Sugar and carb addiction addiction
Replies
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Except stopping eating calories when full has a massive survival benefit too. Looking for calories is expensive. It is dangerous, even if you're a predator. That's why there is an allostatic balance to it.
Interesting you mention broccoli. It and other vegetables and fruit contain sugar but as has been repeatedly observed, no one seems to mean those when they call sugar addictive.PeachyCarol wrote: »Chiming in here to say I will repost my original addiction behavior post if need be and the excellent Eating Addiction Research Review. There's a difference between seeing foods as addictive substances and having addictive behavior with one's eating. A huge difference.
The first difference being that there's some support in the scientific community for the second paradigm in humans, but there's none for the first.
Here is what I propose for those determined to differentiate:
Come up with one word to describe the addictive behavior. One word. We are lazy. We like to give a single word to such phenomenon. And none exists. Come up with it, get it accepted everywhere, good to go. Be glad to use it. Cocaine users, meth users, gamblers, and other users of anything but alcohol and opiates should use the new word, too. Because if we're really going to categorize, the only two substances worthy of being called addictive are alcohol and opiates. One has potentially lethal withdrawal, the other has a painful one. In fact, they should be distinguished, too.
Root of the problem, right there. Stop being lazy, pull up the boostraps and do the work. Using laziness as a reason to not do anything is not okay.
Not what I meant. Humans are linguistically lazy. Took a college class on it once. Made sense.
To distinguish between the common usage and things that actually physically activate things, the term often used is "physical dependence".PeachyCarol wrote: »Chiming in here to say I will repost my original addiction behavior post if need be and the excellent Eating Addiction Research Review. There's a difference between seeing foods as addictive substances and having addictive behavior with one's eating. A huge difference.
The first difference being that there's some support in the scientific community for the second paradigm in humans, but there's none for the first.
Here is what I propose for those determined to differentiate:
Come up with one word to describe the addictive behavior. One word. We are lazy. We like to give a single word to such phenomenon. And none exists. Come up with it, get it accepted everywhere, good to go. Be glad to use it. Cocaine users, meth users, gamblers, and other users of anything but alcohol and opiates should use the new word, too. Because if we're really going to categorize, the only two substances worthy of being called addictive are alcohol and opiates. One has potentially lethal withdrawal, the other has a painful one. In fact, they should be distinguished, too.
I'm not sure why you categorize alcohol and opiates as different. Cocaine has physical dependence. My recollection would be that amphetamines have physical dependence. Heck, even caffeine has physical dependence and because of that it is often brought up as some kind of trump card by people, though I feel talking about caffeine as an addiction is a little disingenuous.
Carbohydrates, including sugar, do not have physical dependence. You cannot detox out of them - their will always be glucose in a living human body. Having the keto flu is not withdrawal. It is an actual physiological response, but it is not withdrawl.
And physical dependence has the interesting counterpoint to the idea of drug addiction being a social phenomena. If you give an unconscious person a drug they have a physical dependence on, they will remain physically dependent, no matter what they do with their conscious actions. The chemical reactions will still take place. You cannot see this phenomena by giving people food that bypasses eating, and that is part of why food addiction seems implausible, but there is discussion of eating addiction as a behavioral addiction akin to gambling addiction. Personally, I haven't search why or what discussion took place about it, but I wonder why gambling did not become some other term separate from addiction, such as calling it habituated repetitive reward hyperstimulation. At least that would be my proposal for a name for actions that the DSM would classify as addictive behaviors.
You're right as far as it goes, you say I'm addicted to caffeine no one freaks they just nod and go uh huh, pass the creamer! You say I'm addicted to sugar, it's a dog turd storm. I'm frustrated about that. I know what I mean when I use the word addiction in different contexts (I did an internship in an inpatient detox). I know that cocaine, heroin, gambling, opiate addiction (btw drugs used to treat opiate addiction also curb appetite, an interesting fact which in no way makes sugar equal to heroin), alcohol addiction, and food addiction are all very different. But there is no distinguishing word. It's annoying, and not the fault of anyone discussing it on this forum. I'm not trying to nitpick, I'm just trying to pinpoint my frustration with it.
I want to say compulsive eating, but eating what? I won't compulsively eat broccoli. Some people might, though. Maybe it's just a failure of enough non-biased, quality research with enough subjects and then a good name for this particular issue which many of us human beings do have. I don't get mad when people argue it shouldn't be called 'addiction' so much as I get mad when people say it doesn't exist at all.
And that is part of why psychologically there might be eating addiction but the evidence is, pretty strong that substances, as constituent molecules, themselves aren't addictive.
The eating addiction seems to tie into reward anticipation and the mental association. Hence I see the typical addiction methods of abstinence being the exact wrong treatment in the long run. Dissociation of food and reward will have the best outcomes in my opinion.
sex and gambling aren't addictions in the very real sense of the word, either. They're behavioral cover ups for emotional problems.
So is alcohol most of the time, and other drugs. We are consciousnesses built on chemical reactions, not separate from them. You trying to make it all about the conscious mind or even the subconscious is oversimplifying just like someone trying to say it's %100 chemical is over simplifying.
But no offense, when someone says it's all chemical, it doesn't sound condescending and dismissive, but when someone says it's all mental, it does.
Except the differentiation is that alcohol and drugs cause physical changes in the body that are addictive changes - they force the body to need them, continually and at greater levels. You can't just walk away from drugs and alcohol when you've been using them to cover up an emotional issue and face the issue, you have to break the addiction first.
With sugar and gambling and sex, you can skip breaking the physical addiction (because it isn't there) and go straight to dealing with the behavioral issues.
Recent research has shown habituation to sugar in the brain as well so that you need more to get the same effect.
The only drug that forces you to need it that is commonly abused is alcohol because without it your blood pressure shoots up and you can die.
Opiates cause nasty sickness and muscle cramps. The rest, as far as I remember, don't. Which is why the inpatient detox I worked in wouldn't take meth and coke addicts, for example. They weren't in physical withdrawal. So yes, you can walk away from some drugs same as sugar.
Again, that doesn't say it's equivalent. But I do say it's condescending to ignore chemical changes in the brain wrought by sugar (edit: Or perhaps I should say eating patterns?), and yes sex, gambling, and even shopping. If you keep doing it, you want to stop, and it hurts you, what do you call that? I call it addiction, then differentiate between substances.
There are multiple threads about this right now, so there is a possibility I'm repeating myself, but I'll reiterate: sugar activates the reward center of the brain. It does not cause long term, laying c
Interesting you mention broccoli. It and other vegetables and fruit contain sugar but as has been repeatedly observed, no one seems to mean those when they call sugar addictive.PeachyCarol wrote: »Chiming in here to say I will repost my original addiction behavior post if need be and the excellent Eating Addiction Research Review. There's a difference between seeing foods as addictive substances and having addictive behavior with one's eating. A huge difference.
The first difference being that there's some support in the scientific community for the second paradigm in humans, but there's none for the first.
Here is what I propose for those determined to differentiate:
Come up with one word to describe the addictive behavior. One word. We are lazy. We like to give a single word to such phenomenon. And none exists. Come up with it, get it accepted everywhere, good to go. Be glad to use it. Cocaine users, meth users, gamblers, and other users of anything but alcohol and opiates should use the new word, too. Because if we're really going to categorize, the only two substances worthy of being called addictive are alcohol and opiates. One has potentially lethal withdrawal, the other has a painful one. In fact, they should be distinguished, too.
Root of the problem, right there. Stop being lazy, pull up the boostraps and do the work. Using laziness as a reason to not do anything is not okay.
Not what I meant. Humans are linguistically lazy. Took a college class on it once. Made sense.
To distinguish between the common usage and things that actually physically activate things, the term often used is "physical dependence".PeachyCarol wrote: »Chiming in here to say I will repost my original addiction behavior post if need be and the excellent Eating Addiction Research Review. There's a difference between seeing foods as addictive substances and having addictive behavior with one's eating. A huge difference.
The first difference being that there's some support in the scientific community for the second paradigm in humans, but there's none for the first.
Here is what I propose for those determined to differentiate:
Come up with one word to describe the addictive behavior. One word. We are lazy. We like to give a single word to such phenomenon. And none exists. Come up with it, get it accepted everywhere, good to go. Be glad to use it. Cocaine users, meth users, gamblers, and other users of anything but alcohol and opiates should use the new word, too. Because if we're really going to categorize, the only two substances worthy of being called addictive are alcohol and opiates. One has potentially lethal withdrawal, the other has a painful one. In fact, they should be distinguished, too.
I'm not sure why you categorize alcohol and opiates as different. Cocaine has physical dependence. My recollection would be that amphetamines have physical dependence. Heck, even caffeine has physical dependence and because of that it is often brought up as some kind of trump card by people, though I feel talking about caffeine as an addiction is a little disingenuous.
Carbohydrates, including sugar, do not have physical dependence. You cannot detox out of them - their will always be glucose in a living human body. Having the keto flu is not withdrawal. It is an actual physiological response, but it is not withdrawl.
And physical dependence has the interesting counterpoint to the idea of drug addiction being a social phenomena. If you give an unconscious person a drug they have a physical dependence on, they will remain physically dependent, no matter what they do with their conscious actions. The chemical reactions will still take place. You cannot see this phenomena by giving people food that bypasses eating, and that is part of why food addiction seems implausible, but there is discussion of eating addiction as a behavioral addiction akin to gambling addiction. Personally, I haven't search why or what discussion took place about it, but I wonder why gambling did not become some other term separate from addiction, such as calling it habituated repetitive reward hyperstimulation. At least that would be my proposal for a name for actions that the DSM would classify as addictive behaviors.
