Food Addiction And What It Does To The Brain

Do you find yourself over eating those processed food coated with sugar, artificial preservatives and salt, oil all the time? Food addiction manifests itself in the uncontrollable craving for excess food that follows the ingestion of refined carbohydrates, primarily sugar and flour substances that are quickly metabolized and turned into sugar in the bloodstream. If you have these problems, you might be suffering from food addiction. Palatable edibles or junk food are also the most energy dense foods, and prepared in such a way that human taste would prefer them. Regardless, preferring calorie dense food is one thing, however most compulsive over-eaters relationships with palatable foods go way beyond anything evolution had in mind. Studies have shown that palatable foods not only stimulate the appetite they stimulate the rate at which we eat them. The food you are addicted to can affect your brain and body .i.e the Homeostatic function, (calories in vs. calories out) regulates the metabolic consequences of food (energy, fat storage, weight loss), where as the reward function of food in the brain controls the pleasurable consequences eating. In addition, studies have shown that consuming palatable foods in tandem with weight gain, cause de-sensitization of the D2 dopamine receptors in the reward system in the brain. Certain hormones are released in the body each time we eat junk foods. The trigger our impulse nerves that it is the best making us eat more. That is why you feel like eating more junk food even when you are already full. In a healthy individual, the body is able to communicate effectively with the brain via hormones such as leptin, ghrelin, insulin and other informational substances. In the obese individual’s unhealthy body, converging reasons breach communication between the brain and the body. 1) Hypothalamic remodeling resulting from early life trauma compromises leptin receptors. 2) Elevated serum leptin levels from obesity and overeating damage the hypothalamus and resulting in leptin insensitivity. If you are eating too much processed food you are directly reducing your lifespan and reducing your immunity count. Processed foods further confuse the signalling mechanisms our brain. The result of this is you over feed your body because your brain believes you are starving. This usually leads to overeating like I already mentioned. The overeating problem that people with food addiction do is persistent, so a person addicted to food eats too much food — and often the wrong kinds of food is consumed regularly. Doctors recommend that you slow that your eating routine and reduce the portion. Replace sugary foods with fibre and fruits. That is how you can help your body. Reduce the alcohol intakes and make sure you exercise thrice weekly. Go for medical check up yearly. Experts suggest you should stop eating after 6:00 p.m. and before 10:00 a.m. This has tremendous neurochemical and hormone signalling benefits. After several months of this, you will notice that the fat stores your body will begin to communicate their status your brain.

Food is awesome; you all love food; you need to eat and packaged, processed and refined foods tastes good. Processed foods are convenient; just stop at the grocery store and buy a. meal in a bag, run home and fill your family’s plates with addictive carbs and fats. Refined and processed foods take the components of whole foods and modify them by taking out fiber, water and nutrients. Refined foods do have elements of whole foods, but these elements are concentrated which causes digestive problems. Eating refined and concentrated food will artificially stimulate dopamine or the pleasure neurotransmitter in the brain. You are eating foods that cause great and happy feelings and you want more.

The brain is hardwired to seek out behaviors that release dopamine in the reward system.The problem with modern junk foods is that they can cause a reward that is way more powerful than anything we were ever exposed to in nature. When the brain sees that the amount of dopamine is too high, it starts removing the dopamine receptors in order to keep things “balanced.” When you have fewer receptors, you need more dopamine to reach the same effect, which causes people to start eating more junk food to reach the same level of reward as before. This is called tolerance. If you have fewer dopamine receptors, then you will have very little dopamine activity and you will start to feel unhappy if you don’t get your junk food “fix.” This is called withdrawal. i see a lot of mothers in Nigeria; each time I travel by road-they way they eat as if they were just released from the prison. A woman will seat and eat three wraps of Okpa, egg, rice, big coke and then suya/Kirishi. Please NIGERIA women should learn how to respect and eat decently in public. Health is wealth.

Obesity is serious problem. each time you hear that people dropped DEAD just like that - it must have been their Blood Pressure was high over the usual rate. Most people with over weight tend to have high blood pressure.   Source: http://nutripotnigeria.com/food-addiction-and-your-brain/