The End of Overeating
May 6th, 2009
My girl Connie Bennett of Sugar Shock fame posted a link to a great article on David Kessler by The Washington Post the other day.
To quote the article, Kessler is a, “Harvard-trained doctor, lawyer, medical school dean and former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.” His battles with weight throughout life have lead him to study the brain’s reaction to certain foods we eat. He elaborates on his findings in his new book, “The End of Overeating.”
I very much agree with his assessment, “Much of the scientific research around overeating has been physiology — what’s going on in our body. The real question is what’s going on in our brain.”
As I have previously discussed, the food we eat absolutely affects the way we think. If we are not eating the right foods, our entire lives are affected; from the way we interact with family and co-workers, right down to how efficacious our prayers can be. In the same way a cell phone can have trouble receiving a signal from the nearest tower because of buildings and trees, the grace God wants to communicate to us can be clouded by the “brain fog” resulting from indulging our Sugar Addictions and eating too much sugar and refined flour.
This process is summed up nicely in the following paragraph from the article,
“‘Highly palatable’ foods — those containing fat, sugar and salt — stimulate the brain to release dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with the pleasure center, he found. In time, the brain gets wired so that dopamine pathways light up at the mere suggestion of the food, such as driving past a fast-food restaurant, and the urge to eat the food grows insistent. Once the food is eaten, the brain releases opioids, which bring emotional relief. Together, dopamine and opioids create a pathway that can activate every time a person is reminded about the particular food. This happens regardless of whether the person is hungry.”
It looks like I’ve got another book to add to my towering stack of “Must Reads.”
Tags: Freedom
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