You're right as far as it goes, you say I'm addicted to caffeine no one freaks they just nod and go uh huh, pass the creamer! You say I'm addicted to sugar, it's a dog turd storm. I'm frustrated about that. I know what I mean when I use the word addiction in different contexts (I did an internship in an inpatient detox). I know that cocaine, heroin, gambling, opiate addiction (btw drugs used to treat opiate addiction also curb appetite, an interesting fact which in no way makes sugar equal to heroin), alcohol addiction, and food addiction are all very different. But there is no distinguishing word. It's annoying, and not the fault of anyone discussing it on this forum. I'm not trying to nitpick, I'm just trying to pinpoint my frustration with it.
I want to say compulsive eating, but eating what? I won't compulsively eat broccoli. Some people might, though. Maybe it's just a failure of enough non-biased, quality research with enough subjects and then a good name for this particular issue which many of us human beings do have. I don't get mad when people argue it shouldn't be called 'addiction' so much as I get mad when people say it doesn't exist at all.
And that is part of why psychologically there might be eating addiction but the evidence is, pretty strong that substances, as constituent molecules, themselves aren't addictive.
The eating addiction seems to tie into reward anticipation and the mental association. Hence I see the typical addiction methods of abstinence being the exact wrong treatment in the long run. Dissociation of food and reward will have the best outcomes in my opinion.
sex and gambling aren't addictions in the very real sense of the word, either. They're behavioral cover ups for emotional problems.
So is alcohol most of the time, and other drugs. We are consciousnesses built on chemical reactions, not separate from them. You trying to make it all about the conscious mind or even the subconscious is oversimplifying just like someone trying to say it's %100 chemical is over simplifying.
But no offense, when someone says it's all chemical, it doesn't sound condescending and dismissive, but when someone says it's all mental, it does.
Except the differentiation is that alcohol and drugs cause physical changes in the body that are addictive changes - they force the body to need them, continually and at greater levels. You can't just walk away from drugs and alcohol when you've been using them to cover up an emotional issue and face the issue, you have to break the addiction first.
With sugar and gambling and sex, you can skip breaking the physical addiction (because it isn't there) and go straight to dealing with the behavioral issues.
Recent research has shown habituation to sugar in the brain as well so that you need more to get the same effect.
The only drug that forces you to need it that is commonly abused is alcohol because without it your blood pressure shoots up and you can die.
Opiates cause nasty sickness and muscle cramps. The rest, as far as I remember, don't. Which is why the inpatient detox I worked in wouldn't take meth and coke addicts, for example. They weren't in physical withdrawal. So yes, you can walk away from some drugs same as sugar.
Again, that doesn't say it's equivalent. But I do say it's condescending to ignore chemical changes in the brain wrought by sugar (edit: Or perhaps I should say eating patterns?), and yes sex, gambling, and even shopping. If you keep doing it, you want to stop, and it hurts you, what do you call that? I call it addiction, then differentiate between substances.
The "chemical changes" you're referring to is the release of dopamine. I get the same thing when I pet a cute puppy. It's a temporary release of dopamine. It's not a long term change.
Heroin, alcohol, cocaine, etc. cause long term changes to the chemistry of the brain. That's the difference and why it's not condescending to differentiate the two.
Okay, you get the same feeling when you pet a puppy. If someone was wired slightly differently, they might obsess about petting puppies. Our brains are complex, complex things glitch.
Here is the difference: There are a lot more obese people who want to quit, are harming themselves, and need to quit than there are people who have petting puppy obsessions.
Why? Probably because petting a puppy has little survival value (though some, dogs exist after all!) while eating massive amounts of calories has in the past.
It's chemical/genetic/environmental/psychological. Acknowledge that, I'm happy. Pretend it's all a conscious choice, and I have to assume the person doing this is either simplifying it for themselves (hey, whatever works for you!) or is dishonest and is merely playing the personal responsibility card in order to introvert and shame people rather than look logically at our food choices, especially our subsidy choices.
See food - dopamine rises in anticipation, causing an aroused state. Eat food - serotonin causes a sense of contentment and ends an aroused state - the animals stays put and finishes the food.
People mistake this for: take cocaine, hits the brain, clogs reuptake pumps for dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine, brain floods with all of them. Over time, watch the abused synapses lose receptors to combat what looks like a malfunctioning system. Now require higher amounts of cocaine to get the same effect.0 -
Except stopping eating calories when full has a massive survival benefit too. Looking for calories is expensive. It is dangerous, even if you're a predator. That's why there is an allostatic balance to it.
Interesting you mention broccoli. It and other vegetables and fruit contain sugar but as has been repeatedly observed, no one seems to mean those when they call sugar addictive.PeachyCarol wrote: »Chiming in here to say I will repost my original addiction behavior post if need be and the excellent Eating Addiction Research Review. There's a difference between seeing foods as addictive substances and having addictive behavior with one's eating. A huge difference.
The first difference being that there's some support in the scientific community for the second paradigm in humans, but there's none for the first.
Here is what I propose for those determined to differentiate:
Come up with one word to describe the addictive behavior. One word. We are lazy. We like to give a single word to such phenomenon. And none exists. Come up with it, get it accepted everywhere, good to go. Be glad to use it. Cocaine users, meth users, gamblers, and other users of anything but alcohol and opiates should use the new word, too. Because if we're really going to categorize, the only two substances worthy of being called addictive are alcohol and opiates. One has potentially lethal withdrawal, the other has a painful one. In fact, they should be distinguished, too.
Root of the problem, right there. Stop being lazy, pull up the boostraps and do the work. Using laziness as a reason to not do anything is not okay.
Not what I meant. Humans are linguistically lazy. Took a college class on it once. Made sense.
To distinguish between the common usage and things that actually physically activate things, the term often used is "physical dependence".PeachyCarol wrote: »Chiming in here to say I will repost my original addiction behavior post if need be and the excellent Eating Addiction Research Review. There's a difference between seeing foods as addictive substances and having addictive behavior with one's eating. A huge difference.
The first difference being that there's some support in the scientific community for the second paradigm in humans, but there's none for the first.
Here is what I propose for those determined to differentiate:
Come up with one word to describe the addictive behavior. One word. We are lazy. We like to give a single word to such phenomenon. And none exists. Come up with it, get it accepted everywhere, good to go. Be glad to use it. Cocaine users, meth users, gamblers, and other users of anything but alcohol and opiates should use the new word, too. Because if we're really going to categorize, the only two substances worthy of being called addictive are alcohol and opiates. One has potentially lethal withdrawal, the other has a painful one. In fact, they should be distinguished, too.
I'm not sure why you categorize alcohol and opiates as different. Cocaine has physical dependence. My recollection would be that amphetamines have physical dependence. Heck, even caffeine has physical dependence and because of that it is often brought up as some kind of trump card by people, though I feel talking about caffeine as an addiction is a little disingenuous.
Carbohydrates, including sugar, do not have physical dependence. You cannot detox out of them - their will always be glucose in a living human body. Having the keto flu is not withdrawal. It is an actual physiological response, but it is not withdrawl.
And physical dependence has the interesting counterpoint to the idea of drug addiction being a social phenomena. If you give an unconscious person a drug they have a physical dependence on, they will remain physically dependent, no matter what they do with their conscious actions. The chemical reactions will still take place. You cannot see this phenomena by giving people food that bypasses eating, and that is part of why food addiction seems implausible, but there is discussion of eating addiction as a behavioral addiction akin to gambling addiction. Personally, I haven't search why or what discussion took place about it, but I wonder why gambling did not become some other term separate from addiction, such as calling it habituated repetitive reward hyperstimulation. At least that would be my proposal for a name for actions that the DSM would classify as addictive behaviors.
You're right as far as it goes, you say I'm addicted to caffeine no one freaks they just nod and go uh huh, pass the creamer! You say I'm addicted to sugar, it's a dog turd storm. I'm frustrated about that. I know what I mean when I use the word addiction in different contexts (I did an internship in an inpatient detox). I know that cocaine, heroin, gambling, opiate addiction (btw drugs used to treat opiate addiction also curb appetite, an interesting fact which in no way makes sugar equal to heroin), alcohol addiction, and food addiction are all very different. But there is no distinguishing word. It's annoying, and not the fault of anyone discussing it on this forum. I'm not trying to nitpick, I'm just trying to pinpoint my frustration with it.
I want to say compulsive eating, but eating what? I won't compulsively eat broccoli. Some people might, though. Maybe it's just a failure of enough non-biased, quality research with enough subjects and then a good name for this particular issue which many of us human beings do have. I don't get mad when people argue it shouldn't be called 'addiction' so much as I get mad when people say it doesn't exist at all.
And that is part of why psychologically there might be eating addiction but the evidence is, pretty strong that substances, as constituent molecules, themselves aren't addictive.
The eating addiction seems to tie into reward anticipation and the mental association. Hence I see the typical addiction methods of abstinence being the exact wrong treatment in the long run. Dissociation of food and reward will have the best outcomes in my opinion.
sex and gambling aren't addictions in the very real sense of the word, either. They're behavioral cover ups for emotional problems.
So is alcohol most of the time, and other drugs. We are consciousnesses built on chemical reactions, not separate from them. You trying to make it all about the conscious mind or even the subconscious is oversimplifying just like someone trying to say it's %100 chemical is over simplifying.
But no offense, when someone says it's all chemical, it doesn't sound condescending and dismissive, but when someone says it's all mental, it does.
Except the differentiation is that alcohol and drugs cause physical changes in the body that are addictive changes - they force the body to need them, continually and at greater levels. You can't just walk away from drugs and alcohol when you've been using them to cover up an emotional issue and face the issue, you have to break the addiction first.
With sugar and gambling and sex, you can skip breaking the physical addiction (because it isn't there) and go straight to dealing with the behavioral issues.
Recent research has shown habituation to sugar in the brain as well so that you need more to get the same effect.
The only drug that forces you to need it that is commonly abused is alcohol because without it your blood pressure shoots up and you can die.
Opiates cause nasty sickness and muscle cramps. The rest, as far as I remember, don't. Which is why the inpatient detox I worked in wouldn't take meth and coke addicts, for example. They weren't in physical withdrawal. So yes, you can walk away from some drugs same as sugar.
