Every day at about 2:30 p.m., I start thinking about chocolate. No matter what I’m doing or where, how involved I am or who I’m with, the concept of cocoa rises in my mind like a breeze and wafts through my mental senses. Smooth, creamy, bittersweet, fragrant. Right on cue, like Pavlov’s dog, I slobber and wag my tail in anticipation.
At 3:00 p.m., known in my personal datebook as “choc-o-clock,” I indulge. Just a square or two of the darkest dark. A medicinal dose, don’t you know? An afternoon pick-me-up.
Am I a helpless chocoholic? A craven sugar craver? Probably. I guess I’ll never know unless I attempt to quit, and if you try to make me, I’ll knock your choc-o-block off. I jest, but food addiction is a real phenomenon, and my little daily habit pales in comparison to some hard-core addicts.
I had a patient the other day who wanted some help losing weight. She is obese and she knows it. She eats too much junk food and she knows it. And yet, she can’t seem to stop herself. She sat across from me, the picture of sobriety and intelligence, and described her own addictive behavior.
At a party, she visits and revisits the chips and dips, all the while knowing and regretting that she is piling on the calories.
In her own kitchen, she eats an entire carton of ice cream with an extra helping of guilt. Out at a restaurant, she orders a big meal, vowing to take half of it home, only to polish off the whole plate and order dessert too. Her inner voice chastises her, but her body does not obey. She is as addicted as any junkie.
Recent research has shown that certain foods can be as addictive as drugs. Guess which foods? Sugar, fat and salt. Also known as junk food. Useful for our caveman ancestors in times of famine, these cravings in the modern age cause obesity, diabetes and a host of other health problems. And the worst culprit of all is sugar.
Here is how it works. Sensory pleasure causes the brain to release dopamine. Pamela Peeke, M.D. wrote in “Food and Addiction: The Dopamine Made Me Do It” (IdeaFit.com, October 2012) that dopamine “signals when rewards are present, motivates us to seek rewards, promotes exploring and learning about rewards and maintains awareness about reward-related cues.”
In the brain, dopamine spreads to the nucleus accumbens, the site of reward, pleasure and addiction; the amygdala, where emotions are processed and remembered; and the hippocampus, a site that converts short-term memory to long-term memory. At each of these sites, dopamine gets taken up by special dopamine receptors, does its thing inside your neurons, and presto: pleasure. You can see how the cycle is set.
The trouble is, when there is too much dopamine around for too long a time, the brain compensates by decreasing the number of dopamine receptors. It is only trying to protect you, but the result is less pleasure per cookie. To get the same experience, you now have to eat the whole plate.
Scientists have studied this in rats, of course. They gave rats free access to a mix of the typical “hyperpalatable” — a fancy word for deliciously junky — foods available to humans: chocolate, cheesecake, bacon, sausage and other fatty and processed products.
The rats’ brains actually changed structure — now they look just like the brains of rats on cocaine. They ate themselves sick, and when the junk food was taken away, they got cranky and jittery.
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Not only that, when rats were intentionally made addicted to sugar, heroin and alcohol and then given their choice of the three, they chose sugar. Sugar over heroin. Now there is a scary Halloween thought.
It happens in humans, too. Yale University researchers, using functional MRI (fMRI) studies, proved that “both lean and obese women who demonstrate addictive behavior around food show the same pattern of neural activity as a chronic drug abuser: very high levels of anticipation of their drug of choice — in this case, a chocolate milk shake — but very low levels of satisfaction after consumption,” (Peeke, 2012). You want it, you want it, you get it, and you’re not happy.
An unfortunate correlate of decreased dopamine receptors is a reduction in activity in the prefrontal cortex. This is the smart part of your brain, the decider and planner, as well as the artist and the cop. So now, in addition to needing more than one cookie to get your fix, it is much harder to stop yourself from chowing down the whole batch. Your decider is weak, you can’t find creative ways to get around the plate of cookies. And as for discipline? Your inner cop is on a perpetual smoke break. Worse, food addictions can be tougher to break than drug addictions, because the multiple ingredients and flavors in food create brain changes that are more complex.
So what to do about it? Stop eating and use heroin instead?
No, just kidding. Thankfully, there is hope. You can affect your brain chemistry, up-regulate those dopamine receptors and get off the merry-go-round of addictive eating. It is not easy, but it is possible. Research supports exercise and meditation as your two best self-help tools.
Exercise “is the best healthy fix because it directly regenerates D2-like dopamine receptors — similar to those linked with food addiction — in the brain, helping to rebuild the damage of past addiction and prevent it in the future,” (Peeke, 2012). Even vigorous walking is a great form of exercise for addiction busting. Bonus: walking actually grows your brain and staves off senility. It’s never too early to start. If you can do more vigorous activity, go for it. Exercise has oodles of health benefits.
Meditation trains your prefrontal cortex. A strong, well-trained prefrontal cortex will help you remain vigilant, make the right choices, steer clear of those nasty hyperpalatables and select fresh, whole, life-promoting foods instead. You can revive the decider and bring the cop back in from break. A great local resource for this is The Mindful Center, which offers a six-week Mindful Eating and Living course. See TheMindfulCenter.com for more information.
Counseling can be a huge help, particularly if there are other eating-related issues or an eating disorder at play. Your very own Student Health and Counseling has counseling services as well as a new nutritionist on staff. Call (505) 277-4537 for counseling and (505) 277-1074 for nutrition appointments.
Peggy Spencer is a student-health physician. She is also the co-author of the book “50 ways to leave your 40s.” Email your questions directly to her at pspencer@unm.edu. All questions will be considered anonymous, and all questioners will remain anonymous.
