Stress and excessive sugar consumption are a regular part of many, if not most Americans lifestyles and diets. High levels of stress coupled with large amounts of sugar may have serious health effects on the body. Chronic exposure to stress hormones, whether it occurs during the prenatal period, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood or aging, has an impact on brain structures involved in cognition and mental health. Repeated stress can also cause reversible impairments of spatial memory performance. Our study observes the physical and structural changes this high intake of glucose coupled with extended exposure to stress causes in organisms. The effects of stress during aging are associated with both memory impairments and reduced hippocampal volumes. In order to test this hypothesis, forty rats (Rattus norvegicus) were used as test subjects exposed to stress only, glucose only, stress + glucose, and a control. Following a two-hour fasting period and a blood-glucose test, we administered to rats either a glucose solution or undiluted water via a feeding needle, depending on their designated treatments. Rats receiving the stress treatment were placed inside a rodent restrain bag for 10 minutes to induce stress but without causing harm. We administered to control subjects water, these rats were handled but allowed to freely crawl through the bag. Afterward, we measured blood-glucose levels of all rats using a standard glucometer. This process was repeated every other day for sixty days after rats were humanely euthanized and dissected to determine any structural changes in liver and brain.
