Sugar addiction alcohol
Did you know that the number of sugar cubes you prefer in your tea can be a direct indication of your potential for alcohol addiction? Several studies done by assistant professor of psychiatry, Dr. Alexei Kampov-Polevoy, at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine have indicated that there is a strong genetic link between your preference for sweetness, and potential for an alcohol addiction. While not everyone who prefers a heavy dose of sugar is necessarily destined for an alcohol addiction, the information of the link alone helps open up avenues of treatment, as well as detection for alcohol addiction, and potentially even prevention of an alcohol addiction, and it's entirely thanks to sugar!
One study using twin brothers showed that while one was a former alcohol addict, and his brother was a non-drinker, they both tended to have a markedly higher preference for far more sugar than the average person. Another point discovered in the same study was that even though the twins may have had vastly different lifestyles, and suffered from various traumas, they were not both alcoholics. This leads to an indication that although genetics obviously plays a part thru the sugar and alcohol addiction link, the emotional facet previously believed to play such a large role in alcohol addiction, may in fact not play nearly the role it was thought to.
In another study, using adult children who had a father with an alcohol addiction versus adult children of fathers who did not have an alcohol addiction, it was discovered that the children with the fathers who had an alcohol addiction were two and a half times more likely to prefer items with more sugar than the children of fathers who were not alcohol addicts. The implications of the study, and future studies can be widespread.
So what now? Knowing there is a definite link between sugar craving and alcohol addiction, there is the potential to develop testing for alcohol addiction based on the sugar preferences of a person. But what in the meantime? Should parents perhaps pay close attention to their children's sugar likings, and if noticing they are higher sugar likings than the average child, be more attentive to providing support towards an adulthood without an alcohol addiction? Possibly so, but on the other hand, while sugar preference is linked, it could be socially dangerous to ponder on it too far. It would be far too easy to assume the person next to you placing 3 times the sugar in their tea that you do has an alcohol addiction.
