Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The Day Your Life Really Begins
Just a quick but inspiring quote:
The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.
~ Bob Moawad
Your Brain on Junk Food
In a newly published study, scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have shown that the same mechanisms that drive people into drug addiction are behind the compulsion to overeat, pushing people into obesity and adding credance to the idea that junk food binging is extremely difficult to stop.
The study demonstrates clearly that in rat models the development of obesity coincides with a progressively deteriorating chemical balance in reward brain circuitries. As these pleasure centers in the brain become less and less responsive, rats quickly develop compulsive overeating habits, consuming larger quantities of high-calorie, high-fat foods until they become obese. The very same changes occur in the brains of rats that overconsume cocaine or heroin, and are thought to play an important role in the development of compulsive drug use.
In the study, the animals completely lost control over their eating behavior, the primary hallmark of addiction. They continued to overeat even when they anticipated receiving electric shocks, highlighting just how motivated they were to consume the palatable food.
The scientists fed the rats a diet modeled after the type that contributes to human obesity -- easy-to-obtain high-calorie, high-fat foods like sausage, bacon, and cheesecake. Soon after the experiments began, the animals began to bulk up dramatically.
The new study was conducted by Scripps Research Associate Professor Paul J. Kenny and graduate student Paul M. Johnson.
"The rats always went for the worst types of food," Kenny said, "and as a result, they took in twice the calories as the control rats. When we removed the junk food and tried to put them on a nutritious diet -- what we called the 'salad bar option' -- they simply refused to eat. The change in their diet preference was so great that they basically starved themselves for two weeks after they were cut off from junk food. It was the animals that showed the "crash" in brain reward circuitries that had the most profound shift in food preference to the unhealthy diet. These same rats were also those that kept on eating even when they anticipated being shocked."
What happens in addiction is lethally simple, Kenny explained. The reward pathways in the brain have been so overstimulated that the system basically turns on itself, adapting to the new reality of addiction, whether its cocaine or cupcakes.
After showing that obese rats had clear addiction-like food seeking behaviors, Johnson and Kenny next investigated the underlying mechanisms that may explain these changes. They focused on the dopamine D2 receptor. The D2 receptor responds to dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is released in the brain by pleasurable experiences like food or sex or drugs like cocaine. In cocaine abuse, for example, the drug alters the flow of dopamine by blocking its retrieval, flooding the brain and overstimulating the receptors, something that eventually leads to physical changes in the way the brain responds to the drug.
The new study shows that the same thing happens in junk food addiction. These data are, as far as we know, the strongest support for the idea that overeating of junk food can become habitual in the same manner and through the same mechanisms as consumption of drugs of abuse.
What all this means is that junk food is highly addictive because it works in the brain in the same manner as cocaine.
Just say no to junk food!
To your health,
Pamela
[1]www.ForcesofNature.ca
[2]www.NaturopathToronto.ca
[3]Twitter: http://twitter.com/pfranknd
Copyright 2010 Forces of Nature
The study demonstrates clearly that in rat models the development of obesity coincides with a progressively deteriorating chemical balance in reward brain circuitries. As these pleasure centers in the brain become less and less responsive, rats quickly develop compulsive overeating habits, consuming larger quantities of high-calorie, high-fat foods until they become obese. The very same changes occur in the brains of rats that overconsume cocaine or heroin, and are thought to play an important role in the development of compulsive drug use.
In the study, the animals completely lost control over their eating behavior, the primary hallmark of addiction. They continued to overeat even when they anticipated receiving electric shocks, highlighting just how motivated they were to consume the palatable food.
The scientists fed the rats a diet modeled after the type that contributes to human obesity -- easy-to-obtain high-calorie, high-fat foods like sausage, bacon, and cheesecake. Soon after the experiments began, the animals began to bulk up dramatically.
The new study was conducted by Scripps Research Associate Professor Paul J. Kenny and graduate student Paul M. Johnson.
"The rats always went for the worst types of food," Kenny said, "and as a result, they took in twice the calories as the control rats. When we removed the junk food and tried to put them on a nutritious diet -- what we called the 'salad bar option' -- they simply refused to eat. The change in their diet preference was so great that they basically starved themselves for two weeks after they were cut off from junk food. It was the animals that showed the "crash" in brain reward circuitries that had the most profound shift in food preference to the unhealthy diet. These same rats were also those that kept on eating even when they anticipated being shocked."
What happens in addiction is lethally simple, Kenny explained. The reward pathways in the brain have been so overstimulated that the system basically turns on itself, adapting to the new reality of addiction, whether its cocaine or cupcakes.
After showing that obese rats had clear addiction-like food seeking behaviors, Johnson and Kenny next investigated the underlying mechanisms that may explain these changes. They focused on the dopamine D2 receptor. The D2 receptor responds to dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is released in the brain by pleasurable experiences like food or sex or drugs like cocaine. In cocaine abuse, for example, the drug alters the flow of dopamine by blocking its retrieval, flooding the brain and overstimulating the receptors, something that eventually leads to physical changes in the way the brain responds to the drug.
The new study shows that the same thing happens in junk food addiction. These data are, as far as we know, the strongest support for the idea that overeating of junk food can become habitual in the same manner and through the same mechanisms as consumption of drugs of abuse.
What all this means is that junk food is highly addictive because it works in the brain in the same manner as cocaine.
Just say no to junk food!
To your health,
Pamela
[1]www.ForcesofNature.ca
[2]www.NaturopathToronto.ca
[3]Twitter: http://twitter.com/pfranknd
Copyright 2010 Forces of Nature
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