"Mood Foods"

Why addicts crave sugar and starch.

James Langton of Clearhead.org.uk recently sent me a fascinating article about food and addiction. The technical bulletin from Sure Screen Diagnostics, Ltd., the U.K.'s leading provider of medical and drug testing services, focuses on the age-old and endlessly fascinating connection between addiction and sugar foods (See my post, “Drug Foods and Addiction”).

Entitled "Mood food and Addiction," the technical bulletin asserts that "drug users, alcoholics and those with addictive tendencies routinely resort to certain psychoactive foods between fixes to regulate their mood." Moreover, "certain foods might reduce withdrawal symptoms... the pantry is a veritable 'psychodelicatessen.'"

While some of the conclusions are highly speculative, most of the article is on more solid ground in its discussion of the "psychopharmacology of everyday foods."

Sweet foods and fruits can mitigate or eliminate cravings, the author says, and examples of this are abundant in the addict and treatment communities. Abstinent cigarette smokers sometimes find that "a piece of fruit or something sweet" can banish cravings by temporarily and partially restoring dopamine and serotonin levels.

In an unconscious effort to raise brain levels of serotonin and dopamine, drug users often discover that doughnuts, cakes, ice cream, soft drinks, and other sugar foods can lessen withdrawal symptoms. As evidence, we are far more likely "to see a user with a bar of chocolate in his hand than a sausage roll."

Complex carbohydrates, the bulletin asserts, do not have the same effect. Whole grain breads and starchy vegetables, unlike table sugar and white bread, do not have the same reinforcing impact on neurotransmitters along the reward pathway. "For that reason, they do not tend to be craved as much as sweets, even though they still satisfy [serotonin] 5-HT needs." Because simple sugars eaten in large quantities can cause blood sugar levels to drop below baseline, the result can be the abrupt return of drug withdrawal symptoms.

How does this work out in practice? The bulletin speculates, for instance, that “a amphetamine user who has exhausted his dopamine and noradrenaline levels, and feels depressed and unable to think straight, may be drawn to high-protein, tyramine-rich foods, such as a steak, pizza or a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. An MDMA or "ecstasy" user experiencing fatigue... would probably crave something like fish and chips rich in carbohydrates, and a sugar-rich drink to temporarily bring the depleted 5-HT levels back up to normal." As for opiate users, foods such as whole milk, ice cream, and milk chocolate are appealing because they contain "biologically active opioid peptides.... It no doubt explains why a pint of full fat milk and a Snicker's bar is a perennial snacking favourite of opiate users."

As for chocolate (you didn’t think I’d forget chocolate, did you?), “the most widely preferred chocolate among the general population is not unsweetened dark chocolate with its higher drug cocktail, but sweetened milk chocolate suggesting that the majority of us may in fact be craving its addictive psychoactive sugars, fats and narcotic casomorphins more than anything else.”

In the end, the specific food preferences of addicts force us “to reconsider how fragile the food-drug distinction actually is.”

Graphic Credit: Anselm

dopamine

[Guest Post] Food For Thought--Are You Addicted?

Can you eat your way to happiness?

(This article is contributed by Sarah Scrafford, who regularly writes on the topic of Becoming an Ultrasound Technician. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com.)


Food is essential for life, but there are times when it becomes the reason for death. If you’ve heard of addictions, you’ll know what I’m talking about – addictions and substance dependence extend beyond the realm of drugs, nicotine and alcohol. There are times when it can become as simple, and as complicated, as being addicted to food. Some people have a sweet tooth and get their rush from sugar; others limit themselves to chocolate; but there are a few people who need to eat all the time – they eat when they’re sad and when they’re happy; they eat because food is available; they eat because they’re bored; they eat because they’re stressed; in short, they eat all possible reasons and for no reason at all.

Too much of anything is bad for you, and so you have food and eating related disorders. The compulsive eaters are beset with various medical problems, all of which begin and end with obesity. Large people with fat deposits on various parts of their body are prone to illnesses like diabetes, hypertension, stroke and cardiac diseases. They’re also bound to be in poor general health because of their low level of fitness and sedentary lifestyle that comes about automatically when you’re fat and unable to move around without difficulty. Besides these, they’re also plagued by knee and back pains because of their weight – their knees are unable to support their body weight and become weak as time goes by.

On the other end of the spectrum are those obsessed with thinness – they love to eat too, but they do it on the sly. And when they’re done, they make themselves throw up either by retching or by using emetics. This disease, called bulimia, is characteristic of food addicts who feel guilty that they eat so much, and who are scared of the weight they’re going to put on because of the amount they’ve consumed. Bulimics are prone to binge eating, where they eat much more than normal amounts.

The best cure to an eating disorder or food addiction is self-control, and if you cannot control yourself, then get someone to help you do so. De-addiction from alcohol, tobacco or any other drug happens when you avoid the substance altogether, but it’s not that easy to overcome an addiction to something that’s a basic necessity for life. The trick is to learn to count your calories or to get someone to do it for you. You could also begin a sensible exercise routine where you concentrate on losing weigh in a healthy manner. A more active lifestyle gives you less time to sit around doing nothing, and so frequenting the path between your couch and your refrigerator.

Food addiction, like all other addictions, is a psychological problem that can be cured if treated at an early stage. All you need is a lot of will power and a little determination.

Food Addiction and Dopamine

Why your brain likes sweets.

The brain's ability to sniff out calories in the form of sugar depends upon sugar's drug-like effect on the dopamine-rich reward center known as the nucleus accumbens, according to a study published in the March 27 issue of Neuron. This tiny structure in the mid-brain is also the locus of reward activity for all addictive drugs.

