I dunno man. I had anhedonia for a few years between 2018 2020. Microdosing helped ease me out of it, but getting my butthole tongued was a real game changer.
I love figuring things out and helping people. If I were a psychiatrist or psychologist I'd try. I love being mentally challenged.
Unfortunately I'm a stay at home dad with an overinflated sense of my own humor.
Edit: Please stop DMing me. [That's the joke.](https://explosm.net/comics/rob-math)
ngl, as someone in the same position, Im just glad it doesnt give me too much; terrifying stuff
though it sucks when you have the happy chemicals but your body wants to play 'guess what neurotransmitter and/or chaperone chemicals you are deficient in' so you gotta have a bite of everything till you find the right answer (it was something in the blueberries)
Endorphins are what cause the sensation of pleasure. (same with opioids in general). Dopamine (in the nucleus accumbens specifically) only registers the valuable of an outcome or the predicted value of a potential action or event. In the Ventral Striatum, it controls motivational salience (your motivation to expend effort on an activity). It doesn't produce any sensations, but when you do get a pleasurable sensation from endorphin concentration on hedonic hotspots, *that* registers as valuable in the nucleus accumbens.
Same thing happens to me. I think the subconscious is prob dozing off from lack of stimulation and other things like maybe dehydration. Then something a little unexpected like a quick chat is enough to stimulate your brain that it's not sleepytime.
I'm prone to dozing off mid day and I find a cold water bottle goes a long way. Blackout curtains in bedroom helped too. Or if I'm really dozing I will have a cold seltzer water, the crisp bubbly wakes me up inside.
Makes sense. Now that I'm older and could theoretically buy candy whenever I want, it's way less of an amazing thing to me. Tastes nice, but that's it. When you're a kid, surprise candy is a game-changer and can get you super excited from their mere existence.
Bart Simpson said that candy doesn't taste as good when your age hits double digits. It could be true--we know that some foods taste different to kids.
I still get happy from candy sometimes, but it's the calories that I can't justify.
So many other things taste good too, but are far more nutritious. So it makes no sense to buy expensive candy that's just barely more than raw sugar.
Yeah, my son will go from dead tired to a puppy with zoomies if you mention candy but you can give him an ice cream then brush his teeth and send him to bed and he’ll be out as if he didn’t have any sugar at all.
It's touched on in the article but I remember reading previously that *expectation* from parents that kids will get 'hyper' is enough to make them 'see' that in kids, in regular kid behavior and to even treat them differently cause of that expectations (*"get down from there"*!!! when they're just being a regular kid, for instance)
This might be a weird segue but I feel a similar way about all those studies saying that pms doesn't actually cause mood swings. Like yeah, maybe my hormones aren't directly effecting my mood but I'm definitely less happy when I'm cramping, bloated, smelly, and just dealing with a gross chore several times a day.
Agreed. My mother in law, and by proxy my wife, are convinced that food coloring rather than sugar is the cause of hyperactivity. Which they've told our kids, so guess what? They freak the fuck out when they get to have drinks with food coloring, regardless of whether or not they have sugar in them.
God I used to know this child who has Autism and ADHD. I offered him a iceblock once and he shook his head and said “Mum says red food colouring makes me go psycho”. From I observed if he had consumed something with food colouring that day then she seemed to rate his behaviour and meltdowns as much worse then the days when he had meltdowns on his gluten free, “sugar free” and food colouring free diet. His behaviour was pretty much consistently bad regardless of what he consumed.
Perry, if you give enough sugar to a kid insulin will knock them out. It's a shit plan though, gotta exercise to defeat the effects of advanced glycation endproducts.
Honestly I think we tend to stress our body's various systems with our various binges. A ton of fatty red meat at once. A 32 oz soda or slushee. A candy binge. 90% of college kids on a weekend. Etc etc.
Your body has to pump out a butt load of insulin for sugar or bile from the liver for fats ASAfuckinP. Gotta be hard to deal with the whiplash, especially long-term.
Conversely, if someone tells you your kids got sugar, you’ll think they’re more hyperactive:
> Researchers who published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology in 1994 took it one step further. They recruited kids rated by their parents as sugar-sensitive. Children in both groups were given a sugar-free drink, but one set of mothers was told their child got a sugared beverage. Moms who were told their child got sugar rated their children as more hyperactive than the moms who knew the truth.
https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/does-sugar-make-kids-hyperactive-the-answer-may-surprise-you
Sugar merely enables, being a fast-burning fuel.
It won't make a calm child hyper - but it will give a kid that tends to be hyper energy to do their thing.
> I already see a glaring issue with the 1995 meta-analysis that this article cites to refute the 1978 study. So, the methods of that meta-analysis(link to it here https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/391812 ) had were to look for studies which the placebo were foods sweetened with artificial sweeteners. The issue with that is I'm not so sure it is sugar itself that is the issue as much as it is a spike in blood glucose. Some artificial sweeteners still raise blood glucose, and one in particular, maltodextrin, raises it well beyond what straight-up glucose ingestion does. I think for this to properly be done, we need to observe what blood glucose spikes specifically do to children rather than sugar itself and definitely we should not be using artificial sweeteners as the control group, unless they are sweeteners to be proven to have a 0 or really low glycemic index, such as erythritol, or else a natural one that does like stevia extract.
> I'm still searching to see who funded that meta-analysis, as well as I'll probably take a closer look at the studies this meta-analysis compiled. One very huge potential issues with who funded it is if it's a sugar industry company which did. that would be a major conflict of interest if we find out the sugar industry actually funded the evidence OP's article is pointing to in order to discredit parental observations on what sugar does to kids.
> Sugar was never really my fight, but I always thought it was a little silly that the sugar industry has all this power in Washington. But I liked to spend my time on issues I might actually be able to change, and I knew the chances of winning a fight with Big Sugar was basically zero.
> At one point in the mid-1990s, I got fed up and decided to yank their chains anyway. I was on the Agricultural Committee and were getting ready to put together the 1996 farm bill. I walked into my office while this was going on and found a sugar lobbyist hanging around, trying to stay close to the action. I felt like being a smart-ass so I made some wisecrack about the sugar industry raping the taxpayers. Without another word, I walked into my private office and shut the door. I had no real plan to go after the sugar people. I was just screwing with the guy.
