is provided to the brain, we will be able to restrain ourselves," he said. "This discovery is not only a meaning as a discovery that satisfies medical curiosity, it has more value That's what it is. "

According to the two published papers, Professor Bushman and his co-workers are doing some experiments, the more difficult the metabolism or digestion of glucose in the body is, the less tolerant the surroundings It is understood that it is aggressive.

As part of the research, 62 college students were fasted for 3 hours in order to eliminate the instability of the glucose value, and it was measured how much reaction time it took in the test using the opponent computer Was done. Half of the participants were given lemonade with sugar, and the other half was given lemonade with sugar-free artificial sweetener.


After waiting 8 minutes for glucose to be absorbed in the body of the participant and increasing the blood glucose concentration, participants were asked to tell the participants "who the opponent who is not in front and the person can press the button earlier" 25 For those who played matches and the reaction was late, a large volume of headphones was wornWhite noiseIt was reported that the rule of being swept away.

At the beginning of the showdown, the participants were told that it is possible to set the volume of noise sent from the headphones from 60 dB to 105 dB (same level as the fire alarm) when the other party loses, but in fact participants People are always set to win twelve times out of 25 matches, and which one will win is decided at random.

The aggressiveness to the opponent was measured by "the volume of the noise selected before the match", the volume of participants who drank lemonade containing sugar averaged 4.8, the average drinking group of lemonade with artificial sweetener averaged 6.06 We chose the volume of. In other words, participants who drank sugar-containing lemonade and ingested glucose had a result that they did not act more aggressively than non-ingested participants.

Professor Bushman says, "To the best of my knowledge, it is the first study to demonstrate the possibility of suppressing aggressive behavior in real life by increasing blood glucose concentration." However, as other problems such as obesity may emerge, ingesting sugar should not be considered a panacea to suppress irritation.

However, this result is effective as a method of boosting mental strength because it is possible to ignore their aggressive impulses by making self-control work for those who get hit hard and get around the circumference It is thought.

In addition, such findings have also been confirmed in different series of studies by Professor Bushman and Professor of Kentucky University, recently published in the magazine "Personality and Individual Differences", and they were given symptoms of type 2 diabetes It is said that he instructed to fill in the check list frequently used to measure the number and its strength.

The check item includes the question of whether there are symptoms such as "feeling of feet gone", "causing shortness of breath at night," "feeling fatigue throughout the body", but all three separate studies Looking at it, people with signs of diabetes at a higher level than the average did not allow others to violate and took a tough response.

Here recently, the number of people who can not successfully metabolize glucose by diabetes is rising rapidly, Professor Bushman says, "Diabetes merely may not be only a disease that is only harmful to patients themselves. There is a possibility that it will have a bad influence on relations and society ".

He also said that "If glucose can correctly metabolize, it may be self-regulating, so it may be one step closer to a peaceless society without any harm", so the influence of diabetes mentally is clear It seems that it will be expected to lead to a new approach from the perspective of treating patients with diabetes.