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IS IT ALL IN YOUR HEAD? HOW YOUR BRAIN (CHEMISTRY) MAY BE INFLUENCING YOUR DIET
03/05/2005 - Part 1: Tune Out the Food Channel
Trying to control your weight? If so, you may want to hold your nose when you walk by the bakery, send someone else to shop for food, and avoid watching food shows on TV.
New evidence indicates that the same brain circuits involved in drug addiction are also activated by food. The mere suggestion of food — just smelling and tasting favorite foods without actually eating them — impacts the entire brain, including the region that controls pleasure. This food “stimulation” also increases self-reports of hunger and desire for food.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory believe these findings might suggest potentially harmful effects of constant exposure to food stimuli, such as advertising, candy machines, TV food shows, and food displays in stores. Jack Wang, the study’s lead author, says “The high sensitivity of this brain region to food stimuli, coupled with the huge number and variety of these stimuli in the environment, likely contributes to the epidemic of obesity in this country.”
The Brookhaven scientists have previously shown that similar brain changes are involved in compulsive behaviors in addicted individuals. In fact, subjects responded the same way as addicts craving such drugs as cocaine. They have also found that food stimulation increases levels of the brain chemical dopamine, which is involved in pleasure and reward. Interestingly, like drug addicts, obese individuals have fewer dopamine receptors than normal-weight control subjects do.
Although the study only involved 12 people who were deprived of food for 18 hours (and therefore very hungry), there has been other evidence in the past that a subgroup of people are hyper-responsive to food cues. There is a discussion about “hyperresponders” in The Healthiest Diet in The World (page 278). Included are these possible indicators for people who suspect they might fall into this category:
1. Even when not hungry, you can’t resist snacking while around food.
2. The smell of food is an irresistible temptation to eat.
3. Eating is triggered by environmental clues, such as see food, talking about food, thinking about food.
Part 2: Stress Can Make You Fat
Meditation, music, a hot bath or an engaging activity may make weight control easier. It’s not about burning calories, but relieving daily tensions.
A common hormone with the unwieldy name glucocorticoids (GCs) may hold the key to why “comfort foods” offer psychological support and how this can lead to weight gain. During periods of continued stress, the elevation of GC has an excitatory impact on the human brain that appears to increase the effect of pleasurable or compulsive activities (including ingesting sweets, fat and drugs). The continuously high concentrations of GCs in people who are chronically stressed, depressed, drug-addicted, or have eating disorders, may cause them to seek comfort from food. GCs also increase deposits of abdominal fat.
Therefore, for many stressed and depressed people it’s chemistry, not lack of will, that draws them to comfort foods and results in weight gain. Dr. Mary Dallman, who has been studying the link between stress, hormones and food for many years, believes that people eat comfort food in an attempt to reduce the activity in the chronic stress-response network and relieve the subsequent feelings of anxiety. Dallman thinks her research may provide some answers to the obesity epidemic.
In The Healthiest Diet on the Work, another effect of GCs is presented and it may offer a clue as to why women often gain weight after menopause. That is, GCs block insulin from doing its job, creating a condition known as “insulin resistance” that often leads to weight gain. Estrogen helps counter the insulin-suppressing effects of GCs. Thus, when estrogen levels decline at menopause some women gain weight, even though their food patterns haven’t changed. For more on the subject of insulin resistance, including how to select food to minimize its varied health-compromising effects, see pages 270-289 in The Healthiest Diet.
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