Extract 1: Psychology Essay on Sugar Addiction

“The term “addiction” implies psychological dependence and thus is a mental or cognitive problem, not just a physical ailment.” (Avena, Rada & Hoebel, 2008). Addiction is categorised into two sectors; psychological addiction and neurological addiction. Psychological addiction is related to behavioural involvement such as gambling and sex addiction, whereas neurological addiction is biologically related, involving the excessive consumption of a substance. Addiction consists of 4 subterms, bingeing, withdrawal, craving and sensitization. Bingeing is the excessive intake of a substance after a period of abstinence and the body responds to the deprivation of consumption of a substance through withdrawal symptoms (Avena, Rada & Hoebel, 2008). Avena, Rada and Hoebel explore these 4 terms in relation to drug abuse parallel to sugar consumption, highlighting that sugar addiction is in fact similar to drug addiction as it involves the 4 stages of addiction. The neural responses that substance abuse triggers is also known as sugar intake, however there are differences in the biology of these two responses. For example, cross-sensitization in the context of drugs includes the ability for drugs other than the addictive drug to stimulate the same neurological processes within the body and addictive behaviour. Similarly, intermittent sugar consumption cross-sensitizes with drugs of abuse. A study where rats were injected with amphetamine and a week later they were given 10% sucrose, demonstrated these results. The rats experienced hyperactivity as a response to the experiment (Avena, Rada & Hoebel, 2008). As revealed by Avena, Rada and Hoebel (2007), “Hedonic rewarding characteristic of sugar has been recently suggested by some to have abuse potential that is similar to classical drugs by stimulating shared brain reward pathways involved in drug addiction.” (Avena, 2007; Avena, Rada & Hoebel, Avena, Bocarsly, & Rada, 2009). According to biological research, dopamine is intermittently increased by addictive drugs and causes a dopinogenic reaction is triggered by palatable food consumption. Thus the parallel reaction that both sugar consumption and drug addiction share convey how excessive sugar intake can be categorised as a sugar addiction.