What Cookies and Meth Have in Common - The New York Times - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...s-and-meth-have-in-common.html
food addiction drug stress plasticity reward environment psychology research brain science
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Why would anyone continue to use recreational drugs despite the medical consequences and social condemnation? What makes someone eat more and more in the face of poor health?
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Drug exposure also contributes to a loss of self-control. Dr. Volkow found that low D2 was linked with lower activity in the prefrontal cortex, which would impair one’s ability to think critically and exercise restraint
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Now we have a body of research that makes the connection between stress and addiction definitive. More surprising, it shows that we can change the path to addiction by changing our environment.
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Neuroscientists have found that food and recreational drugs have a common target in the “reward circuit” of the brain, and that the brains of humans and other animals who are stressed undergo biological changes that can make them more susceptible to addiction.
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In a 2010 study, Diana Martinez and colleagues at Columbia scanned the brains of a group of healthy controls and found that lower social status and a lower degree of perceived social support — both presumed to be proxies for stress — were correlated with fewer dopamine receptors, called D2s, in the brain’s reward circuit
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The reward circuit evolved to help us survive by driving us to locate food or sex in our environment
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Today, the more D2 receptors you have, the higher your natural level of stimulation and pleasure — and the less likely you are to seek out recreational drugs or comfort food to compensate
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people addicted to cocaine, heroin, alcohol and methamphetamines experience a significant reduction in their D2 receptor levels that persists long after drug use has stopped. These people are far less sensitive to rewards, are less motivated and may find the world dull, once again making them prone to seek a chemical means to enhance their everyday life.
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the myth has persisted that addiction is either a moral failure or a hard-wired behavior — that addicts are either completely in command or literally out of their minds
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The processed food industry has transformed our food into a quasi-drug, while the drug industry has synthesized ever more powerful drugs that have been diverted for recreational use.
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At this point you may be wondering: What controls the reward circuit in the first place? Some of it is genetic. We know that certain gene variations elevate the risk of addiction to various drugs. But studies of monkeys suggest that our environment can trump genetics and rewire the brain.
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simply by changing the environment, you can increase or decrease the likelihood of an animal becoming a drug addict.
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The same appears true for humans. Even people who are not hard-wired for addiction can be made dependent on drugs if they are stressed
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Is it any wonder, then, that the economically frightening situation that so many Americans experience could make them into addicts? You will literally have a different brain depending on your ZIP code, social circumstances and stress level.
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In 1990, no state in our country had an adult obesity rate above 15 percent; by 2015, 44 states had obesity rates of 25 percent or higher. What changed?
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What happened is that cheap, calorie-dense foods that are highly rewarding to your brain are now ubiquitous.
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Nothing in our evolution has prepared us for the double whammy of caloric modern food and potent recreational drugs. Their power to activate our reward circuit, rewire our brain and nudge us in the direction of compulsive consumption is unprecedented.
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Food, like drugs, stimulates the brain’s reward circuit. Chronic exposure to high-fat and sugary foods is similarly linked with lower D2 levels, and people with lower D2 levels are also more likely to crave such foods. It’s a vicious cycle in which more exposure begets more craving.
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Fortunately, our brains are remarkably plastic and sensitive to experience. Although it’s far easier said than done, just limiting exposure to high-calorie foods and recreational drugs would naturally reset our brains to find pleasure in healthier foods and life without drugs.