Insatiable Appetite: Can We Be Addicted To Food?
By Isaac Chenevey & Nancy Woo
Addiction recovery centers are prolific in modern society, but there are surprisingly few for one of America’s leading culprits – junk food.
The dangers of heroin, cocaine and even legal drugs like caffeine and alcohol are well known. Dopamine and seratonin are the naturally occurring “happy” neurotransmitters that give us feelings of pleasure, but when addictive drugs hijack the brain’s ability to regulate those signals, the blood stream becomes flooded and dysfunctional. Eventually, more and more of the drug is needed to produce the same effect, and this is how addiction sets in.
The same thing, recent scientific studies have found, happen to some people with a different, less obviously addicting drug: junk food. The modern Westerner’s relationship with food differs drastically from our ancestors’. Though every stage of human history has been riddled with food insecurity, never before has obesity, heart disease and diabetes been so prevalent.
Now, instead of fresh food and balanced nutrients, fast food, junk food, processed foods and high-”bad”-fat, high-carbohydrate, sugary snacks account for an alarming majority of the average American’s diet. The fast food industry is robust, and so is obesity. Americans take the cake for the most overweight first world country in the world, with roughly 70% of adult Americans weighing in as either overweight or obese. Obesity in children has also been on the rise, tripling in both children and teenagers in the past thirty years.
To start thinking about the obesity riddle, new discoveries about human neurology are beginning to explain why it’s not so easy to “just say no.” Dopamine is dispersed in the brain naturally during sex and when we are about to eat – two of the most important functions for survival and reproduction. However, researchers in the past decade have been noticing that obese people have fewer dopamine receptors in the brain’s striatum, or Reward Center, meaning that they need to eat more in order to stimulate the same amount of dopamine as an average person. Similarly, when research subjects were shown pictures of their favorite foods but were not allowed to eat them, dopamine flooded the striatum and craving set in, even though they weren’t hungry – the exact same thing that happens to drug addicts.
Food addiction may be a very important step to helping people understand the reasons behind obesity. Leading this research is Nora Valkow, MD, who has been studying the effects of dopamine and food on the brain for the past decade. Valkow has shown how lab rats fed on a high-fat, high-carbohydrate diet will literally eat themselves to death, walking over electrified plates for one more hit of their “junk food.” And when deprived of the food, they curl up in the fetal position, exhibiting symptoms of withdrawal. These rats also tend to eat 65% of their calories in one sitting, gorging themselves until the food is forcibly removed. Though sugars and fats were once very important to human survival, providing key energy and fat storage during times of scarcity, in a society that is overrun by junk food, it’s not scarcity we have to worry about now – it’s food addiction.
Valkow has also made some interesting strides in understanding, then, why obesity has skyrocketed in the past thirty to forty years. Simply put, it’s a combination of nature and nurture. Even though some people may have a gene that is wired for addiction – be it food or drugs – new findings in epigenetics, or the study of underlying genes, are beginning to prove that our environment plays a huge role in whether those genes are expressed or not. Not everyone who has the alcoholic gene will become addicted, and the same goes for obesity. Yet, our society is set up so that in the past few decades, our fast-paced, stressful lifestyles have given rise to the proliferation of environmental conditions that cause obesity to flourish. For example, in a lifestyle where people eat healthy foods, exercise regularly and create meaningful work, the gene for obesity is not generally expressed.
Yet, in a typical day, the average American might have to deal with any number of stressors like high work demands, kids with homework issues or sitting in traffic. These scenarios put people in a constant state of fight-or-flight mode, our evolutionary response to crisis. Except now, the crisis scenario is usually just an ingrained part of everyday living, and our bodies become flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, the stress hormones, on a regular basis. On top of being generally unhealthy, these high-stress situations activate the part of the brain that craves sugars and fats, so it becomes a temporary “fix” to reach over and grab a soda or bag of chips. Continuous behavior like this can actually bring unexpressed genes for obesity into activation. Having vending machines and McDonald’s readily available definitely doesn’t help.
Though genes are not available for alteration like a suit or a dress at the tailor’s, lifestyle choices do have a significant impact on which genes are going to be expressed. There are ways to encourage the brain’s ability to form healthy eating habits. Mindful meditation has been proven to increase dopamine production and reduce impulsivity. Transitioning into practicing regular exercise, eating nutrient-rich foods and reducing stress overall increases healthy regulation of dopamine. Though it may not be instantaneous, the good news is that any person struggling with food cravings, obesity or being overweight has the ability to transform their lifestyle. A strong mind and consistent training are the keys to successful transformation. A vigilant food therapist or an integrated recovery program can make the process even more streamlined.
Perhaps most importantly, what this research has uncovered is that obesity is not just a poor lifestyle choice, a solely societal trend or a product of a weak willpower – it is a condition that has roots in neurology, evolution, genes, environment and individual behavior. Understanding obesity from this holistic perspective gives individuals, health practitioners and societal groups more power to understand and then change habits for improved quality of life.
References:
Peeke, Pamela. “The Dopamine Made Me Do It.” IDEA Fitness Journal Oct. 2012: 34-42. Print.
Ross, Julia. The Mood Cure. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. Print.
Weight-control Information Network. “Overweight and Obesity Statistics.” National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Nov 12, 2012. Web. http://www.win.niddk.nih.gov/statistics/
CDC. “Overweight and Obesity.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Aug 13, 2012. Web. http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html