Oslo teens who drink the most sugary soft drinks also have more mental health problems such as hyperactivity and distress, according to Norwegian researchers.
Their study of more than 5,000 Norwegian 15- and 16-year-olds showed a clear and direct association between soft drink intake and hyperactivity, and a more complex link with other mental and behavioral disorders.
They surveyed the students, asking them how many fizzy soft drinks with sugar they had a day, and then questions from a standard questionnaire used to assess mental health.
The teens who reported skipping breakfast and lunch were among the heaviest soft drink consumers, Dr. Lars Lien and colleagues at the University of Oslo found.
“There was a strong association between soft drink consumption and mental health problems among Oslo 10th grader”.
“This association remained significant after adjustment for social, behavioral and food-related disorders.”
Most of the students said they drank anywhere between one and six servings of soft drinks per week.
Those who drank the most — more than six servings a week – had the highest scores.
For hyperactivity, there was a direct linear relationship — the more sodas a teen drank, the most symptoms of hyperactivity he or she had.
The worst problems were seen in boys and girls who drank four or more soft drinks a day. Ten percent of the boys and 2 percent of the girls drank this much.
The researchers said it was possible that other substances in the soft drinks, such as caffeine, were to blame for the symptoms, and they did not check other possible sources of refined sugar in the children’s diets.
-Reuters, American Journal of Public Health
Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on sugar linked with mental problems in Norway.
This was a very interesting study, it’s one that has been known for many years but it’s very good that they did this study to confirm it. What this study showed was, when sugar goes into the body, the sugar was in this study was the form of soft drink intake. When sugar goes into the body as we spoke of before, not only does it weaken your immune system, make you more prone to cancer and all other pathogens, which is bacteria, viruses, parasites, candida, and cancer cell formation. It also throws the mind and emotion balance off and in this study, the children, ages 15 and 16 year olds that drank the most soft drinks had the more mental health problems such as hyperactivity and distress.
Again this has been known for quite a long period of time, ask any school teacher that has younger children; ask them what the two worst days to teach in the school are. They are usually the day after Halloween and the day after Easter. These are the days after kids had the most refined sugar in their system and they become hyperactive, ADD, ADHD, all these things are greatly increased when sugar goes into the body. What is the mechanism? There’s many possible ones, but one is sugar depletes the body of B vitamins. And B vitamins are the vitamins of your nervous system. They are also your anti stress vitamins and your energy vitamins, so it is very important that we don’t stress the system out with refined sugar which depletes our system and causes the nervous system to go into dysfunction. It’s also interesting to note people that eat high sugar diets, or more refined sugars, flours and starches and more cooked food, they tend to have more inflammation in their body. Sugar causes inflammation. Sugar causes pain. Sugar causes, as this study showed mental emotional imbalance and sugar opens the door to most forms of diseases as we spoke of in the past. Increases cancer risk and will increase risk of most all diseases because of the increased inflammation in the body due to the sugar consumption.
So how can we reverse all of this? Very simply, it’s just stop eating it.
These sugars are not necessary in the diet. Children can eat non sweetened sugar in the form of fruit, but non sweetened fruit not genetically altered fruit that is hybrid for sweetness and sugar vegetables are acceptable. But any other sugar form, especially in a cooked form, refined flours, starches and sugars, turn into sugar in the body and throw the mind and emotions out of balance and also increase inflammation and also increase risk of most all diseases.
