Day One Hundred and Sixty Eight!!!

 Carbs! More Addictive than cocaine!!?? Oh MY!


The difference between carbs and cocaine is that the intake of carbs are socially acceptable, they are everywhere! Cocaine on the other hand, not so much. And what’s worse, the intake of carbohydrates are recommended by health professionals, fitness trainers, and the barista you secretly had a crush on for 2 months! Cocaine on the other hand used to be, but that did eventually change around the turn of the last century.


Carbohydrates have a similar affect on the brain to cocaine. This similarity is due to their influence on brain activity. As you burn carbs, your brain gets a similar rush as if you just had a dose/sniff/injection/looked at cocaine (I don’t know how to take it but I do know what it does).


This rush can cause cravings in your brain for another rush, another fix, another hit of sugar when you go too long without it. The problem is that when you burn carbohydrates your body stores it as fat, and then when you ingest carbohydrates again the body burns those carbohydrates, instead of the fat you just stockpiled on, causing your body to store more and more fat. 


The USDA and the CDA, both recommend that we consume a goodly amount of carbohydrates each and every meal. They suggest that carbohydrates make up 45-65 percent of all our caloric intake. This nonsense has been going on since before the 1970’s. 


That is why everyone, and especially their mother’s refuse to accept that carbs are bad and fat is harmful, because it has been programmed in their sugar addicted brains. After all carbs are cheap to make, fast and easy to snack on and profitable for the big man. That is also why carb saturated food has been thought to be better than the non-taxable nutrition of animal protein.


I think what is really interesting is that the big thing that got people drinking sugar was the mass production of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola was originally composed from the same plant as cocaine, the Coca bush or Coca tree. The leaves of this plant are the host of the stimulant, cocaine. There was a cocaine epidemic in the 1880’s and it was actually helped along by Sigmund Freud who started to prescribe it to his patients, as he used it himself and found that it was helpful, although he never became addicted. Cocaine was actually prescribed by physicians and was readily available in over the counter medicines.  The Coca-cola manufacturer, advertised that their drink was a tonic and contained the nerve stimulant properties of the coca plant. People were getting high off of coca-cola as well as sugar. Double whammy! 


So those who use cocaine often experience symptoms such as; drug craving, excitement and even physical symptoms like an elevated heart rate. These symptoms can occur just by being in the same place of where they had been previously exposed to the drug. The brain activity becomes activated. They have increased activity in the limbic region of the brain the amygdala and the interior cingulate. As compared, non-users do not have any limbic activation. This difference between users and non-users is significant because this activation of these brain regions involved with psychological experiences are important aspects of drug dependance which lead to changes in the brain after long term exposure. The same applies to sugar.