Sugar vs. Cocaine: Which Is Worse for Your Brain?
Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast
Dr. Eric Berg
4.6 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2025
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sugar creates similar effects to cocaine and heroin in certain parts of the brain. In one study, if given a choice, a lab rat will go after sugar instead of cocaine!
Sugar can alter your hormones and put you in a state of anxiety. It can even cause a mild form of dementia, leading to forgetfulness and memory loss. Sugar affects the hippocampus, which controls memory.
The brain can run on glucose, but too much glucose can eventually hinder absorption. You only need one teaspoon of sugar in your blood at one time, but people consume much more than that!
Excess sugar is stored as fat. Over time, high sugar consumption can lead to insulin resistance, depriving the brain cells of the energy they need. People often consume way more sugar than they know in beverages like juice or due to hidden sugar in the form of starch. A low-carb diet creates the most benefits for your health. It can reverse diabetes in 10 weeks! You’re no longer feeding your brain glucose when you're on a low-carb diet.
A low-carb diet forces the body to mobilize ketones to feed your brain. Once you quit sugar, you’ll notice an improved mood, better concentration and attention, a better ability to learn, improved memory, and brain fog will be gone. Cutting carbs and quitting sugar will leave many people hungry, unsatisfied, and craving certain foods. The solution is to increase protein! Sufficient protein and fat can help eliminate cravings and decrease the desire to snack. There are also plenty of healthy substitutions that can make it easier to quit sugar.
You do not need to consume sugar to maintain healthy blood sugar levels. Your liver can create sugar from other food sources.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Warning, sugar is actually destroying your brain. Sugar creates very similar effects to cocaine and heroin on certain parts of the brain. |
| 0:08.9 | And one study, if given a choice, a lab rat will go after the sugar more than the cocaine. |
| 0:13.2 | Sugar has the ability to alter hormones that literally puts you into this anxiety state when there's nothing around you to be anxious about. |
| 0:21.6 | But what comes way before that is a mild version of dementia. You start losing your memory, |
| 0:27.5 | which you just start forgetting. And I'm like, okay, where do I put my keys? You might have |
| 0:31.8 | difficulty with names. You're not thinking clearly. The last place that the sugar goes to is |
| 0:36.1 | the hippocampus. This part of the brain |
| 0:38.3 | allows you to remember things. And so when you're eating on a sugar and then eventually get |
| 0:42.6 | pre-diabetes or diabetes, that all stems from sugar. People will tell you that the brain needs |
| 0:49.2 | sugar to survive. And it is true that the brain can run on glucose the problem is when you do too much glucose |
| 0:55.7 | you start developing a blockage of the absorption of glucose if we take a look at how much glucose |
| 1:02.6 | that's supposed to be in your blood at any one time that's one teaspoon here's the thing people eat a lot |
| 1:07.2 | more than one teaspoon of sugar so where's it go insulin stores it but then anything more is stored as fat a lot more than one teaspoon of sugar. So where's it go? Insulin stores it, but then anything |
| 1:12.5 | more is stored as fat. A lot of the cholesterol that people have that's too high is coming from carbs or sugar. |
| 1:19.4 | What happens when you're eating excessive sugar, anything more than one teaspoon, is you start |
| 1:23.2 | developing higher levels of insulin that has to do the heavy lifting. But the doctors never |
| 1:28.8 | tests for this fasting insulin level because if they did, not an average person, they would find |
| 1:33.7 | it to be very, very high. What happens over time is that your pancreas keeps working |
| 1:37.5 | harder and harder and you have more and more insulin. And then the brain and other tissues |
| 1:42.2 | of the body start to create this thing called insulin resistance. |
| 1:47.0 | When you have more than a teaspoon of sugar at any one time, the insulin is not working to pull that |
| 1:52.1 | sugar out. Then you start getting higher blood glucose, and that's called diabetes. You have so much |
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