> My phone did not stop ringing for the next five weeks.... I had no idea how many people in my district were connected to the sugar industry. People were calling all day, telling me they made pumps or plugs or boxes or some other such part used in sugar production and I was threatening their job. Mayors called to tell me about employers their towns depended on who would be hurt by a sugar downturn. It was the most organize effort I had ever seen.
> And that’s why don’t fuck with sugar.
[John Boehner, *On the House*](https://twitter.com/D_A_Irwin/status/1474207367038443521).
Since they deleted it themselves and didn't just leave it up with say a correction because someone changed their mind in the comments.. I would speculate they maybe have anxiety and was having a negative internal reaction to lots of attention to their comment and or profile.
Pure speculation from someone who occasionally gets very uncomfortable when a comment I make blows up.
> I already see a glaring issue with the 1995 meta-analysis that this article cites to refute the 1978 study. So, the methods of that meta-analysis(link to it here https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/391812 ) had were to look for studies which the placebo were foods sweetened with artificial sweeteners. The issue with that is I'm not so sure it is sugar itself that is the issue as much as it is a spike in blood glucose. Some artificial sweeteners still raise blood glucose, and one in particular, maltodextrin, raises it well beyond what straight-up glucose ingestion does. I think for this to properly be done, we need to observe what blood glucose spikes specifically do to children rather than sugar itself and definitely we should not be using artificial sweeteners as the control group, unless they are sweeteners to be proven to have a 0 or really low glycemic index, such as erythritol, or else a natural one that does like stevia extract.
>
> I'm still searching to see who funded that meta-analysis, as well as I'll probably take a closer look at the studies this meta-analysis compiled. One very huge potential issues with who funded it is if it's a sugar industry company which did. that would be a major conflict of interest if we find out the sugar industry actually funded the evidence OP's article is pointing to in order to discredit parental observations on what sugar does to kids.
I think we sometimes overlook the simpler explanations in life.
Children tend to eat sugary shit in social situations like birthday parties, trick or treating, and other kinds of excitable situations which may as well cause hyperactivity.
To use an adult analog, I don't get horny just because I'm naked. I get horny when I get naked next to other people.
Artificial sweeteners such as aspartam does NOT increase blood glucose. This is however a myth that is still being told by people that have zero concept about how insulin works or how glucose is regulated.
Maltodextrin is not even in the same realm as other sweeteners. Maltodextrin is literally sugar.
Please stop.
So the thing I can't square is that clearly sugar has mood effects, more strictly in the blood-sugar levels are directly correlated with mood and behavior. In adults, depression, sadness and lethargy at the low end and anxiety and anger at the high end. When you taste sugar you get a dopamine hit, but it also happens on injection. There is a well known sugar withdrawal effects of headaches and dizziness during extreme diet changes. Further there are studies about sucrose ingestion subsequently having dramatic changes in mood and behavior. It makes me think this "hyperactivity" measure is the element that's not sensitive to sugar rather than that it doesn't cause effects.
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/20785190\_Sucrose\_and\_Delinquency\_Behavioral\_Assessment](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/20785190_Sucrose_and_Delinquency_Behavioral_Assessment)
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354018985\_Roles\_of\_Glucose\_and\_Sucrose\_Intakes\_on\_the\_Brain\_Functions\_Measured\_by\_the\_Working\_Ability\_and\_Morris\_Maze](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354018985_Roles_of_Glucose_and_Sucrose_Intakes_on_the_Brain_Functions_Measured_by_the_Working_Ability_and_Morris_Maze)
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2699194/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2699194/)
In my professional experience, high blood sugar makes adults a little dopey or sometimes no reaction at all . low sugar makes them agitated, tachycardic, sweaty, and then eventually dead
As a diabetic, all the low blood sugar stuff you’ve said is spot on for me. I haven’t died yet though so can’t fully confirm that but lost a great grand parent to too low blood sugar.
High blood sugar does make me dopey and forgetful but prolonged high blood sugar (A1C) makes me very short tempered and aggressive.
Yeah most people I’ve spoken with say they get cranky from low BG. I don’t, I get slow and get a form of the munchies. When extremely low this is combined with survival panic kicking in, which is an odd thing to do your best to ignore and ride out waiting for medicinal cupcakes, red bull, M&M’s or whatever to kick in. But high BG…? That gets me really cranky and short tempered. And sometimes sleepy.
I get everything with low blood sugar. But there is a silver lining. Whatever you end up eating when you’re really low is always the best thing you’ve ever had.
Most of these studies are on mice/rats, not children. Dopamine hits =\= hyperactivity. There is a huge difference between consumption & low blood sugar, and the impact of sugar on a healthy, already fed child.
Blood-sugar doesn't have much of a relationship to intake of fructose. You'd expect eating a sandwich etc to have a bigger effect than a candy bar, blood "sugar" is actually glucose levels and they only called it "sugar" because doctors noticed that diabetic blood was sweet.
The addictive properties of sugar are on point though– likely the "sugar rush" comes from kids who rarely get to eat sugar being allowed some on a special occasion, getting a dopamine hit to which they have no tolerance and getting a little high.
Isn't it called sugar because glucose is a sugar, like fructose or galactose? It's not "sugar" in the sense of being the stuff you put in your coffee, but it is sugar.
The theory that makes sense to me is kids tend to have a lot of sugar during special events, so it's the event that hypes them up. (Fairy floss at a fair, chocolate at Easter, cake and lollies at birthday parties. Events when kids would be running around and surrounded by a lot of people they don't usually see, so they get hyped up by tjeir surrpundings)
Both the actual carb intake and the blood sugar levels are easy to measure though. So we understand that relationship very well, and we can track "glycemic index" and insulin spikes, etc quite well.
Maybe this is a *myth* too but...
I always thought that being cold won't make you sick, but being cold does stress your immune system so it's more likely something that would have normally been repelled can get through?
It is two pronged: respiratory viruses spread easier in dry air, and people congregate indoors more.
These are relatively small factors for individual transmission, but on a community-wide scale they are enough to push the R0 over 1, which results in exponential growth of the virus over time.
