So what can junk food dependence actually do to your brain
Posted August 30th, 2011 by adminThe description of dependency can match for many types of chemicals, including nicotine, amphetamine, heroin, crack and yes…. junk food. This is because fast food causes fast food addiction which is just like narcotics addiction. The addiction may not be as noticeably evident as it is with narcotics, and the social implications most likely are not as terrible, but the addiction is most surely there and possesses devastating consequences for health.
A person is beginning to become ill from eating unhealthy, the body starts giving warning signs such as increased weight, bad sleep, tiredness, and the doctor has begun informing the person to completely clean up their way of life to prevent a lifetime of poor health and early death. The person attempts for some time, then fails, tries once again and fails once again, and finally gives up.
This person will most likely end up fat, with type II diabetes and rampant metabolic syndrome, and die from something similar to heart disease. The person knew it was the unhealthy diet and lifestyle that was causing just about all of this, yet was not able to summon the self-control to take control. Is it really that tough to imagine this person is actually dependent on junk food?
A couple of common elements within refined food are sugars as well as wheat, the two things that seem to be at the forefront of providing people with all the plethora of modern traditional western diseases. There exists real research proof these “foods” can cause alterations in brain biochemistry, particularly involving dopamine as well as opiate receptors.
In the prehistoric era, evolution taught people that what tasted sweet was safe to eat. Neural mechanisms within our brains have been designed to give us feeling of reward once we consume something sweet, to be able to motivate us to seek out the behaviour again. Evolution didn’t anticipate that people would some time have refined sugars in such abundance that it could make us unhealthy.
When rats are fed with sugars, they encounter behavioral and neurochemical changes which are similar to what goes on whenever they ingest drugs. These types of changes are specificially associated with dopamine and opioid receptors in the nucleus accumbens in the brain.
I believe that human beings can easily become addicted to these kinds of substances. The procedure often starts in childhood, when children are compensated with candies when they behave nicely, contributing to mental addiction too. Judging from the above studies and private encounter, I think it is extremely probable that refined food causes addiction within the human brain of many individuals, triggering these people to become unable to alter their diet in spite of wishing to.