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According to the latest research published in the journal Cell, those of us who want to be healthy have a new reason to hate the sun (you know, besides the fact that the sun’s rays are deadly cancer causing poisons): Sunlight is addicting and stimulates the pleasure center of your brain–the same part of your brain that addictive drugs like alcohol and cocaine stimulate.
One of the researchers had this rather mindless interpretation of the results of his study:
”It’s surprising that we’re genetically programmed to become addicted to something as dangerous as UV radiation, which is probably the most common carcinogen in the world… In the current time, there are much safer and more reliable sources of vitamin D that do not come with carcinogenic risk, so there is real health value in avoiding sunlight as a source of vitamin D.” (1)’
The itself study found something incredibly interesting–the rather remarkable finding that our brains are wired to respond to sun exposure by lighting up the pleasure center of our brains. Now, where things got problematic is that without much deeper thought at all, the researchers interpreted this finding as weird and pathological–the equivalent of being addicted to illegal drugs like cocaine–and simply suggested to avoid sun exposure and just use a vitamin D supplement instead. You know, since of course, vitamin D supplementation isn’t a horrible carcinogen like sunlight is, and surely your little bottle of vitamin D is just as good as getting outdoors, right? Nevermind the findings of many recent studies that show that sunlight exposure specifically?is linked with reduced mortality, (2)?while getting vitamin D in other ways such as supplementation or UV tanning beds does not decrease mortality (suggesting that the links between vitamin D levels and health status may be confusing correlation with causation, and suggesting that the benefits of sunlight exposure extend far beyond simply vitamin D). (3)
No no, none of that matters, according to these researchers. ?Take your vitamin D and stay out of the sun at all costs! And then we see article headlines like this: ?Sunshine can be addictive like heroin: Bathing in the sun has a similar effect on the human body as heroin and is highly addictive.
By now, I’m sure you’ve also heard the news about sugar–you know that it too stimulates the pleasure circuitry in your brain in much the same way that cocaine and heroin do.
After all, how could you not have heard about it? Since pretty much every low-carb guru out there tries to paint a picture of how eating sugar is the equivalent of being a crack addict. Here’s the title of a recent article on Huffington Post: ?What’s Worse For Your Brain: Sugar Or Cocaine?? The article starts with this introduction to the topic:
?Think cocaine is bad for your brain? Then you might want to change the way you think about sugar. Eating high-sugar foods lights up your brain on an MRI “like a Christmas tree,” Dr. Mark Hyman, M.D., founder and medical director of UltraWellness Center, said during a recent interview on HuffPost Live. The part of the brain that lights up is the very same part of the brain that’s triggered by cocaine or heroin, according to research by Dr. David Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D. (4)
And there’s this from another similar article: ?We’re finding that a sweet tooth makes you just as much an addict as snorting cocaine. (5)
The basic underlying premise of this logic is that sugar is bad for you because it–like drugs like cocaine, heroin, and alcohol–stimulates the pleasure center of your brain. Makes sense, right? Anything that stimulates the brain in a similar way to what those nasty drugs do must be bad for you! Therefore, if you don’t want to activate the same areas of your brain that crack addicts do, you better avoid that nasty pleasure center stimulating sugar!
I’ve decided that this logic is so brilliant that it should be the basis of a new paradigm of health. The new paradigm is simple:
If you want health, avoid all things which stimulate the pleasure center of your brain.
So I’ve decided to compile a list of all the other things that we should be avoiding due to the fact that they too stimulate the pleasure circuitry of our brains:
- SEX -?Sex stimulates the pleasure center of the brain very powerfully. Why do you think we find it so pleasurable and fun? No more sex for you if you want to be healthy.
- CARBS -?Of course, as we’ve heard from many a low-carb guru, those nasty insulin-spiking carbohydrates stimulate a nice strong reward response in our brains. No more carbs for you.