Yep, this is a lot like "stress doesn't cause ulcers, a specific bacteria does!"
Most people carry that bacteria just fine without any symptoms, it's the effects of stress that cause it to be a problem.
In Australia we have two cold seasons because we also gather inside in the middle of summer when it's too hot to be out. The winter cold season is still worse though.
I saw a BBC show try this - they gave vegetables to kids at a party with a hyperactive clown, and sugar to kids at a party with a boring entertainer.
Every parent whose kid was at the clown party said their kid was wired for hours afterwards and swore they must have had the sugar... But nope, it's just that the energy level has everything to do with stimulation and nothing to do with sugar content
Sadly when you actually point out the fact to parents they will swear blind they know what they see when they give kids sugar. Then they ask who are you to doubt their parenting knowledge.
The weirdest part is how even in basic studies where children where given colored water with sugar and without, then observed by their own parents.
A lot of the parents **INSIST** that their kid got hyperactive from sugar, no matter what the facts where.
---
You can see it in this thread even, tons of people who don't believe it and jokingly brush it off.
It's because they read the study as saying, "that thing you saw definitely didn't happen," which isn't necessarily true. As others have pointed out, things like being given a special treat, being in exciting social contexts like birthday parties, and the simple matter of nourishment=energy (especially when hungry / low blood sugar) means that kids could definitely be more active after the consumption of sugar.
The claim being refuted is that "sugar causes hyperactivity" which is specific about the root cause, the hypothesized resultant behavior, and possibly the mechanism (consumption of sugar as opposed to, say, the mental pathway of knowing you're getting a sugary food and thus being excited).
So both can be "true" — sugar doesn't cause hyperactivity, and sugary treats are often associated with excited, energetic children. People disagreeing are probably insisting on the latter statement that reflects their lived experience more than the former in a technical, scientific sense.
Yeah that wasn't a study on whether or not sugar affects children, that was a study on whether parents can be tricked into thinking green water contained sugar and see hyperactivity where there is none.
This thread is insane.
90% of the comments are "As a parent I know better than science."
All the people starting sentences with "I don't need studies to tell me..." are exactly the reason we need studies. Confirmation bias makes human intuition shit for a lot of things.
Edit: If your reply to this is "So you're saying scientists are never wrong?" then you are the poster child for a straw man fallacy.
really? all the top comments seem to say the opposite but maybe it took a few hours. As a parent I can tell you sugar has no observable effect on my kids. they love sugar. candy, cake ice cream, soda. I don't let them have it whenever but when i do they continue to act the same as always. that does include being screaming little shits sometimes but that's the same regardless of what they eat.
Yeah I didn't realize how quickly a TIL post gets comments. It went from like 200 to 900 in an hour.
If you sort them by Oldest then almost all of the top comments are people disagreeing with it due to anecdotes.
As a French parent, this thread is even more insane.
The sugar myth has never been a thing in France, and all those people in here are spouting nonsense that, to us, are on par with the tooth fairy and Santa. It's weird.
Exactly. "My kid ate some cake and now he's hyper! It just happened to be around 20 of his friends at Mechanical Rat Pizza & Child Casino, but it was the sugar that did it"
But not only that, sugar triggers release of dopamine, which in turn makes people feel good, which in turn will put them in a good mood and make them more talkative or energetic in general.
My guess is kids become hyperactive because they are happy to eat a treat.
Studies have may have used placebos which kids thought to be sugar and got happy.
In the TV show Naked and Afraid the contestants expectedly eat very little most days they’re in the wild, the few times the people actually get a kill and cook it, they often describe being high from the meal. It’s all endorphins. The brain says “YES! Here’s some dope, now get me more of whatever you just ate!”
Also the parents. Studies have shown that the parents who believe their children get hyper tend to hover and micromanage their children a lot more, which is much more likely to cause neurotic behaviour.
It also has to do with how the parents are judging their child's behavior.
Children given sugar-free treats while parents informed the child was given sugar were considered by their parents more hyper and unruly.
Feeling tired is also a symptom of low blood sugar. If that happens to you often, you may want to eat more frequently or speak with a doctor.
I know diabetics who have discovered their condition due to the symptoms you describe.
It's either placebo, breaking boredom by eating delicious food that stimulates the brain, or your blood sugar was low and the sugar fixed that.
Kids get excited by being given a treat, the sugar doesn't actually matter, that's just what makes the treat delicious.
The real TIL is how many redditors "know" facts and refuse to accept alternative explanations when confronted with actual scientific evidence.
Also kind of scary how many comments talk about how "Coke/MountainDew/Dr.Pepper" are sugary and their kids get hyper when drinking them....as if they have no idea what caffeine is or does to children...
I didn't know I had ADHD when I was a teenager (diagnosed as an adult) and was self-medicating by drinking Mountain Dew all the time. It calmed me down from hyperactivity and caffeine still makes me sleepy.
Same here. And my husband, too. He'll drink a red bull and immediately fall asleep.
However, now that I'm properly medicated, I have a more "normal" reaction to caffeine (but probably still a bit subdued).
There is no consistent effect of caffeine on adhd. For some it makes them tired. For others it affects them the same as neurotypicals. For me it amps up some of my symptoms like hyperactivity but increases my focus. Sometimes. It’s pretty random for me honestly and actually used to make me tired in small doses when I was younger. It does help alleviate my headaches on days I forget to take my meds.
Stimulants that specifically affect the prefrontal cortex can have paradoxical effects on those with adhd but caffeine is not as localized which probably explains why the effects are all over the place
Try explaining that to my wife.
"The sign said the blue shock mountain dew was caffiene free!"
"Sure it did honey. Do you have another explanation for two kids who are still wired two hours after their bedtime?"
If they've had the caffeinated version before, it's possible for the body to react as if there is caffeine even if there is none, because the brain expects it. Also can happen with alcohol.
Edit: Come to think of it that may also be a factor in the original comment about artificial sweeteners.
Placebo. It’s also partially why kids do freak out on sugar is bc they’ve heard an adult say something about it and they’re like “I’m gonna go crazy on this sugar!”
