Withdrawals from food

mattyc772014

@senecarr That can be a huge difference. You're hungry, you eat, you get a little "reward" signaling in the brain, process turns itself back down, dopamine returns to normal.
What if you repeat the process? Do you get hit with dopamine again?

senecarr

mattyc772014 wrote: »

senecarr That can be a huge difference. You're hungry, you eat, you get a little "reward" signaling in the brain, process turns itself back down, dopamine returns to normal.
What if you repeat the process? Do you get hit with dopamine again?

You get diminishing returns. Now, you do get a bit of a bonus if you increase novelty, but basically, your body will keep decreasing the signal. Now obviously it isn't a perfectly self limiting system - people do overeat or we wouldn't be here on MFP, but it is much more self limiting than taking cocaine. The kinds of adaptations that go into down regulating the action of a drug like cocaine by reducing receptors take a lot longer to happen than the hour or less that appetite takes place in.
To make things even weirder, dopamine also increases when experiencing pain - it might not be about reward, so much as increase mental activity around any kind of stimulus that should get a response. Yet no one comes on MFP saying, "sugar cases the same effect as getting hit by a hammer in your brain!"

AlabasterVerve

mattyc772014 wrote: »

@senecarr That can be a huge difference. You're hungry, you eat, you get a little "reward" signaling in the brain, process turns itself back down, dopamine returns to normal.
What if you repeat the process? Do you get hit with dopamine again?

It's not dopamine but this study might interest you:

Science: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24132980
Media: well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/in-food-cravings-sugar-trumps-fat/?_r=0

mattyc772014

Thanks guys. I appreciate your feedback. Now I know why Sonic markets the shakes so much.