In the study, Ivan de Araujo and colleagues at Duke University and the Universidade do Porto in Portugal demonstrated that lab mice lacking the ability to taste sweet foods still preferred sugary water to regular water. The genetically altered mice, lacking functional taste receptor cells for bitter and sweet, consistently chose to consume sugar water--even though they could not sense the sugar. (The lab animals were also prevented from smelling or sensing textural differences in the offerings.)

"Our findings suggest that calorie-rich nutrients can directly influence brain reward circuits that control food intake independently of palatability or functional taste transduction," the researchers wrote.

The findings offer new clues to obesity, and also bolster the contention that simple carbohydrate foods--because of their effect on reward pathways in the brain--can be addictive for certain people. As Tamas Horvath of Yale University's School of Medicine told Science News (sub. required): "This is a very exciting new element in how you get addicted to food. It doesn't even matter how it tastes."

In the same article, written by Amy Maxmen, study author de Araujo said: "The animal's reward processing systems were sensitive to changes in metabolism, not just flavor. This is a new system."

The "sweet-blind" animals did not go for the low-cal alternative, when they were offered water mixed with sucralose, otherwise known as Splenda. Low-cal sweeteners did not result in a similar dopamine boost along the reward pathways of the brain.

The brain's ability to "sense" calories may help explain why diet foods are often ignored in favor of sweets. As Ewan Callaway of New Scientist put it, "Anyone who has devoured a tub of ice cream in one sitting knows that delicious foods can override our body's pleas of 'enough.'" We have increased levels of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens to thank for that.

As De Araujo explained to New Scientist, "even when you do not stimulate the sensory pathways in the mouth you still have this reward signal in the brain."

In a preview of the article in the same issue of Neuron, Zane Andrews and Tamas Horvath speculate that "high-fructose corn syrup is an ubiquitous sweetener in American society.... It may be that fructose produces stronger activation of the reward system and that removing high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetener will curb some desire for these products."

Photo Credit: Biz/Ed

dopamine addiction

Food Addiction: Snacking on Serotonin

The neurology of carbohydrate craving.

Eighteen years ago, Richard and Judith Wurtman, a husband and wife research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reported in Scientific American:

"We wondered whether the consumption of excessive amounts of snack carbohydrates leading to severe obesity might not represent a kind of substance abuse, in which the decision to consume carbohydrates for their calming and anti-depressant effects is carried to an extreme--at substantial cost to the abuser’s health and appearance."

In the case of certain carbohydrate cravers, the Wurtmans discovered, dietary tryptophan was being converted into serotonin, like always—but this concentrated serotonin surge acted like a powerful mood-booster. It acted like medicine.

The Wurtmans had hit on something important. People who tended to binge late in the day on carbohydrate foods, particularly simple sugars, got a drug-like “buzz” that was highly reinforcing. In the experiments, these people quite specifically, if unconsciously, selected the kinds of foods richest in serotonin-building compounds.

The serotonin-boosting effects of carbohydrates may explain why addicts in recovery, as well as carbohydrate cravers and PMS sufferers, show a tendency to binge on sugar foods. Abstaining addicts apparently turned to the overconsumption of carbohydrates as a means of attempting to redress the neurotransmitter imbalances at the heart of their disorder. Perhaps some addicts discover early in life that carbohydrate-rich foods are their drug of choice.

None of this should be taken to mean that large doses of supplemental tryptophan constitutes some sort of easy remedy for serotonin-mediated disorders. It isn’t that simple. However, many drug treatment experts are convinced that dietary alterations, vitamin therapy, and nutritional supplements--as well as strenuous exercise, which also has a marked effect on neurotransmission—play vital roles in addiction treatment programs.

Dopamine is involved with eating behaviors, too. A Princeton University animal study compared dopamine levels while rats were experiencing stimulant drugs, and while they were eating preferred foods. The researchers found that “amphetamine and cocaine increase dopamine in a behavior reinforcement system which is normally activated by eating. Conversely, the release of dopamine by eating could be a factor in addiction to food.”

The idea of a link between addiction and appetite control is not new, and the controversy over the addictive properties of sugar foods is an old one. Heroin addicts, alcoholics, and cigarette smokers, when deprived of their drug of choice, will sometimes binge on sugar foods in a pattern highly suggestive of cross-addiction or substitute addiction. Old-time alcoholics tell stories of pouring bottles of pancake syrup down the gullets of colleagues in dire need of sobering up. (Fructose does indeed speed the elimination of alcohol.) The practice of referring to drug cravings as “drug hunger” may be closer to the mark than we realize. Intense physical hunger may be as close as any non-addict ever comes to experiencing the mind/body sensations of drug craving.

Many addicts with alcoholic relatives report that they have experienced substitute addictions and multiple addictions repeatedly—and sometimes, these substitutions and additions center on food.

As usual, some of the best hard evidence comes from rats. In a study by Dr. Neil Grunberg at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, rats were regularly injected with nicotine over long periods. When the injections were suddenly withdrawn, the rats chose sweetened food over regular food--a complete reversal of the food preference they had previously shown.

Not all overeaters are abstaining drug addicts, of course. Obesity, like drug addiction, comes in a variety of forms, and is influenced both genetically and environmentally. But the spotlight is now on a subset of obese people in which obesity does not seem to be a behavior learned from obese parents, any more than alcoholism is inevitably a learned behavior picked up from alcoholic parents.