Again, that doesn't say it's equivalent. But I do say it's condescending to ignore chemical changes in the brain wrought by sugar (edit: Or perhaps I should say eating patterns?), and yes sex, gambling, and even shopping. If you keep doing it, you want to stop, and it hurts you, what do you call that? I call it addiction, then differentiate between substances.
There are multiple threads about this right now, so there is a possibility I'm repeating myself, but I'll reiterate: sugar activates the reward center of the brain. It does not cause long term, laying c
Interesting you mention broccoli. It and other vegetables and fruit contain sugar but as has been repeatedly observed, no one seems to mean those when they call sugar addictive.PeachyCarol wrote: »Chiming in here to say I will repost my original addiction behavior post if need be and the excellent Eating Addiction Research Review. There's a difference between seeing foods as addictive substances and having addictive behavior with one's eating. A huge difference.
The first difference being that there's some support in the scientific community for the second paradigm in humans, but there's none for the first.
Here is what I propose for those determined to differentiate:
Come up with one word to describe the addictive behavior. One word. We are lazy. We like to give a single word to such phenomenon. And none exists. Come up with it, get it accepted everywhere, good to go. Be glad to use it. Cocaine users, meth users, gamblers, and other users of anything but alcohol and opiates should use the new word, too. Because if we're really going to categorize, the only two substances worthy of being called addictive are alcohol and opiates. One has potentially lethal withdrawal, the other has a painful one. In fact, they should be distinguished, too.
Root of the problem, right there. Stop being lazy, pull up the boostraps and do the work. Using laziness as a reason to not do anything is not okay.
Not what I meant. Humans are linguistically lazy. Took a college class on it once. Made sense.
To distinguish between the common usage and things that actually physically activate things, the term often used is "physical dependence".PeachyCarol wrote: »Chiming in here to say I will repost my original addiction behavior post if need be and the excellent Eating Addiction Research Review. There's a difference between seeing foods as addictive substances and having addictive behavior with one's eating. A huge difference.
The first difference being that there's some support in the scientific community for the second paradigm in humans, but there's none for the first.
Here is what I propose for those determined to differentiate:
Come up with one word to describe the addictive behavior. One word. We are lazy. We like to give a single word to such phenomenon. And none exists. Come up with it, get it accepted everywhere, good to go. Be glad to use it. Cocaine users, meth users, gamblers, and other users of anything but alcohol and opiates should use the new word, too. Because if we're really going to categorize, the only two substances worthy of being called addictive are alcohol and opiates. One has potentially lethal withdrawal, the other has a painful one. In fact, they should be distinguished, too.
I'm not sure why you categorize alcohol and opiates as different. Cocaine has physical dependence. My recollection would be that amphetamines have physical dependence. Heck, even caffeine has physical dependence and because of that it is often brought up as some kind of trump card by people, though I feel talking about caffeine as an addiction is a little disingenuous.
Carbohydrates, including sugar, do not have physical dependence. You cannot detox out of them - their will always be glucose in a living human body. Having the keto flu is not withdrawal. It is an actual physiological response, but it is not withdrawl.
And physical dependence has the interesting counterpoint to the idea of drug addiction being a social phenomena. If you give an unconscious person a drug they have a physical dependence on, they will remain physically dependent, no matter what they do with their conscious actions. The chemical reactions will still take place. You cannot see this phenomena by giving people food that bypasses eating, and that is part of why food addiction seems implausible, but there is discussion of eating addiction as a behavioral addiction akin to gambling addiction. Personally, I haven't search why or what discussion took place about it, but I wonder why gambling did not become some other term separate from addiction, such as calling it habituated repetitive reward hyperstimulation. At least that would be my proposal for a name for actions that the DSM would classify as addictive behaviors.
You're right as far as it goes, you say I'm addicted to caffeine no one freaks they just nod and go uh huh, pass the creamer! You say I'm addicted to sugar, it's a dog turd storm. I'm frustrated about that. I know what I mean when I use the word addiction in different contexts (I did an internship in an inpatient detox). I know that cocaine, heroin, gambling, opiate addiction (btw drugs used to treat opiate addiction also curb appetite, an interesting fact which in no way makes sugar equal to heroin), alcohol addiction, and food addiction are all very different. But there is no distinguishing word. It's annoying, and not the fault of anyone discussing it on this forum. I'm not trying to nitpick, I'm just trying to pinpoint my frustration with it.
I want to say compulsive eating, but eating what? I won't compulsively eat broccoli. Some people might, though. Maybe it's just a failure of enough non-biased, quality research with enough subjects and then a good name for this particular issue which many of us human beings do have. I don't get mad when people argue it shouldn't be called 'addiction' so much as I get mad when people say it doesn't exist at all.
And that is part of why psychologically there might be eating addiction but the evidence is, pretty strong that substances, as constituent molecules, themselves aren't addictive.
The eating addiction seems to tie into reward anticipation and the mental association. Hence I see the typical addiction methods of abstinence being the exact wrong treatment in the long run. Dissociation of food and reward will have the best outcomes in my opinion.
sex and gambling aren't addictions in the very real sense of the word, either. They're behavioral cover ups for emotional problems.
So is alcohol most of the time, and other drugs. We are consciousnesses built on chemical reactions, not separate from them. You trying to make it all about the conscious mind or even the subconscious is oversimplifying just like someone trying to say it's %100 chemical is over simplifying.
But no offense, when someone says it's all chemical, it doesn't sound condescending and dismissive, but when someone says it's all mental, it does.
Except the differentiation is that alcohol and drugs cause physical changes in the body that are addictive changes - they force the body to need them, continually and at greater levels. You can't just walk away from drugs and alcohol when you've been using them to cover up an emotional issue and face the issue, you have to break the addiction first.
With sugar and gambling and sex, you can skip breaking the physical addiction (because it isn't there) and go straight to dealing with the behavioral issues.
Recent research has shown habituation to sugar in the brain as well so that you need more to get the same effect.
The only drug that forces you to need it that is commonly abused is alcohol because without it your blood pressure shoots up and you can die.
Opiates cause nasty sickness and muscle cramps. The rest, as far as I remember, don't. Which is why the inpatient detox I worked in wouldn't take meth and coke addicts, for example. They weren't in physical withdrawal. So yes, you can walk away from some drugs same as sugar.
Again, that doesn't say it's equivalent. But I do say it's condescending to ignore chemical changes in the brain wrought by sugar (edit: Or perhaps I should say eating patterns?), and yes sex, gambling, and even shopping. If you keep doing it, you want to stop, and it hurts you, what do you call that? I call it addiction, then differentiate between substances.
The "chemical changes" you're referring to is the release of dopamine. I get the same thing when I pet a cute puppy. It's a temporary release of dopamine. It's not a long term change.
Heroin, alcohol, cocaine, etc. cause long term changes to the chemistry of the brain. That's the difference and why it's not condescending to differentiate the two.
Okay, you get the same feeling when you pet a puppy. If someone was wired slightly differently, they might obsess about petting puppies. Our brains are complex, complex things glitch.
Here is the difference: There are a lot more obese people who want to quit, are harming themselves, and need to quit than there are people who have petting puppy obsessions.
Why? Probably because petting a puppy has little survival value (though some, dogs exist after all!) while eating massive amounts of calories has in the past.
It's chemical/genetic/environmental/psychological. Acknowledge that, I'm happy. Pretend it's all a conscious choice, and I have to assume the person doing this is either simplifying it for themselves (hey, whatever works for you!) or is dishonest and is merely playing the personal responsibility card in order to introvert and shame people rather than look logically at our food choices, especially our subsidy choices.
See food - dopamine rises in anticipation, causing an aroused state. Eat food - serotonin causes a sense of contentment and ends an aroused state - the animals stays put and finishes the food.
People mistake this for: take cocaine, hits the brain, clogs reuptake pumps for dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine, brain floods with all of them. Over time, watch the abused synapses lose receptors to combat what looks like a malfunctioning system. Now require higher amounts of cocaine to get the same effect.
Lots of predators eat to satiety. Food rots.
However, I agree with several researchers (none of whom you will be happy with if I post their names here) who point out that our current food choices hijacks this and causes harm. Lustig (told you that you wouldn't be happy!) had an interesting talk, of which he freely admits is speculation on one of our primate relatives gorging themselves on sugary fruits while they're in season because once they're not, lean times are ahead. So now we have sugary foods year round. Hijacking what once might have been an excellent survival strategy.
Then there is the Pleasure Trap author who talks about our brains wanting as many calories as we can fit in and knowing what we can eat to absolute fullness while getting the most bang for our buck. He also talks about cocaine and other drugs we were never equipped to deal with giving us pleasure without the bother of carrying out evolutionarily useful activities like reproduction.
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Except stopping eating calories when full has a massive survival benefit too. Looking for calories is expensive. It is dangerous, even if you're a predator. That's why there is an allostatic balance to it.
Interesting you mention broccoli. It and other vegetables and fruit contain sugar but as has been repeatedly observed, no one seems to mean those when they call sugar addictive.PeachyCarol wrote: »Chiming in here to say I will repost my original addiction behavior post if need be and the excellent Eating Addiction Research Review. There's a difference between seeing foods as addictive substances and having addictive behavior with one's eating. A huge difference.
The first difference being that there's some support in the scientific community for the second paradigm in humans, but there's none for the first.
Here is what I propose for those determined to differentiate:
Come up with one word to describe the addictive behavior. One word. We are lazy. We like to give a single word to such phenomenon. And none exists. Come up with it, get it accepted everywhere, good to go. Be glad to use it. Cocaine users, meth users, gamblers, and other users of anything but alcohol and opiates should use the new word, too. Because if we're really going to categorize, the only two substances worthy of being called addictive are alcohol and opiates. One has potentially lethal withdrawal, the other has a painful one. In fact, they should be distinguished, too.
