Posts Tagged ‘temptations’

Addiction is the new eating disorder of the 21^st century.

Eating Disorders

The list of eating disorders is reduced to either starving yourself, or stuffing yourself and purging. What if there are reasons to call our obsession with and binging on junk food one of the most dangerous trends. The shocking part it is a growing movement, making its way to the most vulnerable victims our children.

U.S. researchers working with rats have shown for the first time the compulsion to overeat has the same biological mechanism as the addiction to drugs such as cocaine and heroin. It affects the brain’s pleasure circuitry in a similar way.

The study was conducted by Scripps Research Associate Professor Paul J Kenny and graduate student Paul M Johnson. The Scripps Research Institute is in Jupiter, Florida. It was published in the online issue of Nature Neuroscience.

Addiction

According to a statement from the Scripps Research Institute the study confirms what many obesity patients have been saying for years binging on junk food is just about impossible to control.

Kenny and Johnson show that as pleasure centers in the brain become less responsive, rats quickly develop compulsive overeating habits. This is the same progressively deteriorating chemical balance in reward brain circuits seen in rats that over consume cocaine or heroin.

Kenny said the study confirms that junk food can become “addictive.” One of the tests of addictive behavior is to train lab animals to anticipate an electric shock. At first the animals receive the mild shocks at the same time as light coming on, eventually they learn to anticipate the shock when they see the light and avoid doing the thing that triggers the shock.

In rats that become “addicted’ to junk food ignored the light and continued to binge. The junk food consisted of what people eat: cheesecake, bacon, sausage, and Ding-Dongs a chocolate like cake.

Junk Food Wins

Junk food wins even with rats. Lab rats were divided into three groups. The first group got a balanced healthy diet, the second group had access to high-calorie “junk” food for one hour a day, and the third group was fed healthy food, but had unlimited access to the high-calorie “junk food.”

The third group quickly showed a preference for the junk food, eating it all day long and becoming obese.

“They always went for the worst type of food,” Kenny said. “As a result, they took in twice the calories as the control rats,” when they removed the junk food and left the healthy diet, they refused to eat.

“ The change in the diet preference was so great that they basically starved themselves for two weeks after they were cut off from junk food,” said Kenny.

Conclusion

It doesn’t take a genius to know what group we belong to. We are in the third group minus the healthy food. What will it do to us, just look around. The next eclipse will be because we block the view.

Understanding this should make us realize we are being left without the power, or ability to withstand the temptations.