- FATS -?Oh, and by the way, dietary fat also stimulates a pleasure response in your brain in much the same way that sugar does. But the low-carb gurus certainly don’t want you to know about that. They would much rather that you believe that this is something completely unique to that evil sugary stuff. In fact, they go out of their way to cherry pick the studies and ignore the fact that fats do the same thing. (6) (7) (8) ?This is why ad-libitum high-fat diets promote overfeeding and fat gain as well or better than high-carb diets, which you can see from the literature review HERE. Like I said, fat is nasty stuff. Maybe even worse than those evil carbohydrates. No more fats for you.
- WATER -?Yes indeed, good old water stimulates the reward center of the brain too. Why else do you think having a nice ice cold glass of water feels just so nice on a hot summer day? (9)
- SUNLIGHT -?As mentioned above, sunlight exposure stimulates the reward center of the brain, and if you sunbathe frequently, you’re basically no better than a crack addict. Take a vitamin D supplement and stay indoors at all costs to avoid that nasty cancer-causing sunlight.
- SPENDING TIME IN NATURE -?Shinrin yoku, or forest bathing, has been thoroughly studied in Japan for its myriad health benefits. But unfortunately, immersing yourself in nature and enjoying the beautiful sights also stimulates the pleasure center of our brain, so no more going out in nature for you.
- MEDITATION -?Meditation is also a good way of stimulating the reward center of your brain. It’s probably best that you avoid that too. (10)
- MUSIC -?Of course listening to music you really love stimulates the reward center of your brain very powerfully. Better avoid any of that too. (11)
- DANCE -?Yup, dance and really any kind of play stimulate the pleasure center of your brain very strongly. No more of that nasty stuff.Matt’s hero Flynt?Flossy is just a?junkie.
- MOVEMENT AND EXERCISE (a.k.a. NOT SITTING) -?Moving your body and doing exercise is known to stimulate the reward center of your brain–you know, just like heroin does. (12) You don’t want to stimulate the same part of your brain that heroin does, do you? I didn’t think so. No more exercise for you. It’s probably best that you just sit in a chair all day and avoid any prolonged period of standing and moving your body.
So hopefully you noticed something as you read through that list: The things that stimulate the pleasure centers of our brains are the essential ingredients for optimal health. That is the very reason that evolution has programmed us to find carbs, fat, sunlight, and sex so pleasurable–without these things, we don’t stay alive so well.
And as it turns out, regular stimulation of the pleasure circuitry in our brains is essential for learning, motivation to achieve, and pretty much everything we do to keep ourselves alive. Without regular stimulation of the pleasure circuitry of our brains, we become dull, lifeless, and apathetic.
The point I’m trying to illustrate here is that in recent years there has been a dangerous reductionist tendency to pathologize anything which stimulates the pleasure center of our brains. If something stimulates the same area of the brain that drugs do, we rush to equate doing that thing with being a crack addict–it immediately becomes pathological, harmful, and unhealthy. Eating potatoes, white rice, or a fruit salad with a bit of honey means you’re a junkie and that you need to detox off those cocaine-like carbs that you’re addicted to. Sunbathing regularly is an indication that you have a pathological addiction to the horrible carcinogenic sun. These interpretations are misguided and they result in terrible health advice like ?Avoid sunlight and take a vitamin D supplement? and ?eat low-carb? and ?fight all your cravings for fat and sugar, for they are pathological signs of addiction. We are pathologizing the very things upon which our health, and our very life, depend. And as a result of this sort of thinking, we have lost touch with simply following our instincts and listening to our body’s cravings–many of us our now afraid to eat a potato or a bowl of fruit for fear of the evil ?fat-storing? hormone insulin.
Now, there are of course some kinds of stimuli that can stimulate the pleasure center of our brain in ways that eventually become pathological. We must be?careful to distinguish between the pleasure-stimuli that are essential to our health, and the?pleasurable stimuli which are not compatible with the neurological systems that have been wired into us by evolution–‘superstimuli,? which light up the pleasure center of our brains in such an intense and forceful way that it exceeds our brain’s natural tolerances.