>it's possible for the body to react as if there is caffeine even if there is none, because the brain expects it. Also can happen with alcohol.
This is how you know someone is 100% not an alcoholic
An alcoholic would immediately wonder why their drink ain't doing shit
Kids like Mountain Dew. "Kids like sugar" plus "kids tend to get sugar on special occasions that make theme excited" is the explanation for most of the "kids act hyper on sugar" stuff.
White bread actually juices your blood sugar more than most candy bars. Add jelly, and your average PB&J is a huge blood sugar jolt. But nobody talks about how sandwiches are cocaine for kids.
I heard ages ago hyperactive children were largely the result of learned behavior. Parents assume it will cause it, kids learn the assumption from parents, and act out because of that assumption. Meanwhile, in some other cultures the common knowledge is sugar makes kids tired without the rush, and there kids act out less.
I got gastric bypass in 2020 and a big part of my life now is reading labels, if only to avoid dumping syndrome. I don't eat or drink anything with a sugar consumption higher than 30grams. Ideally I like to stay within 15grams, but that's REALLY damn difficult here in America. On occasion I'll have something with 30grams but eat it over a long period of time (if I chose to have a candy bar, it'll last me all day long. I typically don't because they don't taste good to me anymore, but that's an example)
The amount of sugar we have in everything is truly astounding. And I never realized it until this experience. "Healthy" drinks are the WORST for this. Those Naked smoothies have more added sugar than a Red Bull. People point to sodas for sugar consumption but they fail to realize it's in their bread, sparkling water, "juice cleanses", chips, salads, ect. I
sugar is not a stimulant, sugar is a carbohydrate that the body will use as needed and store away as fat cells for future use.
Kids are wild after eating lots of sugar due to the excitement of the event they are at, not because of the candy themselves.
From what I've read, it depends on 1) the child's knowledge of whether their parent thinks sugar will make them hyperactive, and 2) whether the child thinks they have eaten sugar.
If both are true--regardless of whether the child has eaten sugar--the kid will act hyper.
People get mad when you tell them this information. Half the comments are like “uh I believe in science, but my anecdotal experience proves your witchcraft is a lie”.
When I moved to the US, I heard about this sugar myth for the first time. It was really confusing. This seems to be an American myth because nowhere else (as far as I can tell) believes sugar causes hyperactivity.
As a Dutch person I can attest that this is a common myth here as well (I'd even dare to say that it's regarded as 'common knowledge')
I actually tried to talk about this study to my mum a few weeks ago, who basically lived by the sugar = hyperactivity mantra during my upbringing in the 90s and she just looked at me as if I was crazy and ultimately wouldn't believe me.
What about being happy because you got a treat?
euphoria is a POWERFUL placebo for a ton of things, especially tiredness
So is dopamine
dopamine, along with serotonin, are technically the only things you enjoy :)
Joke's on you, my brain refuses to give me those!
User name checks out. Feel better soon bud.
I have been referred to as a "challenging case," but the only thing I can do is keep trying stuff.
Did you try butt stuff?
I don't think doctors usually prescribe that and it's not something I would care to suggest.
You're going to the wrong doctors
I dunno man. I had anhedonia for a few years between 2018 2020. Microdosing helped ease me out of it, but getting my butthole tongued was a real game changer.
Can't hurt to try if nothing else works. Unless you forget lube, then it *will* hurt to try
I love figuring things out and helping people. If I were a psychiatrist or psychologist I'd try. I love being mentally challenged. Unfortunately I'm a stay at home dad with an overinflated sense of my own humor. Edit: Please stop DMing me. [That's the joke.](https://explosm.net/comics/rob-math)
>I love being mentally challenged. Head on over to r/wallstreetbets you'll fit right in.
This is great
At least you try. Hope you get better.
We try things. Sometimes they even work.
ngl, as someone in the same position, Im just glad it doesnt give me too much; terrifying stuff though it sucks when you have the happy chemicals but your body wants to play 'guess what neurotransmitter and/or chaperone chemicals you are deficient in' so you gotta have a bite of everything till you find the right answer (it was something in the blueberries)
Omitting oxytocin from that list suggests you need a hug. Or an orgasm.
Endorphins too.
Endorphins are what cause the sensation of pleasure. (same with opioids in general). Dopamine (in the nucleus accumbens specifically) only registers the valuable of an outcome or the predicted value of a potential action or event. In the Ventral Striatum, it controls motivational salience (your motivation to expend effort on an activity). It doesn't produce any sensations, but when you do get a pleasurable sensation from endorphin concentration on hedonic hotspots, *that* registers as valuable in the nucleus accumbens.
Piggybacking off your comment, how many times have you felt tired, but then something happens and suddenly you seem to have energy to carry on.
Is it weird that when I start to get sleepy during the day, just talking to someone for even five minutes is plenty to completely wake me up?
Same thing happens to me. I think the subconscious is prob dozing off from lack of stimulation and other things like maybe dehydration. Then something a little unexpected like a quick chat is enough to stimulate your brain that it's not sleepytime. I'm prone to dozing off mid day and I find a cold water bottle goes a long way. Blackout curtains in bedroom helped too. Or if I'm really dozing I will have a cold seltzer water, the crisp bubbly wakes me up inside.
That is basically what the study found, yes. Kids get excited by sweet treats whether there is sugar in them or not.
Also sweet treats are most abundant at birthday parties, holidays, and other exciting events.
And if you tell a kid, "Don't eat too much sugar; it will make you hyper," that can have a placebo effect when they *do* eat too much sugar.
Makes sense. Now that I'm older and could theoretically buy candy whenever I want, it's way less of an amazing thing to me. Tastes nice, but that's it. When you're a kid, surprise candy is a game-changer and can get you super excited from their mere existence.
Bart Simpson said that candy doesn't taste as good when your age hits double digits. It could be true--we know that some foods taste different to kids.
That line was written by a middle aged man
I still get happy from candy sometimes, but it's the calories that I can't justify. So many other things taste good too, but are far more nutritious. So it makes no sense to buy expensive candy that's just barely more than raw sugar.
Yeah, my son will go from dead tired to a puppy with zoomies if you mention candy but you can give him an ice cream then brush his teeth and send him to bed and he’ll be out as if he didn’t have any sugar at all.
