Welcome to the Doctor Burg, Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Now, your host, the man taking your health to a whole new level.

Doctor, Eric Burg.

So, in this video, we want to talk about what makes sugar actually addictive.

So, we know certain drugs are addictive, but why is sugar actually addictive?

There's actually two mechanisms.

When you consume comfort foods, high in carbs, desserts, breads, candy, sugar, etc.,

you increase insulin, which then decreases blood sugars.

Then what happens, certain sensory things from your blood to your brain are triggered,

causing sugar cravings.

So, that's one mechanism.

Number two is dopamine.

When you even anticipate eating certain foods, could be carbs, junk foods, things like that,

and then you actually eat them, you actually get a release of dopamine,

and the more concentrated sugar it is, the more massive the release.

Dopamine is connected to pleasure.

Now, they don't actually know exactly what dopamine does.

There's a lot of theories out there, but they know that dopamine increases when you have anticipation of a reward,

when you attain a goal, there's a spike of dopamine.

They know it's involved in some way in motivation, motor control, alertness, even appetite.

So, when you consume sugar, you release dopamine, it goes into the cell, it makes you feel good,

but over time, when you continue to do it, chronically, the receptors for dopamine downgrade.

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