theintelhub.com | January 4 2013
A new study using brain imaging says that fructose, a ubiquitous sugar in the modern western diet, prevents the brain from recognizing fullness, promoting overeating and thereby weight gain. The researchers concluded that glucose does not have this effect. According to Oregon Health & Science University endocrinologist Dr. Jonathan Purnell, the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results of 20 young, normal-weight study subjects mimicked how hungry each subject said he or she felt before and after consuming drinks with glucose or fructose.
All sugars are not the same—for example, high fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose as opposed to table sugar, which is half of each.
Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin says that glucose “turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food.” Because fructose doesn’t result in those changes, however, “the desire to eat continues—it isn’t turned off.”
Researchers have long been studying the connection between health and the five major personality traits: agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, openness and conscientiousness. A large body of research links neuroticism with poorer health and conscientiousness with superior health. Now openness, which measures cognitive flexibility and the willingness to entertain novel ideas, has emerged as a lifelong protective factor. The linchpin seems to be the creativity associated with the personality trait—creative thinking reduces stress and keeps the brain healthy.
In a series of generous grants in the 1940s- and 50s, extended to Professor Carl I. Hovland of Yale University, the Foundation actively funded research into “the psychological mechanisms through which communications exert their influence.”