Do your loved ones with schizophrenia have intense sugar cravings? Sugary foods and drinks are literally all my 23-yr-old daughter will eat. She truly lives on sugar. Has anyone else experienced this? I don’t know what to do. I fear for her physical health on top of the mental health issues. She is very headstrong, has anosognosia, and will not accept any suggestions about her diet.
Yes my sibling is a heavy sugar eater also.
He goes through 5 lb bags of sugar very quickly I believe he drinks that mostly all in his coffee
He also likes lots of other sweets once when I was on a video call I saw him take a swig of syrup like just drinking syrup out of the bottle.
I’ve never really read any research about the sweets and schizophrenia but it does seem to be common.
Hi! I just read an article that pointed out that eating sugar leads to a dopamine flash in the human brain. This really opened my eyes because I eat way too many sweets and this is my main obstacle to avoiding overweight. As a doctor pointed out to me: schizophrenics will seek dopamine flashes because of the antipsychotics blocking the dopamine receptors. This means that because of our medication we actually have a lack of dopamine, most of the time.
https://www.reddit.com/r/schizophrenia/comments/1eg1u6i/sugar_addiction/?rdt=62388
@KBella, if your daughter isn’t on meds, then this theory would not apply.
@megmeg and @caregiver1, thank you for your responses. Unfortunately my daughter is not on meds (she has anosognosia and adamantly refuses them) so the cravings aren’t related to anti-psychotics, although that theory does make sense. I’ve read that the disease itself is correlated with disordered eating, but hadn’t seen anything about people consuming sugar to the exclusion of all other food. It’s so bizarre, but of course many things she does are bizarre. Thanks again.
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Same with my sibling also unmedicated but he doesn’t exclude normal foods at this point .
He has been into those nutri shakes in the past they are sweet but at least have nutrients
Maybe your daughter would like those they usually come in vanilla and chocolate flavors
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Hi KBella. Our son Ben is 30 unmedicated SZ and eats sugar like an addict! Drinks sodas all day and eats sweets constantly. Only reason we have sweets around is to help keep him calm,ish…At this point, we are done, we have tried and tried to talk him into taking meds, seeing a psychiatrist, getting on a good diet but his illness prevents him from making that connection. It is out of our control, everything with Ben is out of our control and it is time for us to stop worrying about trying to think that if we CAN control part of his illness he will eventually get on meds, get better and move out on his own. Not so with this illness, all we can do is live in the day, give them the best advise we can and move on for ourselves.
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@Refueler1, you are exactly right, the illness makes it impossible to get my daughter to agree to see a psychiatrist, take meds, eat anything besides sugar, or do anything else she doesn’t want to do. She is not violent or dangerous so I don’t think anything will happen to result in hospitalization or forced/court ordered meds. So I don’t see how anything will change. She is like a very stubborn child with her damaged brain, even though she’s an adult… It’s hard not to feel hopeless. I’ve seen some of your other posts and saw that your son used to take meds, so I will hope for you that he will go back to doing that. Best wishes