Compulsive overeating, drug addiction linked
Great article supporting why proper nutrition is such an important part of our drug and alcohol treatment programs.
The Scripps Research Institute – http://www.scripps.edu
Compulsive overeating, drug addiction linked through changes in the brain
America is addicted to food. We meet for breakfast, discuss business over lunch or grab a quick bite on the go. Our senses are flooded from billboard ads and commercials. Just walk through the mall and the aroma of chocolate, sugar loaded lattes or hot pretzels layered with salt will make the strongest will power weak.
We associate reward and pleasure with food. To get that “high” we replace boredom, loneliness and depression with over consumption of these narcotic-like chemicals. Food addiction creates physical and emotional cravings satisfied by that late-night trip to the corner store for a “fix.” Realizing this excessive behavior creates guilt and depression and the detrimental cycle continues. Like drugs, withdrawal symptoms may include headaches, irritability, sleep deprivation and mood alterations.
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.
The study, conducted by Scripps Research Associate Professor Paul J. Kenny and graduate student Paul M. Johnson, 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 over consume cocaine or heroin, and are thought to play an important role in the development of compulsive drug use.
“The new study, unlike our preliminary abstract, explains what happens in the brain of these animals when they have easy access to high-calorie, high-fat food,” said Kenny. “It presents the most thorough and compelling evidence that drug addiction and obesity are based on the same underlying neurobiological mechanisms. 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.”
“They 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 palatable, 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 over stimulated 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 molecular mechanisms that may explain these changes. They focused on a particular receptor in the brain known to play an important role in vulnerability to drug addiction and obesity—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 alter the flow of dopamine by blocking its retrieval, flooding the brain and over stimulating 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 findings confirm what we and many others have suspected,” Kenny said, “that over consumption of highly pleasurable food triggers addiction-like neuroadaptive responses in brain reward circuitries, driving the development of compulsive eating. Common mechanisms may therefore underlie obesity and drug addiction.”








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