Root of the problem, right there. Stop being lazy, pull up the boostraps and do the work. Using laziness as a reason to not do anything is not okay.
Not what I meant. Humans are linguistically lazy. Took a college class on it once. Made sense.
To distinguish between the common usage and things that actually physically activate things, the term often used is "physical dependence".PeachyCarol wrote: »Chiming in here to say I will repost my original addiction behavior post if need be and the excellent Eating Addiction Research Review. There's a difference between seeing foods as addictive substances and having addictive behavior with one's eating. A huge difference.
The first difference being that there's some support in the scientific community for the second paradigm in humans, but there's none for the first.
Here is what I propose for those determined to differentiate:
Come up with one word to describe the addictive behavior. One word. We are lazy. We like to give a single word to such phenomenon. And none exists. Come up with it, get it accepted everywhere, good to go. Be glad to use it. Cocaine users, meth users, gamblers, and other users of anything but alcohol and opiates should use the new word, too. Because if we're really going to categorize, the only two substances worthy of being called addictive are alcohol and opiates. One has potentially lethal withdrawal, the other has a painful one. In fact, they should be distinguished, too.
I'm not sure why you categorize alcohol and opiates as different. Cocaine has physical dependence. My recollection would be that amphetamines have physical dependence. Heck, even caffeine has physical dependence and because of that it is often brought up as some kind of trump card by people, though I feel talking about caffeine as an addiction is a little disingenuous.
Carbohydrates, including sugar, do not have physical dependence. You cannot detox out of them - their will always be glucose in a living human body. Having the keto flu is not withdrawal. It is an actual physiological response, but it is not withdrawl.
And physical dependence has the interesting counterpoint to the idea of drug addiction being a social phenomena. If you give an unconscious person a drug they have a physical dependence on, they will remain physically dependent, no matter what they do with their conscious actions. The chemical reactions will still take place. You cannot see this phenomena by giving people food that bypasses eating, and that is part of why food addiction seems implausible, but there is discussion of eating addiction as a behavioral addiction akin to gambling addiction. Personally, I haven't search why or what discussion took place about it, but I wonder why gambling did not become some other term separate from addiction, such as calling it habituated repetitive reward hyperstimulation. At least that would be my proposal for a name for actions that the DSM would classify as addictive behaviors.
You're right as far as it goes, you say I'm addicted to caffeine no one freaks they just nod and go uh huh, pass the creamer! You say I'm addicted to sugar, it's a dog turd storm. I'm frustrated about that. I know what I mean when I use the word addiction in different contexts (I did an internship in an inpatient detox). I know that cocaine, heroin, gambling, opiate addiction (btw drugs used to treat opiate addiction also curb appetite, an interesting fact which in no way makes sugar equal to heroin), alcohol addiction, and food addiction are all very different. But there is no distinguishing word. It's annoying, and not the fault of anyone discussing it on this forum. I'm not trying to nitpick, I'm just trying to pinpoint my frustration with it.
I want to say compulsive eating, but eating what? I won't compulsively eat broccoli. Some people might, though. Maybe it's just a failure of enough non-biased, quality research with enough subjects and then a good name for this particular issue which many of us human beings do have. I don't get mad when people argue it shouldn't be called 'addiction' so much as I get mad when people say it doesn't exist at all.
And that is part of why psychologically there might be eating addiction but the evidence is, pretty strong that substances, as constituent molecules, themselves aren't addictive.
The eating addiction seems to tie into reward anticipation and the mental association. Hence I see the typical addiction methods of abstinence being the exact wrong treatment in the long run. Dissociation of food and reward will have the best outcomes in my opinion.
sex and gambling aren't addictions in the very real sense of the word, either. They're behavioral cover ups for emotional problems.
So is alcohol most of the time, and other drugs. We are consciousnesses built on chemical reactions, not separate from them. You trying to make it all about the conscious mind or even the subconscious is oversimplifying just like someone trying to say it's %100 chemical is over simplifying.
But no offense, when someone says it's all chemical, it doesn't sound condescending and dismissive, but when someone says it's all mental, it does.
Except the differentiation is that alcohol and drugs cause physical changes in the body that are addictive changes - they force the body to need them, continually and at greater levels. You can't just walk away from drugs and alcohol when you've been using them to cover up an emotional issue and face the issue, you have to break the addiction first.
With sugar and gambling and sex, you can skip breaking the physical addiction (because it isn't there) and go straight to dealing with the behavioral issues.
Recent research has shown habituation to sugar in the brain as well so that you need more to get the same effect.
The only drug that forces you to need it that is commonly abused is alcohol because without it your blood pressure shoots up and you can die.
Opiates cause nasty sickness and muscle cramps. The rest, as far as I remember, don't. Which is why the inpatient detox I worked in wouldn't take meth and coke addicts, for example. They weren't in physical withdrawal. So yes, you can walk away from some drugs same as sugar.
Again, that doesn't say it's equivalent. But I do say it's condescending to ignore chemical changes in the brain wrought by sugar (edit: Or perhaps I should say eating patterns?), and yes sex, gambling, and even shopping. If you keep doing it, you want to stop, and it hurts you, what do you call that? I call it addiction, then differentiate between substances.
There are multiple threads about this right now, so there is a possibility I'm repeating myself, but I'll reiterate: sugar activates the reward center of the brain. It does not cause long term, laying c
Interesting you mention broccoli. It and other vegetables and fruit contain sugar but as has been repeatedly observed, no one seems to mean those when they call sugar addictive.PeachyCarol wrote: »Chiming in here to say I will repost my original addiction behavior post if need be and the excellent Eating Addiction Research Review. There's a difference between seeing foods as addictive substances and having addictive behavior with one's eating. A huge difference.
The first difference being that there's some support in the scientific community for the second paradigm in humans, but there's none for the first.
Here is what I propose for those determined to differentiate:
Come up with one word to describe the addictive behavior. One word. We are lazy. We like to give a single word to such phenomenon. And none exists. Come up with it, get it accepted everywhere, good to go. Be glad to use it. Cocaine users, meth users, gamblers, and other users of anything but alcohol and opiates should use the new word, too. Because if we're really going to categorize, the only two substances worthy of being called addictive are alcohol and opiates. One has potentially lethal withdrawal, the other has a painful one. In fact, they should be distinguished, too.
Root of the problem, right there. Stop being lazy, pull up the boostraps and do the work. Using laziness as a reason to not do anything is not okay.
Not what I meant. Humans are linguistically lazy. Took a college class on it once. Made sense.
To distinguish between the common usage and things that actually physically activate things, the term often used is "physical dependence".PeachyCarol wrote: »Chiming in here to say I will repost my original addiction behavior post if need be and the excellent Eating Addiction Research Review. There's a difference between seeing foods as addictive substances and having addictive behavior with one's eating. A huge difference.
The first difference being that there's some support in the scientific community for the second paradigm in humans, but there's none for the first.
Here is what I propose for those determined to differentiate:
Come up with one word to describe the addictive behavior. One word. We are lazy. We like to give a single word to such phenomenon. And none exists. Come up with it, get it accepted everywhere, good to go. Be glad to use it. Cocaine users, meth users, gamblers, and other users of anything but alcohol and opiates should use the new word, too. Because if we're really going to categorize, the only two substances worthy of being called addictive are alcohol and opiates. One has potentially lethal withdrawal, the other has a painful one. In fact, they should be distinguished, too.
I'm not sure why you categorize alcohol and opiates as different. Cocaine has physical dependence. My recollection would be that amphetamines have physical dependence. Heck, even caffeine has physical dependence and because of that it is often brought up as some kind of trump card by people, though I feel talking about caffeine as an addiction is a little disingenuous.
Carbohydrates, including sugar, do not have physical dependence. You cannot detox out of them - their will always be glucose in a living human body. Having the keto flu is not withdrawal. It is an actual physiological response, but it is not withdrawl.
And physical dependence has the interesting counterpoint to the idea of drug addiction being a social phenomena. If you give an unconscious person a drug they have a physical dependence on, they will remain physically dependent, no matter what they do with their conscious actions. The chemical reactions will still take place. You cannot see this phenomena by giving people food that bypasses eating, and that is part of why food addiction seems implausible, but there is discussion of eating addiction as a behavioral addiction akin to gambling addiction. Personally, I haven't search why or what discussion took place about it, but I wonder why gambling did not become some other term separate from addiction, such as calling it habituated repetitive reward hyperstimulation. At least that would be my proposal for a name for actions that the DSM would classify as addictive behaviors.
You're right as far as it goes, you say I'm addicted to caffeine no one freaks they just nod and go uh huh, pass the creamer! You say I'm addicted to sugar, it's a dog turd storm. I'm frustrated about that. I know what I mean when I use the word addiction in different contexts (I did an internship in an inpatient detox). I know that cocaine, heroin, gambling, opiate addiction (btw drugs used to treat opiate addiction also curb appetite, an interesting fact which in no way makes sugar equal to heroin), alcohol addiction, and food addiction are all very different. But there is no distinguishing word. It's annoying, and not the fault of anyone discussing it on this forum. I'm not trying to nitpick, I'm just trying to pinpoint my frustration with it.
I want to say compulsive eating, but eating what? I won't compulsively eat broccoli. Some people might, though. Maybe it's just a failure of enough non-biased, quality research with enough subjects and then a good name for this particular issue which many of us human beings do have. I don't get mad when people argue it shouldn't be called 'addiction' so much as I get mad when people say it doesn't exist at all.
And that is part of why psychologically there might be eating addiction but the evidence is, pretty strong that substances, as constituent molecules, themselves aren't addictive.
The eating addiction seems to tie into reward anticipation and the mental association. Hence I see the typical addiction methods of abstinence being the exact wrong treatment in the long run. Dissociation of food and reward will have the best outcomes in my opinion.
sex and gambling aren't addictions in the very real sense of the word, either. They're behavioral cover ups for emotional problems.
