Dr. Sharma’s Obesity Notes » Blog Archive » Junk Foods Trigger Food Addiction in Obesity?
Posted Mar 31 2010 3:09pm
A new paper by Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny from the Scripps Research Institute, Jupiter, FL, just released online in Nature Neuroscience, demonstrates that in rats development of obesity is coupled with a progressively worsening deficit in neural reward responses (as seen in cocaine or heroin abuse).
In "Refuse to Regain", I wrote about the evidence that suggested that eating certain foods could be addictive. Most people who have had weight problems relate immediately to this idea. They use words like "addicted to pasta", "chocoholic", and others to express unwanted feelings of craving and need. The attached article from the blog of Dr. Arya Sharma, a weight management expert in Canada, reviews recent research that further confirms the addictive nature of certain foods. The one thing with which I disagree is Dr. Sharma's comment that food addiction is particularly difficult because we cannot abstain from eating. This is like saying that we can't abstain from cocaine because it's a drug, and we still need to take antibiotics and aspirin. While it's true that we cannot completely abstain from food, we CAN completely abstain from addictive foods. In my experience, eating primary foods does not trigger addiction so it is very possible, with focus and attention, to greatly relieve this problem.
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via www.drsharma.ca
In "Refuse to Regain", I wrote about the evidence that suggested that eating certain foods could be addictive. Most people who have had weight problems relate immediately to this idea. They use words like "addicted to pasta", "chocoholic", and others to express unwanted feelings of craving and need. The attached article from the blog of Dr. Arya Sharma, a weight management expert in Canada, reviews recent research that further confirms the addictive nature of certain foods. The one thing with which I disagree is Dr. Sharma's comment that food addiction is particularly difficult because we cannot abstain from eating. This is like saying that we can't abstain from cocaine because it's a drug, and we still need to take antibiotics and aspirin. While it's true that we cannot completely abstain from food, we CAN completely abstain from addictive foods. In my experience, eating primary foods does not trigger addiction so it is very possible, with focus and attention, to greatly relieve this problem.
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