For stressed out binge eaters, food really is a drug
November 8th, 2005Two studies in the October 2005 issue of Behavioral Neuroscience show that when animals are stressed, deprived and exposed to tempting food, they overeat, with different degrees of interaction. The powerful interplay between internal and external factors helps explain why dieters rebound and even one cookie can trigger a binge if someone’s predisposed to binge.
The findings also implicate the brain’s opioid, or reward, system in regulating overeating, especially when the food is extra-tempting – and not only in under-fed animals. This knowledge may help even non-stressed people to avoid overeating, keep their weight down and improve their health. Behavioral Neuroscience is published by the American Psychological Association (APA).
A study by M. Flavia Barbano, PhD, and Martine Cador, PhD, at the University of Bordeaux 2 in France, separated the distinct roles in consumption played by food deprivation and the “yum” factor, establishing that the interplay between internal and external factors regulates food intake, at least in mammals.
When provided with sugary Choc and Crisp cereal, a food-sated group of lab rats ate almost as much as the food-deprived group. But when presented with lab chow, they ate very little. Barbano and Cador concluded that highly palatable food motivates an animal to eat more than it really needs. When food type and satiety interact, attractiveness overrides satiety — a phenomenon known to anyone who has ever stood in a buffet line.
In another key study, neuroscience psychologist Mary Boggiano, PhD, and her colleagues at the University of Alabama at Birmingham focused on the regulatory role of the brain’s opioid system. Opioids or endorphins (the brain’s “feel good chemicals”) play a key role in our liking of food. Yet external substances such as heroin and morphine mimic endorphins by binding to the same receptors in the brain, produce a sense of reward (among other functions). The researchers compared how binge-eating rats versus non- binge eating rats responded to drugs that either turn on opioid receptors (butorphanol, which treats pain) or block them (naloxone, which treats heroin addiction).
From the rats’ responses to these drugs, Boggiano and her colleagues inferred how stress and dieting change the brain’s opioid control of eating. The binge eating occurred after rats experienced both foot shock (stress) and cyclic caloric restriction (dieting). Either caloric restriction or stress alone were not enough to produce changes in food intake, but stressed and underfed rats ate twice the normal amount of Oreo® cookies, which rats find rewarding. In other words, animals subjected to both stressors became binge eaters, confirming how strongly these outside factors interact to change eating behavior.
The findings also implicated opioids in the neurochemistry of binge eating. The highly rewarding butorphanol enhanced the binge eating; the reward-blocker naloxone suppressed how much the stress/deprived rats ate, to the level of the control rats. The authors say this pattern of findings in rats who were sated at the time of testing strengthens the evidence that reward, more than metabolic need, drives binge eating.
In light of their findings, she says, “Highly palatable food can mimic opioid drugs by releasing opioids or activating sensitized receptors, so imagine so imagine what it can do in a human with a history of dieting. If only rat chow is available, even rats with a history of dieting when stressed rats don’t binge — but when they get a little bite of cookie first, they do.” As a result, she says when treating bulimics and binge eaters, it may not be a good idea to introduce palatable (junk) food too early in therapy.
Link: A Recipe for Overeating: Studies Outline Dangers (American Psychological Association) (via BoingBoing)
- Various Aspects of Feeding Behavior Can Be Partially Dissociated in the Rat by the Incentive Properties of Food and the Physiological State (PDF)
- Combined Dieting and Stress Evoke Exaggerated Responses to Opioids in Binge-Eating Rats (PDF)
Tags: bulemia, binge eating, food addiction, science
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