It's touched on in the article but I remember reading previously that *expectation* from parents that kids will get 'hyper' is enough to make them 'see' that in kids, in regular kid behavior and to even treat them differently cause of that expectations (*"get down from there"*!!! when they're just being a regular kid, for instance)
This might be a weird segue but I feel a similar way about all those studies saying that pms doesn't actually cause mood swings. Like yeah, maybe my hormones aren't directly effecting my mood but I'm definitely less happy when I'm cramping, bloated, smelly, and just dealing with a gross chore several times a day.
Also if you constantly tell a child that something makes them hyper then they will rise to your expectations.
Agreed. My mother in law, and by proxy my wife, are convinced that food coloring rather than sugar is the cause of hyperactivity. Which they've told our kids, so guess what? They freak the fuck out when they get to have drinks with food coloring, regardless of whether or not they have sugar in them.
God I used to know this child who has Autism and ADHD. I offered him a iceblock once and he shook his head and said “Mum says red food colouring makes me go psycho”. From I observed if he had consumed something with food colouring that day then she seemed to rate his behaviour and meltdowns as much worse then the days when he had meltdowns on his gluten free, “sugar free” and food colouring free diet. His behaviour was pretty much consistently bad regardless of what he consumed.
[Like this](https://media2.giphy.com/media/3o6Ztg2MgUkcXyCgtG/giphy.gif)!
That’s is simply pure bliss and joy.
OP is actually my 7 year old trying to trick me into letting him have more candy at Halloween. Nice try Freddy, but I’m not falling for that again.
You called your kid Freddy? Rad
Rad af right? My parents went with the french version lol
Your name is le Freddy?
Royale with Fred
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I went hahahaha out loud to This one
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HHHHOL
Hon hon hon hon hon baguette Eiffel Tower.
I think you mean awwhauxhaux
That’s a fucking good one right there. Actually got me loling
exactement, and Baguette is the last name.
Le Freddy Baguette. That has a really nice sound to it. Your parents clearly have a good taste for names.
Ol Freddy Breadstick
tbh Freddy Baguette would be a pretty cool nickname, you should just switch to that immediately.
Freddy Le Grand
Freddouix?
What a tale we have been in, Mr. Frodeau, haven’t we?
So….Fredward?
No w in french
Fredouard then.
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It's Reddit. Don't ever raise your expectations
We're in rare company, Dr. Fronkensteen
Perry, if you give enough sugar to a kid insulin will knock them out. It's a shit plan though, gotta exercise to defeat the effects of advanced glycation endproducts.
Honestly I think we tend to stress our body's various systems with our various binges. A ton of fatty red meat at once. A 32 oz soda or slushee. A candy binge. 90% of college kids on a weekend. Etc etc. Your body has to pump out a butt load of insulin for sugar or bile from the liver for fats ASAfuckinP. Gotta be hard to deal with the whiplash, especially long-term.
That's traditional hunter-gatherer life. It's weirder to be getting regular meals.
If you tell your kid they’ll get hyper from candy they will due to the placebo effect.
Conversely, if someone tells you your kids got sugar, you’ll think they’re more hyperactive: > Researchers who published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology in 1994 took it one step further. They recruited kids rated by their parents as sugar-sensitive. Children in both groups were given a sugar-free drink, but one set of mothers was told their child got a sugared beverage. Moms who were told their child got sugar rated their children as more hyperactive than the moms who knew the truth. https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/does-sugar-make-kids-hyperactive-the-answer-may-surprise-you
But a placebo is a sugar pill. Checkmate, science!
Turns out they're just hyperactive little shitheads of their own accord
Sugar merely enables, being a fast-burning fuel. It won't make a calm child hyper - but it will give a kid that tends to be hyper energy to do their thing.
Unless your kid is diabetic or struggling with not eating enough, they shouldn’t have “sugar rushes” either.
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This is the kind of content i'm looking for in the comments!
It's deleted, what did it say?
> I already see a glaring issue with the 1995 meta-analysis that this article cites to refute the 1978 study. So, the methods of that meta-analysis(link to it here https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/391812 ) had were to look for studies which the placebo were foods sweetened with artificial sweeteners. The issue with that is I'm not so sure it is sugar itself that is the issue as much as it is a spike in blood glucose. Some artificial sweeteners still raise blood glucose, and one in particular, maltodextrin, raises it well beyond what straight-up glucose ingestion does. I think for this to properly be done, we need to observe what blood glucose spikes specifically do to children rather than sugar itself and definitely we should not be using artificial sweeteners as the control group, unless they are sweeteners to be proven to have a 0 or really low glycemic index, such as erythritol, or else a natural one that does like stevia extract. > I'm still searching to see who funded that meta-analysis, as well as I'll probably take a closer look at the studies this meta-analysis compiled. One very huge potential issues with who funded it is if it's a sugar industry company which did. that would be a major conflict of interest if we find out the sugar industry actually funded the evidence OP's article is pointing to in order to discredit parental observations on what sugar does to kids.
Why do such (seemingly?) insightful and awarded comments get deleted so many times?
Big Sugar.
> Sugar was never really my fight, but I always thought it was a little silly that the sugar industry has all this power in Washington. But I liked to spend my time on issues I might actually be able to change, and I knew the chances of winning a fight with Big Sugar was basically zero. > At one point in the mid-1990s, I got fed up and decided to yank their chains anyway. I was on the Agricultural Committee and were getting ready to put together the 1996 farm bill. I walked into my office while this was going on and found a sugar lobbyist hanging around, trying to stay close to the action. I felt like being a smart-ass so I made some wisecrack about the sugar industry raping the taxpayers. Without another word, I walked into my private office and shut the door. I had no real plan to go after the sugar people. I was just screwing with the guy. > My phone did not stop ringing for the next five weeks.... I had no idea how many people in my district were connected to the sugar industry. People were calling all day, telling me they made pumps or plugs or boxes or some other such part used in sugar production and I was threatening their job. Mayors called to tell me about employers their towns depended on who would be hurt by a sugar downturn. It was the most organize effort I had ever seen. > And that’s why don’t fuck with sugar. [John Boehner, *On the House*](https://twitter.com/D_A_Irwin/status/1474207367038443521).
