Boba tea. Frappes. Red Bull. Soda. Iced Tea.

What do they all have in common? They taste absolutely amazing.

Oh, and they can make your ADHD worse. (Sorry to be the bearer of bad news). Today I’m going to break down for you why exactly this happens and how you can still enjoy those wonderful drinks without it harming you in the long run! So, let’s get into it.

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Let’s chat sugar.

Remember last week’s breakdown about sugar and how it’s incredibly important for our physical and mental health? (If you don’t, tap here for a recap about how our body uses sugar and the two main ways of getting it).

If you were paying attention, you might remember that sugar itself isn’t the issue for our health, but rather high-dose sugar at one time is. There is also a difference between high-dose added sugar and general high-dose sugar. For instance, we see that soda consumption can worsen insulin sensitivity whereas 100% orange juice can actually improve insulin sensitivity!

But why?

The Impact of High-Dose Added Sugar on Dopamine

The difference is in the dopamine: sugar itself doesn’t necessarily ‘fry our dopamine receptors’ like a lot of people online say, but if you consume too much of it at one time? Yeah, it pretty much can.

When we look at mice studies, we find that regularly consuming high-dose sugar leads to decreases in overall dopamine, increases in dopamine breakdown, and disrupts signaling in the areas of the brain associated with reward and motivation. However, sugar itself doesn’t necessarily do this. There are three main theories for why:

1. Sugar-sweetened beverages can push the sugar into our bloodstream extremely fast, which can release a lot of dopamine into the brain much quicker than other types of foods - this can then lead to decreases in dopamine receptor function.

2. The sugar consumed in sugar-sweetened beverages tend to be over the recommended daily limits (25g/day of added sugar for adults).

3. Consuming a lot of calories at once negatively impacts dopamine receptors, so it would make sense that consuming a lot of one type of high-dopamine producing food would negatively impact dopamine receptors as well.

The Sugar-ADHD Connection

Depending on how long you’ve been around, you may already know that sugar doesn’t increase ADHD symptoms even though people with ADHD tend to consume more sugar than the average person.

However, one thing that consistently shows up is that sugar-sweetened beverages ARE associated with worse ADHD symptoms. It’s hard to know for sure, of course, if people with worse ADHD symptoms simply tend to drink more soda or if the soda is making their ADHD worse because, to be frank, that study would not get approved by the board of ethics considering the mouse study I referenced above.

However, what we can do is see if removing the beverages can improve ADHD symptom severity. Amazingly, we finally got a preliminary study on this last year, and hopefully this small study will spark a more controlled one with more participants. But, until then, let me share it with you really quick.

So, all together, what does this really mean for you?

Honestly? I would highly recommend doing a trial for yourself or for your kid of reducing sugar-sweetened beverages (and report back to me about how it went! I’d honestly LOVE to hear about it). Here’s a quick list of a few common offenders:

• Non-diet soda

• Chocolate milk

• Energy drinks

• Coffee with more than just a splash of creamer (Frappes are some of the worst offenders here)

• Boba tea

• Sweet tea

• Hot cocoa

• Alcohol

I encourage you to look at each drink you consume for the next two weeks and check the added sugar content. If the added sugar content is more than 25mg (adult) or 10mg (child), challenge yourself to reduce how many you’re drinking a day.

Now, ideally, we’re completely eliminating any drink that has more than 25mg of added sugar (or consuming it just once a month), but even so, as we see from that preliminary study, you don’t have to completely eliminate the drinks to get the benefits!

In any sense, slowly reducing your consumption will make it easier to stick to anyway. For me, I used to be an avid soda drinker. It took YEARS to get to the point I’m at now of honestly not even craving a soda (or, if I do, I can’t even drink the whole thing anymore). Transitioning to diet soda can actually be a great tool to use as well - if you’re curious about the science of aspartame and ADHD, be sure to check out my YouTube episode that breaks down the research HERE.

Something else to note is that slowly drinking the sugar-sweetened beverage over a long period of time won’t impact your dopamine system as much as drinking it within 10-30 minutes.

P.S. if you want to know what to test for at the doctor’s office to see if nutrients are impacting your ADHD symptoms, don’t forget to join the Nutrimind Community to get access to the ADHD Nutrient Testing Masterlist! It’s available in the higher tier at this time ($13/month).

Thanks for reading!

If you have any thoughts, questions, or comments, be sure to shoot me a DM on Instagram @Nutrimindcoach or simply reply to this email. I LOVE hearing from you!

A few weeks ago on the Nutritional Mental Health Podcast, I’ve finally spilled the beans on the dietary pattern I personally follow. If you want to learn ADHD Nutrition Guidelines that ACTUALLY Work According to the Research It’s available on podcast platforms + YouTube.