Resolves once I'm upwards of 99% sure that eating sweets causes a noticible change of behavior in the "more excitable/more active" direction, or upwards of 99% sure that it doesn't.
Inspired by https://thezvi.substack.com/p/covid-12822-another-winter-wave
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3.00I guess you should define a sugar rush more strictly, because, well, some sugar is necessary to be active at all, and it's not obvious that there exists a clear natural border between that and "sugar rush".
Like, when diabetic on the verge of hypoglycemic coma receives some glucose and... continues to live, does it count as a sugar rush? Probably not.
I've experienced something like sugar rushes when hiking. Normally it doesn't happen, but when something goes a little wrong and I'm walking non-stop for a very long time without eating anything, I guess I can feel blood sugar crashing because I become not only physically tired but also stupid. It takes me more time to respond when somebody is talking to me, I can stop while doing something and just stand there not moving for no reason, etc. It goes away as soon as I have eaten, and probably my energy level can sometimes go a bit higher then baseline. But I don't experience noticeable response to eating sugar when I'm living my normal life, ie eating regularly and not exhausting myself with 50 km treks.
And I can totally see how to some people it would happen easier then to me, and somebody out there probably gets more excitable and active each time they eat a candy.
What I am trying to say is it seems like there is a spectrum of how strong people respond to eating sugar in terms of behavior, and at least extreme cases are obviously real, so what does it take to convince you that "sugar rushes" are real/not real?
I think the myth stems from people associating child responses to exciting events (e.g. birthdays) with them consuming sugar. But once we have calories in we can actually disconnect from the world more.
A meta-analysis found sugar consumption to correspond with fatigue, which incidentally makes more ecological sense.
A few, very weak, data points: the blog post you link seems to indicate that sugar rushes are common sense b/c they are experienced by lots of people. I do not experience sugar rushes. I observe that lots of people who claim that they want sugar also want to consume this sugar 1. in times of stress, rather than times of low energy and 2. almost always want to consume it paired with caffeine if possible.
Sugar does produce a dopamine/opioid 'rush' (sensitizes receptors) in the brain, impacting mood. Happiness might impact activity levels by making one sleepy or more active. The study that most people cite, IIRC, looks specifically at the behaviors of children after eating sugar, and indicated that they were not more active. I'll have to hunt down that study, but I'm pretty sure that it did not look at adults. Are you looking at children specifically?
@Duncan Must exist in at a subgroup that is prominent enough that the effect likely led to the belief that sugar rushes are a common phenomenon, and that belief could reasonably be treated as pointing to a true thing. 10% of US children, yes. 1% of some uncontacted tribe, no.
I'm uncertain whether I should count non-children. Does the popular belief about sugar rushes usually include them applying to adults?
@IsaacKing I hear adults refering to them in adults, but I don't know how common it is. Does fixing 'hangry' count? Presumably, that's less excitable/more energetic, so it meets half the criteria? .
@Duncan I don't understand what you're asking, can you clarify? Being "bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger" seems very different from a sugar rush to me.
@IsaacKing I would take a sudden change of mood to be basically the same as a sugar rush... depending on your definition of rush.
@IsaacKing I think sugar rushes are more detectable in adults because small children are approximately high energy all the time, how would you even notice?