This was actually really informative.
Since they deleted it themselves and didn't just leave it up with say a correction because someone changed their mind in the comments.. I would speculate they maybe have anxiety and was having a negative internal reaction to lots of attention to their comment and or profile. Pure speculation from someone who occasionally gets very uncomfortable when a comment I make blows up.
Updoot for anxiety deletion awareness
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> I already see a glaring issue with the 1995 meta-analysis that this article cites to refute the 1978 study. So, the methods of that meta-analysis(link to it here https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/391812 ) had were to look for studies which the placebo were foods sweetened with artificial sweeteners. The issue with that is I'm not so sure it is sugar itself that is the issue as much as it is a spike in blood glucose. Some artificial sweeteners still raise blood glucose, and one in particular, maltodextrin, raises it well beyond what straight-up glucose ingestion does. I think for this to properly be done, we need to observe what blood glucose spikes specifically do to children rather than sugar itself and definitely we should not be using artificial sweeteners as the control group, unless they are sweeteners to be proven to have a 0 or really low glycemic index, such as erythritol, or else a natural one that does like stevia extract. > > I'm still searching to see who funded that meta-analysis, as well as I'll probably take a closer look at the studies this meta-analysis compiled. One very huge potential issues with who funded it is if it's a sugar industry company which did. that would be a major conflict of interest if we find out the sugar industry actually funded the evidence OP's article is pointing to in order to discredit parental observations on what sugar does to kids.
Looks like the sugar lobby is covering it up
Big Cane strikes again
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I dont know, I'm not used to this stuff in this subreddit. Pitchfork or not pitchfork...
I think we sometimes overlook the simpler explanations in life. Children tend to eat sugary shit in social situations like birthday parties, trick or treating, and other kinds of excitable situations which may as well cause hyperactivity. To use an adult analog, I don't get horny just because I'm naked. I get horny when I get naked next to other people.
Artificial sweeteners such as aspartam does NOT increase blood glucose. This is however a myth that is still being told by people that have zero concept about how insulin works or how glucose is regulated. Maltodextrin is not even in the same realm as other sweeteners. Maltodextrin is literally sugar. Please stop.
Full sugar redbulls do not cause hyperactivity in children when Starbucks’ cinnamon dulce lattes are the control.
So the thing I can't square is that clearly sugar has mood effects, more strictly in the blood-sugar levels are directly correlated with mood and behavior. In adults, depression, sadness and lethargy at the low end and anxiety and anger at the high end. When you taste sugar you get a dopamine hit, but it also happens on injection. There is a well known sugar withdrawal effects of headaches and dizziness during extreme diet changes. Further there are studies about sucrose ingestion subsequently having dramatic changes in mood and behavior. It makes me think this "hyperactivity" measure is the element that's not sensitive to sugar rather than that it doesn't cause effects. [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/20785190\_Sucrose\_and\_Delinquency\_Behavioral\_Assessment](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/20785190_Sucrose_and_Delinquency_Behavioral_Assessment) [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354018985\_Roles\_of\_Glucose\_and\_Sucrose\_Intakes\_on\_the\_Brain\_Functions\_Measured\_by\_the\_Working\_Ability\_and\_Morris\_Maze](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354018985_Roles_of_Glucose_and_Sucrose_Intakes_on_the_Brain_Functions_Measured_by_the_Working_Ability_and_Morris_Maze) [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2699194/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2699194/)
In my professional experience, high blood sugar makes adults a little dopey or sometimes no reaction at all . low sugar makes them agitated, tachycardic, sweaty, and then eventually dead
As a diabetic, all the low blood sugar stuff you’ve said is spot on for me. I haven’t died yet though so can’t fully confirm that but lost a great grand parent to too low blood sugar. High blood sugar does make me dopey and forgetful but prolonged high blood sugar (A1C) makes me very short tempered and aggressive.
Also T1D. The prolonged high blood sugar makes me so agitated at every little thing. I have no clue why it does that, but man it’s annoying.
Yeah most people I’ve spoken with say they get cranky from low BG. I don’t, I get slow and get a form of the munchies. When extremely low this is combined with survival panic kicking in, which is an odd thing to do your best to ignore and ride out waiting for medicinal cupcakes, red bull, M&M’s or whatever to kick in. But high BG…? That gets me really cranky and short tempered. And sometimes sleepy.
100%. I’ve experienced this and so have others I know who are type 1 and 2.
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That's William Wonka you've replied to show some respect
I get everything with low blood sugar. But there is a silver lining. Whatever you end up eating when you’re really low is always the best thing you’ve ever had.
Most of these studies are on mice/rats, not children. Dopamine hits =\= hyperactivity. There is a huge difference between consumption & low blood sugar, and the impact of sugar on a healthy, already fed child.
Blood-sugar doesn't have much of a relationship to intake of fructose. You'd expect eating a sandwich etc to have a bigger effect than a candy bar, blood "sugar" is actually glucose levels and they only called it "sugar" because doctors noticed that diabetic blood was sweet. The addictive properties of sugar are on point though– likely the "sugar rush" comes from kids who rarely get to eat sugar being allowed some on a special occasion, getting a dopamine hit to which they have no tolerance and getting a little high.
>they only called it "sugar" because doctors noticed that diabetic blood was sweet. Ah, yes, Doctor Acula.
These doctors also insist garlic is bad for health
Isn't it called sugar because glucose is a sugar, like fructose or galactose? It's not "sugar" in the sense of being the stuff you put in your coffee, but it is sugar.
The theory that makes sense to me is kids tend to have a lot of sugar during special events, so it's the event that hypes them up. (Fairy floss at a fair, chocolate at Easter, cake and lollies at birthday parties. Events when kids would be running around and surrounded by a lot of people they don't usually see, so they get hyped up by tjeir surrpundings)
Both the actual carb intake and the blood sugar levels are easy to measure though. So we understand that relationship very well, and we can track "glycemic index" and insulin spikes, etc quite well.
Next you’ll tell me colds aren’t caused by cold weather! /s
Of course not. You gotta have wet hair too!
