Did you know that Twinkies and addictive drugs both impact the brain in the same ways?
You may think what you eat only affects your digestive system and your waistline, but you’re wrong. What you eat can also significantly impact your brain.
We are wired to seek out and eat as much high calorie, sweet and fatty foods as we can. Back in the olden-days when food was scarce, we needed to store up energy whenever we could get our hands on it. But now that we are surrounded by endless options of these high calorie foods, our wiring is really working against us.
So what exactly happens inside the brain when you eat something like a Twinkie? These foods increase dopamine levels in the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter (a chemical messenger) that activates the happy and pleasurable centers of the brain. Just as with addictive drugs, it eventually takes more and more junk food to get the same “high” as it did the first time you ate a Twinkie. In other words, you have to eat more Twinkies to feel as satisfied and as happy as you’re expecting.
As you continue to eat more and more Twinkies, less and less dopamine is released. You can actually create such a deficit of neurotransmitters that you can’t correct it without supplementation for the rest of your life. Your body tries to compensate the deficit by sending you signals to eat — which leads to overeating and weight gain.
The especially scary part about this is that researchers are finding that the effect can be passed on from one generation to the next. Eating too many Twinkies can leave a permanent mark on your brain that you can pass to your children! And then they can pass it on to their children as well. Yikes!
You have probably heard of that Kansas State University professor who went on a Twinkie Diet a couple years ago and lost weight. He said that you can eat anything as long as you don’t eat too much of it. Portion control and counting calories works for some people, but not for most. Calorie balance is only one small snapshot of the big picture. Neurotransmitter imbalance is one of the main underlying metabolic imbalances that prevents people from losing weight when they think they are doing everything right.
If you’re messing with your neurotransmitter balance like we’re talking about here, you’re going to create cravings for these high energy foods and you can even become addicted to them. Willpower is no match for brain chemistry. If your brain is constantly telling you to eat a Twinkie, you are eventually going to eat it. And probably more than one. You have to fix the underlying problem — rebalance the neurotransmitters before you will be able to reach your health and wellness goals.
Source: http://todayhealth.today.com/_news/2012/11/16/15221956-twinkies-even-nutritionists-mourn-the-ultimate-junk-food
