Halloween candy is already filling the shelves at grocery stores across the country. By the end of this month, pies, eggnog, and candy canes will be in the lineup. Before you load up your cart with those tempting sweet treats, it’s a good idea to think about the impact sugar can have on mental health, especially if you or someone in your home already has a mental health diagnosis or is at greater risk for developing mental health concerns. At Cottonwood, in Tucson, Arizona, we know nutritional choices impact our patients’ recovery progress.
Nutritional Psychology
Researchers in this newly emerging field are studying the relationship between what we eat and how we think, feel, and experience life. Scientists from several different disciplines are working together to increase our understanding of how our diets and our mental health interact.
Your brain is a very complicated machine. Like any other machine, it runs at its best when it is getting optimal fuel. Some ways you can ensure that you’re fueling your brain properly are by:
- Starting each day with a healthy breakfast, such as whole-grain granola, yogurt, and fruit.
- Eating more veggies
- Increasing your intake of fish and seafood
- Shopping more at the perimeter of the grocery store, where you are more likely to find fresh, healthy ingredients, and purchasing less of the processed, sugary foods in the middle of the store.
Ways to Reduce Sugar Cravings
If you find yourself craving sugar, there are some strategies you can try to reduce your cravings:
- Give yourself only a small amount, but make it higher quality and savor each bite slowly.
- Combine your sugar fix with something healthy, such as dipping a banana or apple slices in a small amount of chocolate.
- Chew a stick of gum.
- Substitute some fruit.
- If you go cold turkey on simple sugars, remember that the first 48-72 hours will be the hardest, and your cravings will probably improve after that.
- Walk away from wherever you’re feeling the craving, to see if a change of scenery helps.
- Eat healthy meals at regular intervals and have a small healthy snack in between.
- Look for and address patterns. If you seem to always crave sugar at 3 pm, you may need to add a snack at that time that contains some protein.
Sugar’s Scary Side
Eating one piece of candy isn’t going to derail your mental health. When a person consistently overindulges in a high-sugar diet, however, studies have found that they place themselves at greater risk for:
- Depression – Men are at particularly high risk of developing depressive symptoms when they eat a high-sugar diet.
- Anxiety
- Self-harm
- Memory issues
There is also reason to believe that people who turn to sugar to cope may become less able to manage stress over time, because sugar can stifle the part of the brain that handles stress in the process of providing us with short-term relief. The next time we feel stressed, it’s more likely that we will crave sugar and less likely that we will be inclined to use our other coping skills, because our brain associates sugar with stress relief.
Ways to Reduce Sugar Intake
You don’t have to entirely eliminate sugar from your diet, but it is a good idea to limit how much you’re consuming to less than 10 percent of your total daily calories. Some ways you can make this goal more attainable are to:
- Replace sugary drinks with water, which will also help you to stay hydrated.
- Note how much sugar you’re using while preparing food and drinks and cut it in half. Some easy places to start include pancakes, cereal, coffee, and tea.
- Instead of adding sugar to sweeten cereal, try fresh or dried fruit, such as cherries, bananas, strawberries, and raisins
- Select fresh or frozen fruit when possible, or canned fruit preserved in fruit juice, instead of syrup.
- Replace sugar in recipes with flavored extracts, including vanilla, orange, almond, and lemon.
- Check labels to ensure you’re making informed choices.
At Cottonwood, we offer holistic treatment for addiction and mental health disorders. Our team of caring professionals helps clients to find balance and harmony for their minds, bodies, and spirits. We understand that we must address emotional pain, trauma, stress, and physical health concerns together.