So is alcohol most of the time, and other drugs. We are consciousnesses built on chemical reactions, not separate from them. You trying to make it all about the conscious mind or even the subconscious is oversimplifying just like someone trying to say it's %100 chemical is over simplifying.
But no offense, when someone says it's all chemical, it doesn't sound condescending and dismissive, but when someone says it's all mental, it does.
Except the differentiation is that alcohol and drugs cause physical changes in the body that are addictive changes - they force the body to need them, continually and at greater levels. You can't just walk away from drugs and alcohol when you've been using them to cover up an emotional issue and face the issue, you have to break the addiction first.
With sugar and gambling and sex, you can skip breaking the physical addiction (because it isn't there) and go straight to dealing with the behavioral issues.
Recent research has shown habituation to sugar in the brain as well so that you need more to get the same effect.
The only drug that forces you to need it that is commonly abused is alcohol because without it your blood pressure shoots up and you can die.
Opiates cause nasty sickness and muscle cramps. The rest, as far as I remember, don't. Which is why the inpatient detox I worked in wouldn't take meth and coke addicts, for example. They weren't in physical withdrawal. So yes, you can walk away from some drugs same as sugar.
Again, that doesn't say it's equivalent. But I do say it's condescending to ignore chemical changes in the brain wrought by sugar (edit: Or perhaps I should say eating patterns?), and yes sex, gambling, and even shopping. If you keep doing it, you want to stop, and it hurts you, what do you call that? I call it addiction, then differentiate between substances.
The "chemical changes" you're referring to is the release of dopamine. I get the same thing when I pet a cute puppy. It's a temporary release of dopamine. It's not a long term change.
Heroin, alcohol, cocaine, etc. cause long term changes to the chemistry of the brain. That's the difference and why it's not condescending to differentiate the two.
Okay, you get the same feeling when you pet a puppy. If someone was wired slightly differently, they might obsess about petting puppies. Our brains are complex, complex things glitch.
Here is the difference: There are a lot more obese people who want to quit, are harming themselves, and need to quit than there are people who have petting puppy obsessions.
Why? Probably because petting a puppy has little survival value (though some, dogs exist after all!) while eating massive amounts of calories has in the past.
It's chemical/genetic/environmental/psychological. Acknowledge that, I'm happy. Pretend it's all a conscious choice, and I have to assume the person doing this is either simplifying it for themselves (hey, whatever works for you!) or is dishonest and is merely playing the personal responsibility card in order to introvert and shame people rather than look logically at our food choices, especially our subsidy choices.
See food - dopamine rises in anticipation, causing an aroused state. Eat food - serotonin causes a sense of contentment and ends an aroused state - the animals stays put and finishes the food.
People mistake this for: take cocaine, hits the brain, clogs reuptake pumps for dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine, brain floods with all of them. Over time, watch the abused synapses lose receptors to combat what looks like a malfunctioning system. Now require higher amounts of cocaine to get the same effect.
There we go. Far better scientific explanation than mine.0 -
I'm confused by your last paragraph though- can you explain?
Now I want to pet a puppy! Moving on:
If we assume every person who is obese and unhealthy is obese and unhealthy due to purely psychological and especially consciously psychological reasons (assuming this is possible with any issue), then no matter how many people we have who sicken, die young, and cost healthcare system trillions, there's no argument for changing subsidies, advertising, or anything else to reduce the problem. It's all 100% conscious choice, or at least 100% you had a bad childhood or a puppy scared you or you were smitten with birthday cake because it was the only time you thought your mommy loved you subconscious choice.
But if it is acknowledged that:
There is a chemical component to the majority of obese people's cravings
And that they want to quit overeating but a chemical component of craving makes quitting more difficult
And that exposure to and easy availability of the foods they are most likely to crave is likely due to pricing
and that advertising of said foods at an early age affects the likelihood that they will over consume these foods (similar to cigarettes but admittedly with differences, as cigarettes were supposed to be restricted to adult use though in reality they were not)
And if all of the above affects how many people will die young, sick, obese, and with great cost to the rest of us, then there is more incentive and legal standing to alter food subsidies in a way that makes the foods most likely to be over consumed to the point of obesity more expensive and not advertised to children and perhaps even to push subsidies toward foods that fewer people have a chemical urge to over consume.
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Except stopping eating calories when full has a massive survival benefit too. Looking for calories is expensive. It is dangerous, even if you're a predator. That's why there is an allostatic balance to it.
Okay, you get the same feeling when you pet a puppy. If someone was wired slightly differently, they might obsess about petting puppies. Our brains are complex, complex things glitch.
Here is the difference: There are a lot more obese people who want to quit, are harming themselves, and need to quit than there are people who have petting puppy obsessions.
Why? Probably because petting a puppy has little survival value (though some, dogs exist after all!) while eating massive amounts of calories has in the past.
It's chemical/genetic/environmental/psychological. Acknowledge that, I'm happy. Pretend it's all a conscious choice, and I have to assume the person doing this is either simplifying it for themselves (hey, whatever works for you!) or is dishonest and is merely playing the personal responsibility card in order to introvert and shame people rather than look logically at our food choices, especially our subsidy choices.
See food - dopamine rises in anticipation, causing an aroused state. Eat food - serotonin causes a sense of contentment and ends an aroused state - the animals stays put and finishes the food.
People mistake this for: take cocaine, hits the brain, clogs reuptake pumps for dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine, brain floods with all of them. Over time, watch the abused synapses lose receptors to combat what looks like a malfunctioning system. Now require higher amounts of cocaine to get the same effect.[/quote]
Lots of predators eat to satiety. Food rots.
However, I agree with several researchers (none of whom you will be happy with if I post their names here) who point out that our current food choices hijacks this and causes harm. Lustig (told you that you wouldn't be happy!) had an interesting talk, of which he freely admits is speculation on one of our primate relatives gorging themselves on sugary fruits while they're in season because once they're not, lean times are ahead. So now we have sugary foods year round. Hijacking what once might have been an excellent survival strategy.
Then there is the Pleasure Trap author who talks about our brains wanting as many calories as we can fit in and knowing what we can eat to absolute fullness while getting the most bang for our buck. He also talks about cocaine and other drugs we were never equipped to deal with giving us pleasure without the bother of carrying out evolutionarily useful activities like reproduction.
[/quote]
I mentioned predators because people often think being a predator is the safe state in nature and herbivores are the ones in constant fear of injury, though the opposite is true. Plants are poor at running away, but an injured predator is one that cannot catch prey and condemned to starve to death. Predators don't live in continous fear of their prey, but they do fear them, and fear injury more than prey.
See, now we're in the realm of when evolution is being "just so" storytelling and no one providing hard data. I've seen some postulate the sugar was rare, so we over-react to it. Now Lustig in contradiction is saying sugar addiction is possible because sugar is plentiful and we are evolved to eat it.
Without a doubt, many of the world's people now live in environments where food availability is not in sync with the effort to get it. I don't deny we even have hyper-palatable foods designed to encourage eating - well to encourage purchase really, Mars corporation would probably prefer I buy multiple snickers and throw them away because chances are I could end up purchasing more having not eaten them. This isn't the same as the way something like cocaine works.
As I said, the "pleasure centers" actually light up to send signals to cease aroused state and end appetite. Cocaine is not like that. It is both anticipation and fulfillment at the same time. The biggest breaks on consuming cocaine are pure cognitive. Food has natural satiety factors to it.0 -
messed up quotes0
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No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all pleasure signals in the brain. But people don't starve to death on it. They eat a normal portion. They just don't hit the dessert bar fifty times.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
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Sorry about double posting to the same thing, the quotes got all messed up somehow, very hard to read!0
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No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.0 -
No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Depends on when you're referring to as far as your ancestors' access to fruits. When and where.
Here is the Lustig talk I referred to, because I don't remember where the primates he referred to specifically live. And well, he has way more degrees than I do, and in a relevant field!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh4JBXaKnmA
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He's an endocrinologist. That doesn't mean he has any expertise on evolution. I've known doctors that happily don't believe in evolution period.No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Depends on when you're referring to as far as your ancestors' access to fruits. When and where.
Here is the Lustig talk I referred to, because I don't remember where the primates he referred to specifically live. And well, he has way more degrees than I do, and in a relevant field!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh4JBXaKnmA
To be honest, I'm rather disappointed in Lustig when I hear him try to discuss science, particularly if it begins to move outside of his range. I've seen him write an essay that referred to "Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics", which he acknowledged are true but then went into his spew about a calorie isn't a calorie. I tend to like someone discussing thermodynamics to be knowledgeable that Newton had laws of motion, and was pretty thoroughly done being part of the thermodynamic world (past rotten in the ground) by the time people started formulating the laws of thermodynamics and studying it as a field.0 -
He's an endocrinologist. That doesn't mean he has any expertise on evolution. I've known doctors that happily don't believe in evolution period.No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Depends on when you're referring to as far as your ancestors' access to fruits. When and where.
Here is the Lustig talk I referred to, because I don't remember where the primates he referred to specifically live. And well, he has way more degrees than I do, and in a relevant field!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh4JBXaKnmA
To be honest, I'm rather disappointed in Lustig when I hear him try to discuss science, particularly if it begins to move outside of his range. I've seen him write an essay that referred to "Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics", which he acknowledged are true but then went into his spew about a calorie isn't a calorie. I tend to like someone discussing thermodynamics to be knowledgeable that Newton had laws of motion, and was pretty thoroughly done being part of the thermodynamic world (past rotten in the ground) by the time people started formulating the laws of thermodynamics and studying it as a field.
I didn't mean he was an expert in evolution. I meant endocrinology, specifically how it all relates to what we consume and its impact on our health.
