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Food addiction related information
Does food act physiologically like a 'drug of choice' for
some?
ScienceDaily (July 20, 2011) Variety is considered the "spice of life," but does today's unprecedented level of dietary variety help explain skyrocketing rates of obesity? Some researchers think it might. According to ASN Spokesperson Shelley McGuire, PhD: "We've known for years that foods- even eating, itself- can trigger release of various brain chemicals, some of which are also involved in what happens with drug addiction and withdrawal. And, as can happen with substance abusers, tolerance or "habituation" can occur, meaning that repeated use (in this case, exposure to a food) is sometimes accompanied by a lack of response (in this case, disinterest in the food). The results of the study by Epstein and colleagues provides a very interesting new piece to the obesity puzzle by suggesting that meal monotony may actually lead to reduced calorie consumption. The trick will be balancing this concept with the importance of variety to good nutrition." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110719114340.htm
Evidence for 'food addiction'
in humans
ScienceDaily (July 12, 2011) Research to be presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, suggests that people can become dependent on highly palatable foods and engage in a compulsive pattern of consumption, similar to the behaviors we observe in drug addicts and those with alcoholism. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110712094046.htm
Food addiction works like
drug addiction in the brain
Huffington Post (Apr. 5, 2011) Seeing a milkshake can activate the same areas of the brain that light up when an addict sees cocaine, U.S. researchers said on Monday. The study helps explain why it can be so hard for some people to maintain a healthy weight, and why it has been so difficult for drug makers and health experts to find obesity treatments that work. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/05/food-addiction-brain_n_844931.html
Food addiction: There are
more questions than answers
National Post (Mar. 14, 2011) by Jennifer Sygo How do you cure a food addiction? For that matter, how do you define it? Food addiction is one of those grey-area nutrition issues, formed from a combination of research, experience and anecdotes that currently lies somewhere between abstract concept and scientific truth. At this time, researchers are still working to define what, exactly, constitutes food addiction, and if such a condition exists, what can a person who feels addicted do to help themselves? http://www.nationalpost.com/life/health/Food+addiction+There+more+questions+than+answers/4438167/story.html
ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2011) Unlike alcohol problems and antisocial behavior, depression doesn't decline with age in addiction-prone women in their 30s and 40s -- it continues to increase, a new study led by University of Michigan Health System researchers found.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110218111821.htm
Huffington Post (Oct. 16, 2010) by Mark Hyman, MD Our government and food industry both encourage more "personal responsibility" when it comes to battling the obesity epidemic and its associated diseases. They say people should exercise more self-control, make better choices, avoid overeating, and reduce their intake of sugar-sweetened drinks and processed food. We are led to believe that there is no good food or bad food, that it's all a matter of balance. This sounds good in theory, except for one thing...New discoveries in science prove that industrially processed, sugar- fat- and salt-laden food -- food that is made in a plant rather than grown on a plant, as Michael Pollan would say -- is biologically addictive. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/food-addiction-could-it-e_b_764863.html
Compulsive eating shares addictive biochemical mechanism
with cocaine, heroin abuse, study shows
ScienceDaily (Mar. 29, 2010) In a newly published study, scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have shown for the first time that the same molecular mechanisms that drive people into drug addiction are behind the compulsion to overeat, pushing people into obesity.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100328170243.htm?sms_ss=email
Junk food addiction may be clue to
obesity: High-calorie bingeing as addictive as
cocaine, rat study shows
msnbc.msn.com (Mar. 29, 2010) by JoAnne Allen, Reuters Bingeing on high-calorie foods may be as addictive as cocaine or nicotine, and could cause compulsive eating and obesity, according to a study. The findings in a study of animals cannot be directly applied to human obesity, but may help in understanding the condition and in developing therapies to treat it, researchers wrote Sunday in the journal "Nature Neuroscience."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36081881/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/
ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2010) Ever get a buzz from eating chocolate? A study published in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience has shown that chocolate-craving mice are ready to tolerate electric shocks to get their fix
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100208144848.htm
ScienceDaily (Nov. 15, 2009) Enhancing
the effects of the brain chemical dopamine influences how people make life
choices by affecting expectations of pleasure, according to new research from
the UCL Institute of Neurology. The
study, published in Current Biology, confirms an important role for
dopamine in how human expectations are formed and how people make complex
decisions. It also contributes to an understanding of how pleasure expectation
can go awry, for example in drug addiction. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091112121603.htm
ScienceDaily (Aug. 18, 2009) Although exercise is good for your health, extreme exercise may be physically addicting. Rats given a drug that produces withdrawal in heroin addicts went into withdrawal after running excessively in exercise wheels, according to new research. Rats that ran the hardest had the most severe withdrawal symptoms.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090817143600.htm
Flipping the brain's addiction switch without drugs
ScienceDaily
(May 29, 2009) When someone becomes dependent on drugs or alcohol, the
brain's pleasure center gets hijacked, disrupting the normal functioning of its
reward circuitry. Researchers
investigating this addiction "switch"
have now implicated a naturally occurring protein, a dose of which allowed them
to get rats hooked with no drugs at all.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090528142825.htm
Help for addicts may come in form of questions: New program
aims to help health workers ID addiction clues,
provide aid
MSNBC.com (May 4, 2009) If more doctors started asking, would more drug and alcohol abusers 'fess up so they could get help? It's a huge irony of health care: Go to the emergency room and you'll be asked about a tetanus shot, even though "most of us have never seen a case of tetanus," says Dr. Gail D'Onofrio, emergency medicine chief at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30564716/from/ET/
New York Times: Science (Jan 5, 2009) by Pam Belluck Buzz has a whole new meaning now that scientists are giving bees cocaine. To learn more about the biochemistry of addiction, scientists in Australia dropped liquefied freebase cocaine on bees backs, so it entered the circulatory system and brain. The scientists found that bees react much like humans do: cocaine alters their judgment, stimulates their behavior and makes them exaggeratedly enthusiastic about things that might not otherwise excite them. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/science/06bees.html
ScienceDaily (Dec. 11, 2008) A Princeton University scientist will present new evidence today demonstrating that sugar can be an addictive substance, wielding its power over the brains of lab animals in a manner similar to many drugs of abuse.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081210090819.htm
CBC News (Dec. 10, 2008) Sugar can be addictive, wielding power over the brains of lab animals much like a craving for drugs, according to Princeton University scientists who say their findings may eventually have implications for the treatment of humans with eating disorders.
Psychologist Bart Hoebel and colleagues at the university's Neuroscience Institute have studied what they call sugar addiction in rats for years. They say their rats have met two of the three elements of addiction they show a pattern of increased intake and then signs of withdrawal. But Hoebel's most recent experiments also demonstrate a third element craving and relapse.
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/12/10/sugar.html
Studies on
the dopamine connection
CBC Marketplace: Food/junk
food addiction (Oct. 29, 2002) by
Reporter: Wendy Mesley; Producer: Greg Sadler; Researchers: Colman Jones,
Leonardo Palleja Scientists at the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National
Laboratory found that dopamine, a brain chemical associated with addiction to cocaine, alcohol, and other drugs, may
also play an important role in obesity.
http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/food/junkfood_addiction/dopamine.html
Measuring brain activity in
people eating chocolate offers new clues about how the body becomes addicted
ScienceDaily (Aug. 29, 2001) Using positron emission tomography scans to measure brain activity in people eating chocolate, a team of U.S. and Canadian neuroscientists believe they have identified areas of the brain that may underlie addiction and eating disorders.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010829082943.htm
published by: changehappens.ca
last
updated: Sept 23, 2011