Examples of this sort of superstimuli include crack, cocaine, heroin, concentrated alcohol, highly processed foods that are a combination of fats and sugars concentrated to a degree that is not seen in whole foods (along with artificial flavors and flavor enhancers), and pornography involving acts that rarely or never take place inside the bedrooms of most humans. These things can hit the reward center of the brain in a way that is unnaturally intense. And in response to that extremely forceful stimulus, our brains try to compensate by turning down the volume a bit–that is, by decreasing the sensitivity of the reward system of the brain in order to tolerate these new unnaturally forceful stimuli. Thus, engaging in these superstimuli frequently results in a raising of the reward threshold in the brain. And that’s where things get problematic. For one, you need more of a given substance to feel the same amount of pleasure. And two, the more usual pleasures of life become duller.
This raising of the reward threshold (and downregulation of dopamine receptor sensitivity in the brain) is in fact, linked with depression and anhaedonia–?a loss of interest or pleasure in all or almost all usual activities and pastimes. (13) That fruit salad just isn’t nearly pleasurable enough anymore–you need three slices of cheesecake, tons of fried bacon, a whole box of doughnuts. More mild altered states of intoxication like what one gets from a glass of wine just aren’t enough–you need lots of hard liquor or cocaine. To get off sexually, you start masturbating five times a day to videos of crazy freaky porn involving a multitude of people and the simultaneous utilization of more than two orifices, while more normal sex with your spouse just doesn’t do it for you anymore. Ultimately, this raising of the reward threshold contributes to things like drug addiction, chronic overconsumption of calories and obesity, and all the stuff this guy mentions HERE:
You crave the pleasure that only those superstimuli can give you now. And this is indeed very problematic.
But just because some types of rewarding stimuli can cause problems doesn’t mean that we should rush to pathologize anything which lights up the pleasure center of our brains. We might be smarter to approach things with the simple question ?Are there any intelligent reasons why this thing might be stimulating the pleasure center of our brains–is it a healthy pleasure stimulus, or an excessively intense superstimulus??
If we ask such a question, we are much more likely to arrive at good health advice rather than terrible health advice.
Perhaps we might find that it’s not a coincidence that carbs and fat stimulate the reward center of our brains. They are in fact, the best sources of fuel by our cells. This is in fact why these foods taste delicious to us–that is our brain’s intelligent way of getting the fuel it needs to sustain a vital, healthy, and energetic body.
We also might find that it’s not a coincidence that flirting, courtship, and sex stimulate the reward center of our brain rather powerfully. For if we didn’t find these things especially exciting and pleasurable, the human species would rapidly go extinct.
We might also find that it’s not a coincidence that we find movement to be so pleasurable, for last time I checked, it’s rather difficult to hunt, gather, and cultivate food without moving our bodies.
And we might find that it’s also not a coincidence that we find exposure to sunlight rather pleasurable–for without sunlight, we would be filled with stress hormones, have severe vitamin D deficiency, our circadian clock would be thrown off (resulting in all sorts of nasty metabolic side effects), we would have a deficiency in the red light that is needed for efficient cellular metabolism, and eventually, our bones and organs would waste away.
I hope that you can now see that there is nothing inherently pathological about doing things’that light up the pleasure center of our brains. In fact, not only are the above things not pathological, they are essential to our health, our vitality, our positive mood, our motivation to do things in the world, our enjoyment of life, and our very survival. Any intelligent discussion related to dopamine or the pleasure center of the brain should always be grounded in this context, and you should be very skeptical of sensationalist claims that try to pathologize something solely by virtue of the fact that it ‘stimulates the same area of the brain that cocaine does.
We are pleasure seeking organisms, and the things that give us pleasure also give us life.
The ideal for health is probably something along the lines of this: You want frequent and strong–but not unnaturally intense–stimulation of the reward center of your brain. This will allow you to feel pleasure as often as possible while still maintaining a high dopamine receptor density/sensitivity in the brain and avoiding the brain turning down the volume on life’s more typical pleasures.
