Emotional Eating like Drug Craving

[historyteach]

'Emotional Eating' Like Drug Craving
Brain Study: Desire to Eat in Obese People Similar to Drug Craving in Addicts By Daniel DeNoon
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD
on Monday, October 02, 2006 Oct. 2, 2006 --

Obese people's desire to eat triggers the same brain action as addicts' desire for drugs, say researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The finding is based on seven morbidly obese people treated for up to two years with a gastric stimulator. The implanted device makes the stomach expand by giving tiny electric jolts to the vagus nerve. This, say Gene-Jack Wang, MD, and colleagues, signals the brain to make a person feel less hungry.

The seven study participants lost an average 11.6% of their original body weight. At the time of the study, six of the seven still weighed at least 5% less than they used to.

When the device is turned on, Wang and colleagues now report, it stimulates a part of the brain linked to emotional eating -- that is, eating to soothe emotional distress. The participants reported less desire for emotional eating when the device was turned on.

"The brain regions activated by gastric stimulation overlap with those reported during craving responses in addicted subjects, supporting the commonalities in the [brain circuits] that underlie compulsive food intake and compulsive drug intake," Wang and colleagues conclude.

The findings appear in the Oct. 17 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Why does this not surprise me?
*sigh*

Shalom!

[BigSis]

Makes me wanna yell.... "Too slow, Joe!"

OA has been around HOW long? And now we have a "scientific study" that draws the correllation. Seems to have been a long time coming!

Thanks for this, Teach.

[Zephyr]

Yep. When I left off the booze, food was my way of masking the emotions I did not want to feel. The addiction just migrated from one substance to another. Turns out, food is my core addiction. Thank God for 12 steps and sponsors. I was hopeless before I came to OA. I couldn't stop eating no matter how badly I wanted to. I couldn't do it alone. Now I don't have to.