Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Evidence of behavioral, biological similarities between compulsive overeating and addiction
According to Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers the chronic cyclic pattern of overeating followed by undereating, reduces the brain's ability to feel reward and may drive compulsive eating. This finding suggests that future research into treatment of compulsive eating behavior should focus on rebalancing the mesolimbic dopamine system -- the part of the brain responsible for feeling reward or pleasure.
An estimated 15 million people compulsively eat in the U.S. It is a common feature of obesity and eating disorders, most notably, binge eating disorder. People often overeat because it is pleasurable in the short term, but then attempt to compensate by dieting, reducing calorie intake and limiting themselves to "safe," less palatable food. However, diets often fail, causing frequent "relapse" to overeating of foods high in fat and sugar (palatable foods).
"We are just now beginning to understand the addictive-like properties of food and how repeated overconsumption of high sugar -- similar to taking drugs -- may affect our brains and cause compulsive behaviors," said corresponding author Pietro Cottone, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology & experimental therapeutics at BUSM and co-director of the Laboratory of Addictive Disorders.
In order to better understand compulsive and uncontrollable eating, Cottone and his team performed a series of experiments on two experimental models: one group received a high sugar chocolate-flavored diet for two days each week and a standard control diet the remaining days of the week (cycled group), while the other group, received the control diet all of the time (control group). The group that cycled between the palatable food and the less palatable, spontaneously developed compulsive, binge eating on the sweet food and refused to eat regular food. Both groups were then injected with a psychostimulant amphetamine, a drug that releases dopamine and produces reward, and their behavior in a battery of behavioral tests was then observed.
[...]"We found that the cycled group display similar behavioral and neurobiological changes observed in drug addiction: specifically, a "crash" in the brain reward system," explained Cottone. "This study adds to our understanding of the neurobiology of compulsive eating behavior. Compulsive eating may derive from the reduced ability to feel reward. These findings also provide support to the theory that compulsive eating has similarities to drug addiction."
Journal Reference:
Catherine F. Moore, Michael Z. Leonard, Nicholas M. Micovic, Klaus A. Miczek, Valentina Sabino, Pietro Cottone. Reward sensitivity deficits in a rat model of compulsive eating behavior. Neuropsychopharmacology, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41386-019-0550-1
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 18 2019, @07:43PM (11 children)
All those diets are high carb I bet. You need to include a diet where less than 5% of the calories come from carbs. Then you will really see what has been going on.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by insanumingenium on Friday October 18 2019, @08:37PM (10 children)
At no point has that been the norm for any population other than possibly Inuit populations (and even there I am not terribly confident how much of what is written is accurate).
Low carb is the model of a fad diet, it flat doesn't represent a realistic long term diet, and has consistently failed to work long term when tested (like most diets). Mankind has been using carbs as the cornerstone of our diet from day one, carb free is no more a control group for actual practical diet strategy than starvation is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 18 2019, @08:51PM (9 children)
You mean besides hunter-gatherers? Fruit and nuts are desert, they ate mostly meat.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday October 18 2019, @09:16PM (3 children)
That claim is not consistent with the only neolithic individual we've examined the stomach of [pbs.org](though admittedly not paleolithic)
Bran gruel, legumes, herbs, and a tiny bit of meat is what we pulled out of iceman's stomach.
Regardless of whether otzi's diet is the result of early civilization at work, we know from contemporary and near-contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, like Australian aboriginal tribes, that there are entire seasons where roots and seeds made up 100% of the calories. You have to go to extreme cases like arctic nomads to find a majority-meat diet, and even then it's often mostly fish. The fantasy of all-meat hunter gatherer diets is just that, a fantasy from the age of mass produced cattle where such a thing is even plausible and seems intuitive.
Eat your fucking vegetables.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 18 2019, @09:22PM (1 child)
That guy ate bread, then he died young.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday October 19 2019, @01:37AM
With an arrow in his back..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 18 2019, @09:26PM
There is a pretty big difference between vegetables and grains.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by insanumingenium on Friday October 18 2019, @09:31PM (4 children)
What is that second half of the term hunter-gather imply they were eating exactly? If meat was 95% of their diet, why wouldn't we just call them hunters?
Take a look at your teeth dipshit! Do they look like a dogs teeth? Do they look like a cows? Funny, they are somewhere in the middle, do you think there might be a reason they are the shape they are? If plant products were a minority foodstuff why do we have so much mouth space dedicated to them? Why do we have a sense of taste specifically tuned to detect sugar where most carnivores do not?
It is almost like from day one supplementing meat with carbs has been a central strategy from the start.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 18 2019, @10:36PM (1 child)
I am fuzzy these days on the exact details, but I was always impressed by the sequence outlined in Genesis. At the start we were told to eat fruit from the trees. After we got booted from the garden, though, we were cursed and had to eat fruits _and_ vegetables. Then came the flood, and the ground became cursed, so "our food" became fruits, grains, vegetables _and_ "things that moved upon the earth". Later, it was kosher only to eat those moving things that did not consume carrion (as best I grok kosherness). YMMV.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 19 2019, @04:58AM
That means TMB is of the hook?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 18 2019, @11:22PM
Eating vegetables doesn't mean eating craploads of carbs. The only way to really do that is via grains.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 19 2019, @01:01AM
Baaing without a shred of understanding does that to ex-sapients.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Friday October 18 2019, @07:48PM
Though I don't see any reference to it in the summary or the linked article, the reference to the original paper makes it clear this was done in rats.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 18 2019, @07:49PM (6 children)
I'm surprised this is a surprise, actually.
But hey, scientifically validating "common sense" is also a worthy pursuit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 18 2019, @07:57PM
I'm surprised to see this comment before all the "no shit sherlock" armchair dweebs.
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Friday October 18 2019, @08:54PM (4 children)
If you want to screw with the dopamine system, sex is a powerful tool...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 18 2019, @09:04PM
...and even if you have no such interest...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday October 19 2019, @05:03AM (2 children)
Call me old fashioned but, when it comes to sex, I prefer to screw with the genital system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 19 2019, @07:01AM
Can this be a case where you want people to screw with you? Screw you over?
A girl turns up to shop class. The teacher said that they were going to start with the basics. Do anyone know the difference between a screw, a nail and a bolt?
The girl put up her hand and answered: I've never been bolted
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 19 2019, @02:30PM
Of course, but on a slightly more serious note: if there's a crash in the brain's reward system at work - modulating that with sexually released dopamine could be an effective therapy. Seems like it would be a lucrative field: sex therapy for eating disorders.
Another eating disorder: bulimia, is tied to heavy stimulation of the vagus - apparently that's the physiological basis of the addiction, and electrostim of the vagus (ala VNS therapy) has been shown to be wildly more effective at curing bulimia than any other therapies put forward so far.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Saturday October 19 2019, @11:29AM
Everyone has their vice.
It isn't necessarily the same but everyone has one. People with different vices call them out as addicts... but then in turn are and addict as well... just addicted to something else.
It could be food, drugs, alcohol, gaming, social networking, thrill seeking, sex, working out... And I am positive that I am missing quite a few.
If it isn't one, its another... or even multiple types.
Why is it such a shock that everyone has some type of activity to turn to in order to relieve boredom, or fight stress?
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P