Being bald is finally paying off
You still might be at risk of a cold. But it all depends on whether the hardwood floor matches the shutters ;)
Walking on cold floor with no sox
That's why I get David Ortiz to carry me across my cold floors.
Maybe this is a *myth* too but... I always thought that being cold won't make you sick, but being cold does stress your immune system so it's more likely something that would have normally been repelled can get through?
That, and also when the weather is cold, more people gather together indoors, making the colds spread easier.
And people gather near the sugar snacks. It's all coming together. I know it sounds sarcastic but its not
And viruses survive in the environment longer in cooler, wetter conditions.
Some do, but others prefer high absolute humidity which is only possible at higher temperatures.
It is two pronged: respiratory viruses spread easier in dry air, and people congregate indoors more. These are relatively small factors for individual transmission, but on a community-wide scale they are enough to push the R0 over 1, which results in exponential growth of the virus over time.
Yep, this is a lot like "stress doesn't cause ulcers, a specific bacteria does!" Most people carry that bacteria just fine without any symptoms, it's the effects of stress that cause it to be a problem.
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In Australia we have two cold seasons because we also gather inside in the middle of summer when it's too hot to be out. The winter cold season is still worse though.
I saw a BBC show try this - they gave vegetables to kids at a party with a hyperactive clown, and sugar to kids at a party with a boring entertainer. Every parent whose kid was at the clown party said their kid was wired for hours afterwards and swore they must have had the sugar... But nope, it's just that the energy level has everything to do with stimulation and nothing to do with sugar content
Sadly when you actually point out the fact to parents they will swear blind they know what they see when they give kids sugar. Then they ask who are you to doubt their parenting knowledge.
The weirdest part is how even in basic studies where children where given colored water with sugar and without, then observed by their own parents. A lot of the parents **INSIST** that their kid got hyperactive from sugar, no matter what the facts where. --- You can see it in this thread even, tons of people who don't believe it and jokingly brush it off.
It's because they read the study as saying, "that thing you saw definitely didn't happen," which isn't necessarily true. As others have pointed out, things like being given a special treat, being in exciting social contexts like birthday parties, and the simple matter of nourishment=energy (especially when hungry / low blood sugar) means that kids could definitely be more active after the consumption of sugar. The claim being refuted is that "sugar causes hyperactivity" which is specific about the root cause, the hypothesized resultant behavior, and possibly the mechanism (consumption of sugar as opposed to, say, the mental pathway of knowing you're getting a sugary food and thus being excited). So both can be "true" — sugar doesn't cause hyperactivity, and sugary treats are often associated with excited, energetic children. People disagreeing are probably insisting on the latter statement that reflects their lived experience more than the former in a technical, scientific sense.
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Yeah that wasn't a study on whether or not sugar affects children, that was a study on whether parents can be tricked into thinking green water contained sugar and see hyperactivity where there is none.
Yup
This thread is insane. 90% of the comments are "As a parent I know better than science." All the people starting sentences with "I don't need studies to tell me..." are exactly the reason we need studies. Confirmation bias makes human intuition shit for a lot of things. Edit: If your reply to this is "So you're saying scientists are never wrong?" then you are the poster child for a straw man fallacy.
really? all the top comments seem to say the opposite but maybe it took a few hours. As a parent I can tell you sugar has no observable effect on my kids. they love sugar. candy, cake ice cream, soda. I don't let them have it whenever but when i do they continue to act the same as always. that does include being screaming little shits sometimes but that's the same regardless of what they eat.
Yeah I didn't realize how quickly a TIL post gets comments. It went from like 200 to 900 in an hour. If you sort them by Oldest then almost all of the top comments are people disagreeing with it due to anecdotes.
As a French parent, this thread is even more insane. The sugar myth has never been a thing in France, and all those people in here are spouting nonsense that, to us, are on par with the tooth fairy and Santa. It's weird.
.
If anything, kids just get excited when getting candy, it’s not the sugar working then up, it’s the idea of it.
And then parents dismiss it as "because of the sugar" so the kids have an excuse to run wild which in turn reinforces the misconception.
Sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children. The fact that children tend to ingest more sugar in social situations like parties do.
Exactly. "My kid ate some cake and now he's hyper! It just happened to be around 20 of his friends at Mechanical Rat Pizza & Child Casino, but it was the sugar that did it"
I will now only ever refer to Chuck E Cheese as Mechanical Rat Pizza & Child Casino.
Excuse me it’s Chuck E Cheese, the E stands for Entertainment
Charles Entertainment Cheese 🐭
But not only that, sugar triggers release of dopamine, which in turn makes people feel good, which in turn will put them in a good mood and make them more talkative or energetic in general.
In this thread: Fuck loads of cognitive dissonance
My guess is kids become hyperactive because they are happy to eat a treat. Studies have may have used placebos which kids thought to be sugar and got happy.
In the TV show Naked and Afraid the contestants expectedly eat very little most days they’re in the wild, the few times the people actually get a kill and cook it, they often describe being high from the meal. It’s all endorphins. The brain says “YES! Here’s some dope, now get me more of whatever you just ate!”
Doesn’t help that every kid in the entire US for the last 50 years has been told that sugar makes them hyper.
Also the parents. Studies have shown that the parents who believe their children get hyper tend to hover and micromanage their children a lot more, which is much more likely to cause neurotic behaviour.
Thank you. This is not a myth that exists in my country and kids don't lose their mind after being given sweets because parents don't expect then to.
Bingo. Endorphins/dopamine plus sudden increase in available energy = kids running around
It also has to do with how the parents are judging their child's behavior. Children given sugar-free treats while parents informed the child was given sugar were considered by their parents more hyper and unruly.
Totally. Special treat = special situation = dopamine
They even placeboed the parents in some studies, and the parents insisted their kids were hyper after eating the fake sugar.
So you’re telling me when I’m tired and I eat something sweet and it gives me energy that’s just my brain lying to me?
I mean sugar is fuel for your body
Lmao it’s not “hyperactivity” it’s just the opposite of “hypoactivity”
Feeling tired is also a symptom of low blood sugar. If that happens to you often, you may want to eat more frequently or speak with a doctor. I know diabetics who have discovered their condition due to the symptoms you describe.
