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Emotional Eating Explained

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Emotions heavily influence how and what you eat and, in turn, impact your diet and how you look and feel. When we’re stressed out, a common response is to crave salt, sweets, or our favorite fatty snack to quell our nervous energy. Short term, carbohydrates and sugary snack foods can help to elevate serotonin and dopamine – two neurotransmitters (brain hormones) that can help us feel better. Some people still find it difficult to grasp the connection between our mind – our subjective thinking and feeling – and changes in body chemistry. But the link between mind and body has been intensely investigated in recent decades and some remarkable findings have emerged.

The chemical specifics of an emotional upheaval go something like this: You’re experiencing seasonal affective disorder and are unexpectedly faced with the prospect of losing your job. At the speed of light, a chemical cascade begins. In the hypothalamus, a hormone known as CRH is released directly into a connecting pathway to our pituitary gland. The pituitary then secretes its own hormone (known as ACTH) into our main bloodstream. ACTH acts on our adrenal glands, causing them to release cortisol and adrenalin. These hormones allow our body to meet the presenting challenge, and they do so with such intensity that the cells of our organs begin working overtime. For most of us - as a natural result of accelerated body processes - cravings for the wrong types of food can appear. It is the body’s attempt to recharge from an emotional event, fueled by the urge to surge dopamine. When you give in to your cravings for the wrong types of food, you become an emotional eater. Dr. Neal Barnard, MD, author of Breaking the Food Seduction, says he believes that cheese, meat, chocolate and sugar are addictive foods. Barnard acknowledges that these foods contain chemical compounds that stimulate the brain’s secretion of opiate-like, feel-good chemicals like the aforementioned dopamine, which drive our cravings.

If an event is extremely exciting, our brain releases the hormone serotonin (among others). Then, a sub-organ of our brains – the amygdala – may step in to belatedly play the role of regulator. Eventually, our serotonin and dopamine levels decline, which can leave you feeling depressed and frazzled, and this may cause us to fly into the nearest fast food drive-thru for a reward of a double cheeseburger, fries, and soft drink. When we’ve had time to debrief, input from the sensory regions of our brains is edited and filed away as a learned experience. However, this debriefing mechanism is always a little late to acknowledge that all along, food was a culprit, instigator, or the end result of our emotions. Emotional eating trends are also often instigated due to lack of sleep, deadlines, and always being on the go.

You’ve probably heard by that omega-3 fatty acids and other essential fatty acids (EFAs) are essential to humans, and yet cannot be synthesized by the body. They must be obtained through our diet, though many diets are often quite deficient in them, and this is why we’re starting to see signs in supermarkets advertising products such as eggs and dairy with added omega-3s. You might assume that the benefactors of the essential fatty acids are to your heart or arteries, but a number of studies suggest that they are important to our mental and emotional health as well. Countries where diets are deficient in these fatty acids show higher incidences of mental illnesses and emotional unrest. A lack of essential fatty acids has also been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease and Huntington’s disease. Other studies have demonstrated that the addition of EFAs to diets can help to relieve conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and eating disorders (such as bulimia and anorexia). Surprisingly, people with a newly recognized disease called orthorexia - a fixation with healthy or righteous eating that can become so extreme that it can lead to severe malnutrition or even death – have been found deficient in essential fatty acids. Emotions - including stress - can tremendously affect our physical selves at every level.

The great issue of stress in modern humans is partly due to the fact that our brain chemistry is outdated. Our reactions evolved under conditions when they could help us defend ourselves when being attacked by sabre-toothed tigers while struggling to bring down a mammoth. But these emotional responses, when they appear in the face of dangers that call for no physical response, have become an added burden to our health. To deal, we often eat ourselves sick, or at least just enough to reward our brain with more feel-good hormones. Today, ringing telephones, dinging emails, and looming deadlines threaten to overwhelm us and elicit the prehistoric chemical cascade. The effects of cortisol and the other stress hormones - when they flow through the blood for too long and in too concentrated a form - are highly undesirable and lead to unnatural surges of serotonin and dopamine, emotional eating, and weight gain.

 

Bryce Wylde
Is one of Canada's leading experts on natural medicine. He is the author of The Antioxidant Prescription and host of Wylde On Health on CP24. 
www.homeopathicdoctor.ca


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