Low Sugar in Brain Triggers Craving for Junk Food

A new study led by an Indian-origin researcher reveals that our desire for high-calorie food shoots up when there is low sugar in the brain. Feeding the brain with sugar could lower the craving. Brain imaging scans show that when glucose levels drop, an area of the brain known to regulate emotions and impulses loses the ability to dampen desire for high-calorie food, the report said.

"Our prefrontal cortex is a sucker for glucose," said Rajita Sinha, the Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry, and professor in the Department of Neurobiology and the Yale Child Study Center, one of the senior authors of the research.

The Yale team manipulated glucose levels intravenously and monitored changes in blood sugar levels while subjects were shown pictures of high-calorie food, low-calorie food and non-food as they underwent fMRI scans.

When glucose levels drop, an area of the brain called the hypothalamus senses the change. Other regions called the insula and striatum associated with reward are activated, inducing a desire to eat, the study found.

The most pronounced reaction to reduced glucose levels was seen in the prefrontal cortex. When glucose is lowered, the prefrontal cortex seemed to lose its ability to put the brakes upon increasingly urgent signals to eat generated in the striatum.

This weakened response was particularly striking in the obese when shown high-calorie foods.

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"The key seems to be eating healthy foods that maintain glucose levels," Sinha said. "The brain needs its food."

The study was recently published online in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

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Source-ANI