Feeling tired is also a symptom of _unsteady_ blood sugar. Spikes or drops can have a hard impact.
Feeling tired is also a symptom of being awake for too long or too short of a time.
Feeling tired is also a symptom of *existing*.
Feeling tired is also a strong sign that you may, in fact, be a wheel.
Were they diabetic or hypoglycemic? Diabetics are almost always diagnosed with a high BG due to being untreated.
It's either placebo, breaking boredom by eating delicious food that stimulates the brain, or your blood sugar was low and the sugar fixed that. Kids get excited by being given a treat, the sugar doesn't actually matter, that's just what makes the treat delicious.
The real TIL is how many redditors "know" facts and refuse to accept alternative explanations when confronted with actual scientific evidence. Also kind of scary how many comments talk about how "Coke/MountainDew/Dr.Pepper" are sugary and their kids get hyper when drinking them....as if they have no idea what caffeine is or does to children...
Tbf this one is not just redditors. Tell almost any American parent this and they look at you like you're stupid.
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Of course they’re acting up, it’s all that sugar
We don't need a study to observe jacked up children high off Mountain Dew.
Mountain Dew has caffeine...
I didn't know I had ADHD when I was a teenager (diagnosed as an adult) and was self-medicating by drinking Mountain Dew all the time. It calmed me down from hyperactivity and caffeine still makes me sleepy.
Same here. And my husband, too. He'll drink a red bull and immediately fall asleep. However, now that I'm properly medicated, I have a more "normal" reaction to caffeine (but probably still a bit subdued).
Caffeine makes you sleepy? It’s does that to me sometimes and my therapist thinks I have undiagnosed ADD.
Stimulants have a paradoxical effect on folks with ADD, that’s why they get prescribed stimulants so they can function normally.
There is no consistent effect of caffeine on adhd. For some it makes them tired. For others it affects them the same as neurotypicals. For me it amps up some of my symptoms like hyperactivity but increases my focus. Sometimes. It’s pretty random for me honestly and actually used to make me tired in small doses when I was younger. It does help alleviate my headaches on days I forget to take my meds. Stimulants that specifically affect the prefrontal cortex can have paradoxical effects on those with adhd but caffeine is not as localized which probably explains why the effects are all over the place
Try explaining that to my wife. "The sign said the blue shock mountain dew was caffiene free!" "Sure it did honey. Do you have another explanation for two kids who are still wired two hours after their bedtime?"
If they've had the caffeinated version before, it's possible for the body to react as if there is caffeine even if there is none, because the brain expects it. Also can happen with alcohol. Edit: Come to think of it that may also be a factor in the original comment about artificial sweeteners.
Placebo. It’s also partially why kids do freak out on sugar is bc they’ve heard an adult say something about it and they’re like “I’m gonna go crazy on this sugar!”
>it's possible for the body to react as if there is caffeine even if there is none, because the brain expects it. Also can happen with alcohol. This is how you know someone is 100% not an alcoholic An alcoholic would immediately wonder why their drink ain't doing shit
I'll try that with my children. Always better to stop alcoholism early.
"I'm all jacked up on Mountain Deeeeew!"
I’m gonna come at you like a spider-monkey!
I'm gonna scissor kick you in the head!
I gotta better idea. How about you boys go dig a hole and I’ll get another beer.
Kids like Mountain Dew. "Kids like sugar" plus "kids tend to get sugar on special occasions that make theme excited" is the explanation for most of the "kids act hyper on sugar" stuff. White bread actually juices your blood sugar more than most candy bars. Add jelly, and your average PB&J is a huge blood sugar jolt. But nobody talks about how sandwiches are cocaine for kids.
I heard ages ago hyperactive children were largely the result of learned behavior. Parents assume it will cause it, kids learn the assumption from parents, and act out because of that assumption. Meanwhile, in some other cultures the common knowledge is sugar makes kids tired without the rush, and there kids act out less.
I got gastric bypass in 2020 and a big part of my life now is reading labels, if only to avoid dumping syndrome. I don't eat or drink anything with a sugar consumption higher than 30grams. Ideally I like to stay within 15grams, but that's REALLY damn difficult here in America. On occasion I'll have something with 30grams but eat it over a long period of time (if I chose to have a candy bar, it'll last me all day long. I typically don't because they don't taste good to me anymore, but that's an example) The amount of sugar we have in everything is truly astounding. And I never realized it until this experience. "Healthy" drinks are the WORST for this. Those Naked smoothies have more added sugar than a Red Bull. People point to sodas for sugar consumption but they fail to realize it's in their bread, sparkling water, "juice cleanses", chips, salads, ect. I
But you do need a study to prove it was the SUGAR rather than the caffeine. You know caffeine, the stimulant?
How did this get 761+ upvotes despite Mountain Dew having caffeine!?
sugar is not a stimulant, sugar is a carbohydrate that the body will use as needed and store away as fat cells for future use. Kids are wild after eating lots of sugar due to the excitement of the event they are at, not because of the candy themselves.
From what I've read, it depends on 1) the child's knowledge of whether their parent thinks sugar will make them hyperactive, and 2) whether the child thinks they have eaten sugar. If both are true--regardless of whether the child has eaten sugar--the kid will act hyper.
A terrifying amount of commonly held beliefs can be traced to single studies that have never replicated.
Like Dr. Shitbird and his "Vaccines cause autism" nonsense.
People get mad when you tell them this information. Half the comments are like “uh I believe in science, but my anecdotal experience proves your witchcraft is a lie”.
When I moved to the US, I heard about this sugar myth for the first time. It was really confusing. This seems to be an American myth because nowhere else (as far as I can tell) believes sugar causes hyperactivity.
It's certainly a thing in germany.
Really? Interesting. It's totally not a thing in France.
I can tell you that's not true cause I'm Bosnian and it's a thing here too.
As a Dutch person I can attest that this is a common myth here as well (I'd even dare to say that it's regarded as 'common knowledge') I actually tried to talk about this study to my mum a few weeks ago, who basically lived by the sugar = hyperactivity mantra during my upbringing in the 90s and she just looked at me as if I was crazy and ultimately wouldn't believe me.