He fully acknowledges Newton's Laws while saying it doesn't apply as simply to our intake the way people who 'calorie is a calorie' everyone thinks it does because you absorb calories from different sources differently, in the case of almonds, you might not even absorb all the calories available at all. (I think the USDA had something on this recently, calorie count on almonds higher than absorbed). Don't make me do the liver dance, because I can't. I vaguely understand it, but I don't have the chemistry to spell it out. You've listened to Lustig apparently, you understand it or you don't.
In fact obesity isn't his main focus. It's things like metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and NAFLD. And maybe we should also focus on those things more than how much fat we're carrying around, too. It would certainly simplify things up and put the focus more on health. And without health, who cares about thinness? Dying sick, skinny, and young isn't that much better than dying sick, fat, and young.
Edit: I accidentally got off topic. He also discussed high insulin's affect on satiety. And that is a big deal and much more relevant to the discussion.0 -
Last quick post of the night which goes back to a point I made much earlier about how we aren't going to get enough good research until private money is out of the equation:
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/6/1586.full
No differences in satiety or energy intake after high-fructose corn syrup, sucrose, or milk preloads
Funded by:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/suikerstichting-nederland
We are the expertise centre in the field of sugar in a healthy lifestyle, through research, education and communication.
There will always be a counter study when something comes up about sugar or any other profitable food or industry. Check the funding source!
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I think this article on food addiction is interesting: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/food-addiction_b_1085184.html. I'm not sure I agree, but I don't entirely disagree. One of my thoughts about this is that we SHOULD be, and are, evolved to want food, but is this properly called addiction?, or is addiction about replacing something we need for life with something else, putting at the center of your life something that is destructive rather than life sustaining? Thus, of course we want food; it's messed up (addiction) to drop food for heroin.
I'm not convinced eating to satiety (and not beyond) would have been useful for humans for the most part--better to be able to eat when food is available and deal with fasting periods, which is what we seem to be able to do.
Also, the argument that sugar is addictive in a way that fat is not seem unsupported by the science.0 -
It's baffling to turn this into an argument that says all of the first world is fat because of sugar addiction, and that part of the reason is the availability of food, including fresh fruit, during the cold season that in the cave days would have been imposssible to consume.
Sorry, I'm not buying it. Our society is one that is designed about built around eating as a social activity, number one. It's also built around food as a reward system, number two. It's a society that has become almost entirely sedentary, both during childhood play and during adulthood employment, both of which were not the norm almost through the entirety of all of human civilization until the last 20 years or so.
Those three things alone are probably 90% of the reason for the rise in first-world obesity.0 -
He's an endocrinologist. That doesn't mean he has any expertise on evolution. I've known doctors that happily don't believe in evolution period.No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Depends on when you're referring to as far as your ancestors' access to fruits. When and where.
Here is the Lustig talk I referred to, because I don't remember where the primates he referred to specifically live. And well, he has way more degrees than I do, and in a relevant field!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh4JBXaKnmA
To be honest, I'm rather disappointed in Lustig when I hear him try to discuss science, particularly if it begins to move outside of his range. I've seen him write an essay that referred to "Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics", which he acknowledged are true but then went into his spew about a calorie isn't a calorie. I tend to like someone discussing thermodynamics to be knowledgeable that Newton had laws of motion, and was pretty thoroughly done being part of the thermodynamic world (past rotten in the ground) by the time people started formulating the laws of thermodynamics and studying it as a field.
I just googled to see if it is true.
It seems that in Fat Chance (so, not a scientific paper, but a book addressed to the public) he wrote:
“If you don’t like it, file a grievance with Sir Isaac Newton”
I would like to inform you that's a joke, it is supposed to be funny, not accurate.
0 -
It's baffling to turn this into an argument that says all of the first world is fat because of sugar addiction, and that part of the reason is the availability of food, including fresh fruit, during the cold season that in the cave days would have been imposssible to consume.
Sorry, I'm not buying it. Our society is one that is designed about built around eating as a social activity, number one. It's also built around food as a reward system, number two. It's a society that has become almost entirely sedentary, both during childhood play and during adulthood employment, both of which were not the norm almost through the entirety of all of human civilization until the last 20 years or so.
Those three things alone are probably 90% of the reason for the rise in first-world obesity.
I don't argue any of that. I think it all factors in. My argument is that when we only focus on these factors we ignore not only a large chunk of the problem, but what we really are as human beings, and how much the chemical reactions going on with us every day affect us, including the part of ourselves we call 'I' and attribute decisions, motivations, and traits to. Big pharma isn't ignoring it.
They're working to come up with ways to damp down the overeating with drugs and have been for a long time. I think having to mix their latest attempt with an anti-depressant is a very bad sign.
There is a lecture online called Cut the Killer Carbs that references this drug. It's interesting, especially for keto people. It's in several parts on Youtube and it's long, so maybe not a one-sitting watch.0 -
No, and even the above as joke, doesn't exempt him from having a poor knowledge of what he's criticizing:Gianfranco_R wrote: »
He's an endocrinologist. That doesn't mean he has any expertise on evolution. I've known doctors that happily don't believe in evolution period.No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Depends on when you're referring to as far as your ancestors' access to fruits. When and where.
Here is the Lustig talk I referred to, because I don't remember where the primates he referred to specifically live. And well, he has way more degrees than I do, and in a relevant field!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh4JBXaKnmA
To be honest, I'm rather disappointed in Lustig when I hear him try to discuss science, particularly if it begins to move outside of his range. I've seen him write an essay that referred to "Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics", which he acknowledged are true but then went into his spew about a calorie isn't a calorie. I tend to like someone discussing thermodynamics to be knowledgeable that Newton had laws of motion, and was pretty thoroughly done being part of the thermodynamic world (past rotten in the ground) by the time people started formulating the laws of thermodynamics and studying it as a field.
I just googled to see if it is true.
It seems that in Fat Chance (so, not a scientific paper, but a book addressed to the public) he wrote:
“If you don’t like it, file a grievance with Sir Isaac Newton”
I would like to inform you that's a joke, it is supposed to be funny, not accurate.
http://pituitary.org/medical-resources/pavilions/pediatric-health/pediatric-health-archive/hypothalamic-obesityObesity has rapidly become the largest (both figuratively and literally) public health problem, both in the U.S. and in numerous Westernized countries. The causes of this epidemic are myriad, but they still must obey Newton's First Law of Thermodynamics, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. In human terms,
The man literally is fairly ignorant of thermodynamics, but he's out there criticizing the Atwater method and calorie counting. If I had a child with an edocrine disease, I'd be pleased if he was the physician overseeing treatment. If he tried to my child a single thing on physics, I'd tell my child to listen respectfully, smile, nod his head, and forget all of it and come talk to me about physics afterwards so that he can get the right information.
And the above is in an essay. He had the chance to review what he's doing, this isn't like someone who got him in an ah hah gotcha mistake at lecture. He is that unaware of his own ignorance to not even check that Newton did not write a single law of thermodynamics. That the laws of thermodynamics aren't even a set created by one person like the Newton's laws of motion.
If he wants to make jokes like that I'd rather he Carnot.0 -
Neither he, you, or I can acknowledge Newton's laws of thermodynamics, just as I can't address Steve Jobs's laws of robotics, or Einstein's laws of Comedic timing, or Groucho Marx's laws of Communism. Newton didn't write laws of thermodynamics, he wrote laws of motion.
He's an endocrinologist. That doesn't mean he has any expertise on evolution. I've known doctors that happily don't believe in evolution period.No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Depends on when you're referring to as far as your ancestors' access to fruits. When and where.
Here is the Lustig talk I referred to, because I don't remember where the primates he referred to specifically live. And well, he has way more degrees than I do, and in a relevant field!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh4JBXaKnmA
To be honest, I'm rather disappointed in Lustig when I hear him try to discuss science, particularly if it begins to move outside of his range. I've seen him write an essay that referred to "Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics", which he acknowledged are true but then went into his spew about a calorie isn't a calorie. I tend to like someone discussing thermodynamics to be knowledgeable that Newton had laws of motion, and was pretty thoroughly done being part of the thermodynamic world (past rotten in the ground) by the time people started formulating the laws of thermodynamics and studying it as a field.
I didn't mean he was an expert in evolution. I meant endocrinology, specifically how it all relates to what we consume and its impact on our health.
He fully acknowledges Newton's Laws while saying it doesn't apply as simply to our intake the way people who 'calorie is a calorie' everyone thinks it does because you absorb calories from different sources differently, in the case of almonds, you might not even absorb all the calories available at all. (I think the USDA had something on this recently, calorie count on almonds higher than absorbed). Don't make me do the liver dance, because I can't. I vaguely understand it, but I don't have the chemistry to spell it out. You've listened to Lustig apparently, you understand it or you don't.
In fact obesity isn't his main focus. It's things like metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and NAFLD. And maybe we should also focus on those things more than how much fat we're carrying around, too. It would certainly simplify things up and put the focus more on health. And without health, who cares about thinness? Dying sick, skinny, and young isn't that much better than dying sick, fat, and young.
Edit: I accidentally got off topic. He also discussed high insulin's affect on satiety. And that is a big deal and much more relevant to the discussion.
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Neither he, you, or I can acknowledge Newton's laws of thermodynamics, just as I can't address Steve Jobs's laws of robotics, or Einstein's laws of Comedic timing, or Groucho Marx's laws of Communism. Newton didn't write laws of thermodynamics, he wrote laws of motion.
He's an endocrinologist. That doesn't mean he has any expertise on evolution. I've known doctors that happily don't believe in evolution period.No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Depends on when you're referring to as far as your ancestors' access to fruits. When and where.
Here is the Lustig talk I referred to, because I don't remember where the primates he referred to specifically live. And well, he has way more degrees than I do, and in a relevant field!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh4JBXaKnmA
To be honest, I'm rather disappointed in Lustig when I hear him try to discuss science, particularly if it begins to move outside of his range. I've seen him write an essay that referred to "Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics", which he acknowledged are true but then went into his spew about a calorie isn't a calorie. I tend to like someone discussing thermodynamics to be knowledgeable that Newton had laws of motion, and was pretty thoroughly done being part of the thermodynamic world (past rotten in the ground) by the time people started formulating the laws of thermodynamics and studying it as a field.