Pleasure is good! Engage in pleasurable things as often as possible. But make sure those pleasure are of intensities that are aligned with your biology.
So eat carbs, eat fat, listen to music, dance, spend your days pursuing your deepest passion, immerse yourself in nature, sunbathe, and have lots of sex.
Ari Whitten is a fitness and nutrition professional and bestselling author of the book, Forever Fat Loss. Visit Ari’s website for more cutting-edge information, including his extensive Metabolism Supercharge video series on bodyfat regulation, metabolism, and weight loss. www.ariwhitten.com
References:
- [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10912105/Sunshine-can-be-addictive-like-heroin.html]
- [ http://chriskresser.com/does-avoiding-the-sun-shorten-your-lifespan]
- [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21454422]
- [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/07/fed-up_n_5281670.html]
- [ http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727761.700-junkie-food-tastes-your-brain-cant-resist.html]
- [ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/addicted-to-fat-eating/]
- [ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100713011053.htm ]
- [ http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n5/full/nn.2519.html]
- [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8255911] [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1407684]
- [ http://www.hindawi.com/journals/np/2013/653572/abs/]
- [ http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v14/n2/full/nn.2726.html]
- [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17561174] [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21070820]
- [ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3089992/]
First! After so long!! (I will read the post now :P )
That was really your first, first Sangita?! Wow. Glad you finally ended the dry spell, lol. Congrats :)
Well….maybe second first :) Fantastic post. This resonates a lot with Ayurveda, which says your sense organs getting messed up is a major major cause of disease. They describe Hina (less), Ati (excess) and Mithya (wrongful) stimulation of the sense organs. So basically you need to give all your sense organs what they need in the right amounts. No deprivation! This s has completely gone for a toss in our modern lifestyles. Some things in Ayurveda really make sense! (Hope I’m making sense!)
I was really take aback when a survey from my health insurance company dinged me for not using sunscreen every time I go outside. This misinformation is going mainline, yikes! Thanks Matt for tring to set the crazy world straight.
That kind of crap is why I delete unread all emails from my employer and insurance company that relate in any way to “health”. Well, unless I’m looking for some entertainment.
Excellent article!
We need a like button. Like!!!
Can’t wait to go get some of that sunlight. Been fiending all week.
This is a very interesting and creative take on the press release of the scientific article, but the premise of this article and the interpretation of the paper is wrong.
I read the full paper and realized once again that press releases often don’t explain the paper very well (surprise surprise). So I’m not sure where the pleasure center in the brain came from but this paper only briefly mentioned that pleasure center in the brain in the discussion section: the experiments themselves were not about the pleasure center of the brain, they were about what the title clearly states, skin ?-endorphin responses to UV exposure.
Dose is always relevant to health discussions, so instead of throwing this paper aside without reading the thing, we need to acknowledge the legitimacy of the authors’ claims: that ?-endorphin release from UV radiation may mediate the addictive tendencies of users of tanning beds. They cited several studies in the discussion that have clearly established a type of addiction to tanning (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20545951). Their objective was to measure the cellular mechanisms by which this takes place, and long story short they found it through classic ablation experiments (knockout mice for example – ablation experiments serve to establish what is necessary for something to take place).
The paper involves multiple experiments that are clearly glanced over in the press release (as usual) and aren’t mentioned in this piece either. If their hypothesis is true, then I don’t know how anyone is arguing that UV addiction is somehow safe. You can become addicted to sex, exercise, and some of the things mentioned in this article and it can have negative health consequences. I have had mild exercise addiction for years and I think I showed addictive behaviors where I would feel withdrawal symptoms if I didn’t exercise and my muscles started to crave the exercises I did, even if mentally I was fatigued and still recovering.
Similarly, if tanning bed users or sun-tanners become addicted to the ?-endorphin, they may take on a dose of UVB rays that pass the threshold of safety. I would assume there is some sort of feedback system, but in addiction, feedback systems clearly don’t work or aren’t relevant. In their experiment, the mice were given a dose of UV that did not redden their skin: the equivalent of 20-30 minutes of sun exposure in Florida they said for a Fitzpatrick 2-3 type skin, so probably a safe dose. If they caused the skin to redden and the mice still craved the ?-endorphin, we could have a dangerous addiction.
