Beat Food Addictions!

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Food addictions are as real as other chemical addictions, and function similarly to some of them, by messing with the brain’s dopamine levels to manipulate behavior

  • Today’s main feature brings information and advice from Dr. Nicole Avena, a career expert in this matter.

• Do you have, or are you worried about the risk of, sciatica?

  • Today’s sponsor NativePath is offering 10almonds subscribers a large discount on its new product Native Balance, to help bolster the body against sciatica.

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

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✋ MAIN FEATURE

When It’s More Than “Just” Cravings

This is Dr. Nicole Avena. She’s a research neuroscientist who also teaches at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, as well as at Princeton. She’s done a lot of groundbreaking research in the field of nutrition, diet, and addition, with a special focus on women’s health and sugar intake specifically.

What does she want us to know?

Firstly, that food addictions are real addictions.

We know it can sound silly, like the famous line from Mad Max:

As an aside, it is actually possible to become addicted to water; if one drinks it excessively (we are talking gallons every day) it does change the structure of the brain (no surprise; the brain is not supposed to have that much water!) causing structural damage that then results in dependency, and headaches upon withdrawal. It’s called psychogenic polydipsia:

Primary polydipsia: Update

But back onto today’s more specific topic, and by a different mechanism of addiction…

Food addictions are dopaminergic addictions (as is cocaine)

If you are addicted to a certain food (often sugar, but other refined carbs such as potato products, and also especially refined flour products, are also potential addictive substances), then when you think about the food in question, your brain lights up with more dopamine than it should, and you are strongly motivated to seek and consume the substance in question.

Remember, dopamine functions by expectation, not by result. So until your brain’s dopamine-gremlin is sated, it will keep flooding you with motivational dopamine; that’s why the first bite tastes best, then you wolf down the rest before your brain can change its mind, and afterwards you may be left thinking/feeling “was that worth it?”.

Much like with other addictions (especially alcohol), shame and regret often feature strongly afterwards, even accompanied by notions of “never again”.

But, binge-eating is as difficult to escape as binge-drinking.

You can break free, but you will probably have to take it seriously

Dr. Avena recommends treating a food addiction like any other addiction, which means:

1. Know why you want to quit (make a list of the reasons, and this will help you stay on track later!)

2. Make a conscious decision to genuinely quit

3. Learn about the nature of the specific addiction (know thy enemy!)

4. Choose a strategy (e.g. wean off vs cold turkey, and decide what replacements, if any, you will use)

5. Get support (especially from those around you, and/but the support of others facing, or who have successfully faced, the same challenge is very helpful too)

6. Keep track of your success (build and maintain a streak!)

7. Lean into how you will better enjoy life without addiction to the substance (it never really made you happy anyway, so enjoy your newfound freedom and good health!)

Want more from Dr. Avena?

You can check out her column at Psychology Today here:

Psychology Today | Food Junkie ← it has a lot of posts about sugar addiction in particular, and gives a lot of information and practical advice

You can also read her book, which could be a great help if you are thinking of quitting a sugar addiction:

Sugarless: A 7-Step Plan to Uncover Hidden Sugars, Curb Your Cravings, and Conquer Your Addiction

Enjoy!

A QUICK QUESTION…

We’ll then talk about this on Friday!

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

The Whole-Body Approach to Osteoporosis: How to Improve Bone Strength and Reduce Your Fracture Risk – by Keith McCormick

You probably already know to get enough calcium and vitamin D, and do some resistance training. What does this book offer beyond that advice?

It’s pretty comprehensive, as it turns out. It covers the above, plus the wide range of medications available, what supplements help or harm or just don’t have enough evidence either way yet, things like that.

Amongst the most important offerings are the signs and symptoms that can help monitor your bone health (things you can do at home! Like examinations of your fingernails, hair, skin, tongue, and so forth, that will reveal information about your internal biochemical make-up), as well as what lab tests to ask for. Which is important, as osteoporosis is one of those things whereby we often don't learn something is wrong until it's too late.

The author is a chiropractor, which doesn’t always have a reputation as the most robustly science-based of physical therapy options, but he…

• doesn’t talk about chiropractic

• did confer with a flock of experts (osteopaths, nutritionists, etc) to inform/check his work

• does refer consistently to good science, and explains it well

• includes 16 pages of academic references, and yes, they are very reputable publications

Bottom line: this one really does give what the subtitle promises: a whole body approach to avoiding (or reversing) osteoporosis.

Click here to check out The Whole Body Approach To Osteoporosis; sooner is better than later!

May your day see you well-nourished and in ever-increasing good health,

The 10almonds Team

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