I didn't mean he was an expert in evolution. I meant endocrinology, specifically how it all relates to what we consume and its impact on our health.
He fully acknowledges Newton's Laws while saying it doesn't apply as simply to our intake the way people who 'calorie is a calorie' everyone thinks it does because you absorb calories from different sources differently, in the case of almonds, you might not even absorb all the calories available at all. (I think the USDA had something on this recently, calorie count on almonds higher than absorbed). Don't make me do the liver dance, because I can't. I vaguely understand it, but I don't have the chemistry to spell it out. You've listened to Lustig apparently, you understand it or you don't.
In fact obesity isn't his main focus. It's things like metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and NAFLD. And maybe we should also focus on those things more than how much fat we're carrying around, too. It would certainly simplify things up and put the focus more on health. And without health, who cares about thinness? Dying sick, skinny, and young isn't that much better than dying sick, fat, and young.
Edit: I accidentally got off topic. He also discussed high insulin's affect on satiety. And that is a big deal and much more relevant to the discussion.
It isn't that he doesn't believe in Newton's Laws, it's that he points out it's not the be all end all of eating for health. And it's not. So what? I can burn what I eat. As someone pointed out in this thread or another, by that yardstick, trans fats are fine, too. Someone else said why not get all her calories from alcohol? But of course that's ridiculous. And that's what he's saying.
Dr Lustig deals with the effects of foods on human health as well as brain damage and medications (such as insulin for diabetes). You're trying to narrow his specialization down, but if anything, he has specialized in the effects of certain foods on the human body. He is very qualified to speak on this. He might not always be correct (who is?) but I doubt there are more than a handful of experts in relevant fields more qualified to address the matter.0 -
No, and even the above as joke, doesn't exempt him from having a poor knowledge of what he's criticizing:Gianfranco_R wrote: »
He's an endocrinologist. That doesn't mean he has any expertise on evolution. I've known doctors that happily don't believe in evolution period.No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Depends on when you're referring to as far as your ancestors' access to fruits. When and where.
Here is the Lustig talk I referred to, because I don't remember where the primates he referred to specifically live. And well, he has way more degrees than I do, and in a relevant field!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh4JBXaKnmA
To be honest, I'm rather disappointed in Lustig when I hear him try to discuss science, particularly if it begins to move outside of his range. I've seen him write an essay that referred to "Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics", which he acknowledged are true but then went into his spew about a calorie isn't a calorie. I tend to like someone discussing thermodynamics to be knowledgeable that Newton had laws of motion, and was pretty thoroughly done being part of the thermodynamic world (past rotten in the ground) by the time people started formulating the laws of thermodynamics and studying it as a field.
I just googled to see if it is true.
It seems that in Fat Chance (so, not a scientific paper, but a book addressed to the public) he wrote:
“If you don’t like it, file a grievance with Sir Isaac Newton”
I would like to inform you that's a joke, it is supposed to be funny, not accurate.
http://pituitary.org/medical-resources/pavilions/pediatric-health/pediatric-health-archive/hypothalamic-obesityObesity has rapidly become the largest (both figuratively and literally) public health problem, both in the U.S. and in numerous Westernized countries. The causes of this epidemic are myriad, but they still must obey Newton's First Law of Thermodynamics, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. In human terms,
The man literally is fairly ignorant of thermodynamics, but he's out there criticizing the Atwater method and calorie counting. If I had a child with an edocrine disease, I'd be pleased if he was the physician overseeing treatment. If he tried to my child a single thing on physics, I'd tell my child to listen respectfully, smile, nod his head, and forget all of it and come talk to me about physics afterwards so that he can get the right information.
And the above is in an essay. He had the chance to review what he's doing, this isn't like someone who got him in an ah hah gotcha mistake at lecture. He is that unaware of his own ignorance to not even check that Newton did not write a single law of thermodynamics. That the laws of thermodynamics aren't even a set created by one person like the Newton's laws of motion.
If he wants to make jokes like that I'd rather he Carnot.
LOL, fair enough, point scored
anyway, when I was searching that quotation, I also came across this, from the lemurcat's favorite author:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/obesity-epidemic_b_2697961.html
"Leaving aside Newton and laws of thermodynamics, ..."
so I think we have simply to acknowledge the doctors in general are not familiar with other disciplines' history.
0 -
I'm confused by your last paragraph though- can you explain?
Now I want to pet a puppy! Moving on:
If we assume every person who is obese and unhealthy is obese and unhealthy due to purely psychological and especially consciously psychological reasons (assuming this is possible with any issue), then no matter how many people we have who sicken, die young, and cost healthcare system trillions, there's no argument for changing subsidies, advertising, or anything else to reduce the problem. It's all 100% conscious choice, or at least 100% you had a bad childhood or a puppy scared you or you were smitten with birthday cake because it was the only time you thought your mommy loved you subconscious choice.
But if it is acknowledged that:
There is a chemical component to the majority of obese people's cravings
And that they want to quit overeating but a chemical component of craving makes quitting more difficult
And that exposure to and easy availability of the foods they are most likely to crave is likely due to pricing
and that advertising of said foods at an early age affects the likelihood that they will over consume these foods (similar to cigarettes but admittedly with differences, as cigarettes were supposed to be restricted to adult use though in reality they were not)
And if all of the above affects how many people will die young, sick, obese, and with great cost to the rest of us, then there is more incentive and legal standing to alter food subsidies in a way that makes the foods most likely to be over consumed to the point of obesity more expensive and not advertised to children and perhaps even to push subsidies toward foods that fewer people have a chemical urge to over consume.
I'm sort of confounded by this argument, to be honest.
Though I understand your intentions, I fundamentally disagree with your reasoning. First, let me see if I'm following you here, are you really asserting that the government/scientific community conclude things which may or may not be true simply to get funding where you think it should be?
Overeating is a hugely complex problem. Your argument is incredibly reductionist, to say the least.
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It's baffling to turn this into an argument that says all of the first world is fat because of sugar addiction, and that part of the reason is the availability of food, including fresh fruit, during the cold season that in the cave days would have been imposssible to consume.
Sorry, I'm not buying it. Our society is one that is designed about built around eating as a social activity, number one. It's also built around food as a reward system, number two. It's a society that has become almost entirely sedentary, both during childhood play and during adulthood employment, both of which were not the norm almost through the entirety of all of human civilization until the last 20 years or so.
Those three things alone are probably 90% of the reason for the rise in first-world obesity.
I don't argue any of that. I think it all factors in. My argument is that when we only focus on these factors we ignore not only a large chunk of the problem, but what we really are as human beings, and how much the chemical reactions going on with us every day affect us, including the part of ourselves we call 'I' and attribute decisions, motivations, and traits to. Big pharma isn't ignoring it.
They're working to come up with ways to damp down the overeating with drugs and have been for a long time. I think having to mix their latest attempt with an anti-depressant is a very bad sign.
There is a lecture online called Cut the Killer Carbs that references this drug. It's interesting, especially for keto people. It's in several parts on Youtube and it's long, so maybe not a one-sitting watch.
Since the problems that are causing obesity all cropped up in the last 20 years and we know what they are, perhaps we should just get everyone to reverse those trends... and stop looking for a pill to 'damp down the overeating'.
It really just destroys me that people keep looking for a miracle pill to make them stop overeating when they can do that themselves.0 -
The amount of things outside their narrow purview doctors can be fairly ignorant of is sometimes shocking, given the things we put in their hands. I've generally avoided one of the doctors at the practice in my area because the last time I saw him, he recommended "try eating less processed food to reduce inflammation" as something to try for depression. The most I got out of that visit was a double down on my desire to restart losing weight because the better my health the less I'd need to see him, and I could have evidence that his advice on nutrition and depression are bad.Gianfranco_R wrote: »
No, and even the above as joke, doesn't exempt him from having a poor knowledge of what he's criticizing:Gianfranco_R wrote: »
He's an endocrinologist. That doesn't mean he has any expertise on evolution. I've known doctors that happily don't believe in evolution period.No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Depends on when you're referring to as far as your ancestors' access to fruits. When and where.
Here is the Lustig talk I referred to, because I don't remember where the primates he referred to specifically live. And well, he has way more degrees than I do, and in a relevant field!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh4JBXaKnmA
To be honest, I'm rather disappointed in Lustig when I hear him try to discuss science, particularly if it begins to move outside of his range. I've seen him write an essay that referred to "Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics", which he acknowledged are true but then went into his spew about a calorie isn't a calorie. I tend to like someone discussing thermodynamics to be knowledgeable that Newton had laws of motion, and was pretty thoroughly done being part of the thermodynamic world (past rotten in the ground) by the time people started formulating the laws of thermodynamics and studying it as a field.
I just googled to see if it is true.
It seems that in Fat Chance (so, not a scientific paper, but a book addressed to the public) he wrote:
“If you don’t like it, file a grievance with Sir Isaac Newton”
I would like to inform you that's a joke, it is supposed to be funny, not accurate.
http://pituitary.org/medical-resources/pavilions/pediatric-health/pediatric-health-archive/hypothalamic-obesityObesity has rapidly become the largest (both figuratively and literally) public health problem, both in the U.S. and in numerous Westernized countries. The causes of this epidemic are myriad, but they still must obey Newton's First Law of Thermodynamics, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. In human terms,
The man literally is fairly ignorant of thermodynamics, but he's out there criticizing the Atwater method and calorie counting. If I had a child with an edocrine disease, I'd be pleased if he was the physician overseeing treatment. If he tried to my child a single thing on physics, I'd tell my child to listen respectfully, smile, nod his head, and forget all of it and come talk to me about physics afterwards so that he can get the right information.
