Sugar

 

Sugar has many of the same effects on the human body as do certain drugs. Ingestion of a sugar fix in the form of sweet candies and such can send your mood sky high only to see it plummeting in as little as thirty minutes after the rush. The average person in the Western world consumes approximately 40 pounds of sugar per annum--that's a lot of sweet empty calories and many glycemic jolts to one's system. That sugar affects mood is well documented in case after case, and it is even sometimes denied to those who have been hospitalised for depression because of its known properties. 

 

Those of us with affective disorders are especially sensitive to many common dietary items and sugar is often one of them. The flush of adrenaline that follows the intake of sugar can counter the psychotropic medications we take for bipolar disorder. Before you give up on your drugs, make sure that it isn't your diet that is causing some of the ineffectiveness or side-effects you are experiencing. An over abundance of sugar can sabotage your health by making you jittery, anxious and depressed just as can some substances readily categorised as drugs. 

 

 

Some resources if you care to read up on the many ways that sugar can affect the mind and body...