What do we already know about how junk food affects mind chemistry?
Beverly Muhlhausler, PhD: Junk food has a same outcome on a mind as addictive drugs and alcohol. When we eat junk food, it switches on partial of a mind famous as a mesolimbic prerogative center. This causes opioids to be constructed and released, and a opioids trigger a array of reactions that eventually lead to a prolongation of a feel-good chemical dopamine. And this, in turn, creates a silken feeling that’s homogeneous to a high gifted from a drug—although apparently in a milder form!
Consuming extreme amounts of junk food for prolonged durations changes your mind in a same approach as addictive drugs and ethanol do. As a result, we need to devour incomparable amounts of junk food to get a same high—and we knowledge withdrawal symptoms when we can’t get it.
Which components of junk food have this effect?
Dr. Muhlhausler: We still don’t know accurately what it is that switches on a prerogative center, since junk food is done adult of a lot of opposite ingredients. Studies have shown that only feeding fat or sugarine to animals is adequate to activate a prerogative system. But it’s doubtful that fat or sugarine can cranky a blood-brain separator and strech a prerogative core directly. We consider that a hormone that increases in response to junk food, such as insulin or leptin, acts as a middleman. It’s indeed a hormone that binds directly to mind cells in a prerogative center.
What did we do in this sold study, and what did we find?
Dr. Muhlhausler: In a study, we fed profound and lactating rats possibly normal rodent food or a “cafeteria†diet, that consisted of a operation of tellurian junk foods, including potato chips and chocolate cookies. Then we complicated a outcome on their pups.
In a prior study, we had shown that pups innate to junk food-fed mothers were fatter and ate some-more fat than their control counterparts. The partial of a mind that controls prerogative and obsession had grown differently in those pups as well. In this experiment, we tested either a response of pups to a drug that blocks opioid signaling in a prerogative core differed between a dual groups.
We found that pups whose mothers had been fed a junk food diet were reduction manageable to a drug. This tells us that their prerogative complement was reduction supportive to a effects of opioids—and therefore to healthy rewards, such as junk foods, that activate a same system. That means these pups substantially would have to devour some-more junk food to get a feel-good effect. Consequently, they competence be some-more disposed to gorge in this form of food.
What does your investigate uncover about a addictive energy of junk food?
Dr. Muhlhausler: Our investigate supports a formula of other investigate display that junk dishes do indeed have addictive properties. Eating too most junk food over a prolonged duration of time can literally means us to turn addicted. We substantially all know people who have withdrawal symptoms when they can’t get entrance to chocolate or chips—and what a investigate shows is that this unequivocally is a biological response.
Reference
“A Maternal ‘Junk-Food’ Diet Reduces Sensitivity to a Opioid Antagonist Naloxone in Offspring Postweaning.†J.R. Guguseff et al. FASEB Journal, 2013, vol. 27, pp. 1275-84.
Linda Wasmer Andrews is a author who specializes in health, psychology, and a intersection between a two. Follow her on Twitter. Like her on Facebook.
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