In this study there was no evidence that the mice experienced negative health outcomes from the UV radiation; the mechanisms underlying the addictive tendencies were established however and they involved the peripherally released ?-endorphin (which exercise and many other things can elevate as well).
Something I’d like everyone to remember is that there is usually an optimal dose, and that idea is still consistent with the findings of this paper.
Hi Avishek,
Your critique is interesting… below you can see my responses to your comments…
You stated “This is a very interesting and creative take on the press release of the scientific article, but the premise of this article and the interpretation of the paper is wrong….I read the full paper and realized once again that press releases often don’t explain the paper very well (surprise surprise). So I’m not sure where the pleasure center in the brain came from but this paper only briefly mentioned that pleasure center in the brain in the discussion section: the experiments themselves were not about the pleasure center of the brain, they were about what the title clearly states, skin ?-endorphin responses to UV exposure.”
In fact, your assumption that the pleasure center of the brain is not a focus is incorrect. There are researchers who are indeed talking about the effects of UV radiation on the pleasure center of the brain. E.g. “”Certain regions of the brain we know are responsible, partially responsible for drug and alcohol addiction seem to have increased blood flow when you put UV [ultraviolet] light in front of these individuals who are known for frequent tanning,” Dr. Charles Samenow, a psychiatrist and professor at George Washington University, said Saturday.” http://abcnews.go.com/Health/SkinCare/tanning-rehab-study-shows-uv-light-activates-addictive/story?id=14311249
?What this shows is that the brain is in fact responding to UV light, and it responds in areas that are associated with reward,? said Dr. Bryon Adinoff, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and an author of the study. ?These are areas, particularly the striatum, that we see activated when someone is administered a drug or a high-value food like sugar.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/how-tanning-changes-the-brain/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
So yes, the pleasure center of the brain is involved in the mechanism, not just the skin. And this is a major area of focus of these researchers.
Next, you said “we need to acknowledge the legitimacy of the authors? claims: that ?-endorphin release from UV radiation may mediate the addictive tendencies of users of tanning beds. They cited several studies in the discussion that have clearly established a type of addiction to tanning (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20545951).
I agree… I never disacknowledged that UV radiation can potentially be addictive–particularly in the form of tanning beds. My objection was to the researchers conclusion: “It’s surprising that we’re genetically programmed to become addicted to something as dangerous as UV radiation, which is probably the most common carcinogen in the world? In the current time, there are much safer and more reliable sources of vitamin D that do not come with carcinogenic risk, so there is real health value in avoiding sunlight as a source of vitamin D.
Next, you said “You can become addicted to sex, exercise, and some of the things mentioned in this article and it can have negative health consequences. I have had mild exercise addiction for years and I think I showed addictive behaviors where I would feel withdrawal symptoms if I didn’t exercise and my muscles started to crave the exercises I did, even if mentally I was fatigued and still recovering.”
I agree… nothing I said in the article is incompatible with those observations.
In fact, one thing you might find interesting that I ended up taking out of the article was a little blurb talking about how stimuli we typically think of as more “healthy” (or at least, not unhealthy) like running long distances or extreme sports like surfing giant waves, can often serve as superstimuli that create addiction-like effects, and the same sort of damaging side effects of raising the reward threshold and post-event (marathon, or surf session, etc) anhaedonia and depression.
With intense enough doses, pleasurable stimuli like sex, water, carbs, fats, and exercise can all become pathological.
Anyway, thank you for your thoughtful critique.
Best regards, Avishek.