And the above is in an essay. He had the chance to review what he's doing, this isn't like someone who got him in an ah hah gotcha mistake at lecture. He is that unaware of his own ignorance to not even check that Newton did not write a single law of thermodynamics. That the laws of thermodynamics aren't even a set created by one person like the Newton's laws of motion.
If he wants to make jokes like that I'd rather he Carnot.
LOL, fair enough, point scored
anyway, when I was searching that quotation, I also came across this, from the lemurcat's favorite author:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/obesity-epidemic_b_2697961.html
"Leaving aside Newton and laws of thermodynamics, ..."
so I think we have simply to acknowledge the doctors in general are not familiar with other disciplines' history.0 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »thorsmom01 wrote: »Love this post ! It should be a sticky !
Geez, I sure hope MFP wouldn't make such a mocking post a sticky.
+1
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Still never had a clear explanation of who I mocked with this post.tennisdude2004 wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »thorsmom01 wrote: »Love this post ! It should be a sticky !
Geez, I sure hope MFP wouldn't make such a mocking post a sticky.
+10 -
The amount of things outside their narrow purview doctors can be fairly ignorant of is sometimes shocking, given the things we put in their hands. I've generally avoided one of the doctors at the practice in my area because the last time I saw him, he recommended "try eating less processed food to reduce inflammation" as something to try for depression. The most I got out of that visit was a double down on my desire to restart losing weight because the better my health the less I'd need to see him, and I could have evidence that his advice on nutrition and depression are bad.Gianfranco_R wrote: »
No, and even the above as joke, doesn't exempt him from having a poor knowledge of what he's criticizing:Gianfranco_R wrote: »
He's an endocrinologist. That doesn't mean he has any expertise on evolution. I've known doctors that happily don't believe in evolution period.No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Depends on when you're referring to as far as your ancestors' access to fruits. When and where.
Here is the Lustig talk I referred to, because I don't remember where the primates he referred to specifically live. And well, he has way more degrees than I do, and in a relevant field!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh4JBXaKnmA
To be honest, I'm rather disappointed in Lustig when I hear him try to discuss science, particularly if it begins to move outside of his range. I've seen him write an essay that referred to "Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics", which he acknowledged are true but then went into his spew about a calorie isn't a calorie. I tend to like someone discussing thermodynamics to be knowledgeable that Newton had laws of motion, and was pretty thoroughly done being part of the thermodynamic world (past rotten in the ground) by the time people started formulating the laws of thermodynamics and studying it as a field.
I just googled to see if it is true.
It seems that in Fat Chance (so, not a scientific paper, but a book addressed to the public) he wrote:
“If you don’t like it, file a grievance with Sir Isaac Newton”
I would like to inform you that's a joke, it is supposed to be funny, not accurate.
http://pituitary.org/medical-resources/pavilions/pediatric-health/pediatric-health-archive/hypothalamic-obesityObesity has rapidly become the largest (both figuratively and literally) public health problem, both in the U.S. and in numerous Westernized countries. The causes of this epidemic are myriad, but they still must obey Newton's First Law of Thermodynamics, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. In human terms,
The man literally is fairly ignorant of thermodynamics, but he's out there criticizing the Atwater method and calorie counting. If I had a child with an edocrine disease, I'd be pleased if he was the physician overseeing treatment. If he tried to my child a single thing on physics, I'd tell my child to listen respectfully, smile, nod his head, and forget all of it and come talk to me about physics afterwards so that he can get the right information.
And the above is in an essay. He had the chance to review what he's doing, this isn't like someone who got him in an ah hah gotcha mistake at lecture. He is that unaware of his own ignorance to not even check that Newton did not write a single law of thermodynamics. That the laws of thermodynamics aren't even a set created by one person like the Newton's laws of motion.
If he wants to make jokes like that I'd rather he Carnot.
LOL, fair enough, point scored
anyway, when I was searching that quotation, I also came across this, from the lemurcat's favorite author:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/obesity-epidemic_b_2697961.html
"Leaving aside Newton and laws of thermodynamics, ..."
so I think we have simply to acknowledge the doctors in general are not familiar with other disciplines' history.
Your doctor seems to be up to date with the medical literature:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26317148
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No. Using the term inflammation in a generic sense as a result of processed food is balony. Inflammation is a generic term and it is irresponsible, in my opinion, for a medical professional to use it that way with a patient. Like technically, inflammation is responsible for hypertrophy. Does that mean I should load up on processed food to get sick gainz? Any of the hypothesis of depression as inflammation are far to preliminary to use as a basis for treatment.Gianfranco_R wrote: »
The amount of things outside their narrow purview doctors can be fairly ignorant of is sometimes shocking, given the things we put in their hands. I've generally avoided one of the doctors at the practice in my area because the last time I saw him, he recommended "try eating less processed food to reduce inflammation" as something to try for depression. The most I got out of that visit was a double down on my desire to restart losing weight because the better my health the less I'd need to see him, and I could have evidence that his advice on nutrition and depression are bad.Gianfranco_R wrote: »
No, and even the above as joke, doesn't exempt him from having a poor knowledge of what he's criticizing:Gianfranco_R wrote: »
He's an endocrinologist. That doesn't mean he has any expertise on evolution. I've known doctors that happily don't believe in evolution period.No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Depends on when you're referring to as far as your ancestors' access to fruits. When and where.
Here is the Lustig talk I referred to, because I don't remember where the primates he referred to specifically live. And well, he has way more degrees than I do, and in a relevant field!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh4JBXaKnmA
To be honest, I'm rather disappointed in Lustig when I hear him try to discuss science, particularly if it begins to move outside of his range. I've seen him write an essay that referred to "Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics", which he acknowledged are true but then went into his spew about a calorie isn't a calorie. I tend to like someone discussing thermodynamics to be knowledgeable that Newton had laws of motion, and was pretty thoroughly done being part of the thermodynamic world (past rotten in the ground) by the time people started formulating the laws of thermodynamics and studying it as a field.
I just googled to see if it is true.
It seems that in Fat Chance (so, not a scientific paper, but a book addressed to the public) he wrote:
“If you don’t like it, file a grievance with Sir Isaac Newton”
I would like to inform you that's a joke, it is supposed to be funny, not accurate.
http://pituitary.org/medical-resources/pavilions/pediatric-health/pediatric-health-archive/hypothalamic-obesityObesity has rapidly become the largest (both figuratively and literally) public health problem, both in the U.S. and in numerous Westernized countries. The causes of this epidemic are myriad, but they still must obey Newton's First Law of Thermodynamics, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. In human terms,
The man literally is fairly ignorant of thermodynamics, but he's out there criticizing the Atwater method and calorie counting. If I had a child with an edocrine disease, I'd be pleased if he was the physician overseeing treatment. If he tried to my child a single thing on physics, I'd tell my child to listen respectfully, smile, nod his head, and forget all of it and come talk to me about physics afterwards so that he can get the right information.
And the above is in an essay. He had the chance to review what he's doing, this isn't like someone who got him in an ah hah gotcha mistake at lecture. He is that unaware of his own ignorance to not even check that Newton did not write a single law of thermodynamics. That the laws of thermodynamics aren't even a set created by one person like the Newton's laws of motion.
If he wants to make jokes like that I'd rather he Carnot.
LOL, fair enough, point scored
anyway, when I was searching that quotation, I also came across this, from the lemurcat's favorite author:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/obesity-epidemic_b_2697961.html
"Leaving aside Newton and laws of thermodynamics, ..."
so I think we have simply to acknowledge the doctors in general are not familiar with other disciplines' history.
Your doctor seems to be up to date with the medical literature:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26317148
Their rational against eating "fast-food, commercial bakery goods, and sweets" is that it is a predictor of depression in studies in your link. That's correlative fallacy. Do depressed people eat more processed foods? I wouldn't doubt it, but I'd bet money on the pattern being depressed people give up on cooking, not people give up on cooking and then become depressed.0 -
No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Surely that is only true of 'some' of our ancestors - certainly those living nearer the equator.
I am not sure my ancestors in northern Europe where primarily frugivores.
0 -
tennisdude2004 wrote: »No, sorry, I must have explained poorly, he was saying because sugar was not always available and it was valuable calories for leaner times, perhaps we are prone to overeat it.
Are food and cocaine the same? No. Food and opiates? No. But it is interesting that a drug used to treat opiate abuse reduces overeating. Unfortunately from what I've read they have to couple it with an antidepressant because it damps down all activities that cause the pleasure reward center in the brain.
And that is where the similarity is: The pleasure center in the brain may not be identically affected by different substances, but it is affected. And yes, behaviors, both survival promoting and otherwise, also affect the pleasure centers in the brain. Therefore, there is a chemical component to overeating. And the foods most likely to trigger the brain in this way and also have a detrimental affect on the most people? Not produce and meat. Not in the USA, anyway. It's generally the foods in the snack aisle. The cheap and very heavily subsidized foods.
Fruit not available? Our ancestors were frugivores. That we acquired sugar addiction in the last 500K to maybe 1.5M or so years after probably about 10 million years with it as a staple is ... well odd evolutionary arguments.
You can also give people the the stress hormone cortisol to stop inflammation. I don't consider muscle aches to be related to be too relaxed and unstressed though.
Surely that is only true of 'some' of our ancestors - certainly those living nearer the equator.
I am not sure my ancestors in northern Europe where primarily frugivores.
Look at the timeline I stated. I don't mean our ancestors as in homo sapien, nor even Heidelberg. I mean we are essentially the third chimp, and the odd cousin given chimps and bonobos eat 90% fruit, with meat being a bit of a social status symbol for chimps. Up until our split from them, I'd imagine our diet was pretty similar, and even cooking and scavenging didn't up the meat diet dramatically at first.
By proper accounts, we probably added sedges (grains) to our diets long before we added meat. Yet we have people talking about our evolutionary as a romanticism as if we turned into carnivores for a time and long ago, but that grains are somehow an incredibly modern food that we haven't had time to adapt to.0
This discussion has been closed.
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