Thanks for this post Ari. I hear so many people regurgitate that crap from Dr.”Wizard of” Oz about sugar activating dopamine blah blah blah..that I am now actively asking them this one question: since when is activating dopamine a bad thing? The number one response so far has been…the sounds of cricketts chirping as the person stares off into space LOL!!! Btw, thank you Ari for writing the book, Secrets of Fat Loss, and thank you Matt for linking that e-book on this blog. Otherwise, I would never have known about it let alone purchase it :)
I’m pretty sure it’s called Forever Fat Loss Jon, lol.
Oh Snap!! Thanks for the correction Matt, it is titled Forever Fat Loss (and sorry about that Ari) :-o
Haha… Thank you for the kind words, Jon!
This is an incredibly ignorant and dangerous piece of writing. Dosage is everything; problems arise when folks overdose, as is surprisingly easy when it comes to refined carbs. Here’s some facts about sugar addiction and its effects.http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/is-sugar-toxic-50129032/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3598008/
If sugar is so addictive, then why does sugar intake fall with advancing age? Why is no one here addicted to sugar or have cravings?
And you’re really going to post something from CBS news and refer to it as “some facts.” Why don’t you study the issue intensely for a half decade and report back. Interestingly, I did a video response to that news report a couple of years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXzbxS3IFtI
Duane,
I find it rather odd that you decided to attack the article as ignorant, and then you went on to cite the exact same sort of article that my article was criticizing as if it was something novel that I was unaware of. Interesting style of argument. :)
Yes, very high refined sugar diets can be harmful to health over time–not through sugar’s inherent toxicity, but largely through superstimuli effects that can drive calorie overconsumption (in some people). However, this is not unique to sugar. Diets high in refined fats do the same thing, which you probably realize if you read the linked studies and the literature review comparing high carb diets vs. high fat diets.
Nothing I said in the article is incompatible with the studies showing harmful effects from diets very high in sugar or fat.
I laughed out loud reading the quotes from those hallowed peer-reviewed journals; that such stupidity is routinely published and taken seriously is a damning indictment of the academic system. Moronic claims of this sort have been thrown around ever since fMRI became fairly accessible to a legion of half-wits with advanced degrees, and the fact that their logic is so asinine and transparently unsound doesn’t seem to have stemmed the tide of nonsense. “It’s surprising that we’re genetically programmed to become addicted to something as dangerous as UV radiation”… There are no words.
I’m glad to know my love of laying on the beach getting a nice tan is not really an addiction. I wouldn’t care what anybody called it though. I learned a long time ago I need it for my well-being. I have to have my beach time or just time outdoors in the sun. You should see the pitiful looks and head shakes I get when I tell people I don’t use sunscreen.
The take on this study is very creative and insightful: many things we love stimulate the reward center in our brain.
However, the study wasn’t about that AT ALL. It aimed to define the precise mechanism by which tanning-bed users become addicted to the taming bed. They looked at a peripheral opioid, beta-endorphin; the most abundant one.
Sure, maybe Dr. Fischer thinks sun should be avoided and that is a mistake but it is also a fallacy to believe that being addicted to UV rays (the part about sun exposure that independently of said exposure increases beta-endorphin) is somehow healthy.
I have been mildly addicted to exercise and despite the pleasure I felt from going to the gym it wasn’t good for my health. These authors didn’t establish any connection between the UV dose they used and negative health outcomes because they used a small dose (equivalent to 20-30min sunshine in Fitzpatrick 2-3 skin color five days a week in Florida) not large enough to cause burning.
If they found that despite being burned, the addiction still persisted, I think they’d have a more compelling case. They showed through detailed experimentation however why going in the sun or a tanning bed makes us feel good.
Thank you for this great article. It is so frustrating when the complexity is lost for the sake of a snappy headline. It is amazing how many people will alter their behaviour on an over simplified, superficial look at a health issue e.g. red meat causes cancer. As a scientist I am also really depressed by the tendency of medical and health science to presume that anything that we have devised in the past 100 years is automatically better than millions of years of evolution.
Thanks a lot Matt for this article. I’ve also wondered why sugar is bad, if our bodies have cravings for it now and again. Certainly a diet of pure sugar isn’t going to be great, but if someone started doing that, their body would soon send a signal saying ‘hey! enough with this stuff!” and they’d stop wanting it; in other words, our bodies tend to know what they need. We can obviously be wrong about it, but we shouldn’t assume that every time we crave sugar that it is a bad thing. Maybe we just need some glucose.
I’m starting to wonder if the researchers who study this stuff actually agree with their findings; as I understand it (since I know quite a few professors), many researchers are just university professors looking for something to write about and study, since research is part of their job. It’s easy to find ‘facts’ that fit with a certain model of belief, whether it is correct or not.
Again, great read, and thanks.
Don’t forget about laughter. It lights up your brain’s pleasure center like crazy!
Problem with sugar is that you need more and more of it to get the same effect next time. Your dopamine receptors down regulate in response to the excess dopamine release from sugar.
Healthy ways to maximize dopamine rectors are: cold thermogenesis, fasting and exercise. Yep…all the things you would hate to do.
Again, then why is it the more sugar people eat the less they crave it? Why does sugar consumption decrease with age?
No matter what I eat, the more of it I consume, the less of it I want. Whether that’s bacon, ice cream, cereal, etc.
When food is no longer labeled “bad,” then a person can follow their cravings, eat it, and move-on.
For those that don’t believe it, I understand your skepticism. I had the same disbelief. But, trust me, try to eat ice cream (the real, full-fat stuff) every day. You will get sick of it — and, sooner that you think.
Totally happened to me too. Once I let go, I can actually portion my food by just looking at it. So I’m pouring myself a bowl of cocoa puffs and there’s this point where I just feel like I don’t want any more than that, and I stop pouring. I eat WHATEVER i want even if it has PUFAs and high fructose corn syrup and sometimes I the only thing I want for dinner is some nice bitter, arugula salad even if there are pizza and ice cream available. My family has a history of alcoholism and addiction, so I always thought I was addicted to food, but I as soon as I let myself eat as much food, sugar and starch in particular, as I want, my “addiction” went away.
Since I’ve been eating sugar and carbs again I crave sugar far less than ever before in my life. Question though Matt…. I didn’t know our consumption of sugar declines with age. Why would that be if metabolism also declines with age? Don’t we instinctively want to eat more glucose with a lowered metabolism?
Calorie intake falls with age, but for some reason kids eat far more sugar than adults. But I do notice the elderly eating a lot of sweets just observationally. And it’s hard to say if older people eat less because they know it’s “bad” and kids just eat more because they love it and don’t know anything about how “toxic” it is.
I dunno.
WTF are you doing up at 4:00 AM, Matthew?!
Baaaaaaad, Matt! Bad! :)
Thanks for bringing back the blog, Buck.
This article was great. Well and clearly put. I’ve had the same experience as others above. When I first started re-feeding, I was interested in little other than high fat/carb foods, heavy on carbs and sugars. veggies and meat in any quantity seemed unappealing except as a garnish for my fats and carbs. Once I was topped up well, I lost interest in food in general in terms of pleasure. It was more like a chore to keep feeding myself. I decided to keep overeating to see if I could get my morning temps up, but it went against my desires to cut back on food in general and very calorie rich foods in particular. Sugar consumption dropped quite a lot and more nutrient dense foods like brothy stuff, veggies and red meat was suddenly VERY appealing! Clearly, there are feedback mechanisms which control these things to an extent. Whether some people lack these mechanisms and are more prone to addiction is a question worth looking into, but I’ll bet a lot of overeating and addictive type food behaviors are based on psychological stuff around food, and deprivation in particular, or a result of those people never really allowing themselves to feed to the point that the compensatory mechanisms kick in. Or, quite probably the two are very interrelated. Regardless, it’s clear from the experiences of myself and many others that hang around here that it’s not as straightforward as carbs are addictive and will cause us to overeat so that we gain weight at a linear rate until we drop over dead. It may happen in some? I wouldn’t know, but it is definitely folly to assume that’s the case.