Find pleasure in excercise & healthy food

A study on the brain activity of obese and lean women shows that the obese get less pleasure from the food they eat but then eat more high-calorie food to compensate, and the cause may be a variation in the gene related to the body’s pleasure response.

It has been thought that obese people get more enjoyment from food, and that’s the reason they overeat. But the study indicates that it is not so. They only anticipate getting more reward, but they do not actually get it. In pursuit of that elusive reward, they eat some more. More overeating dulls the enjoyment even more, leading to more eating, and they get trapped in a vicious circle.

The researchers studied MRI scans of the pleasure centers in the women’s brains. Their responses were mapped when shown a picture of milkshake and a picture of a glass of water. The team found that heavier women responded more to the picture, and their pleasure centers exhibited higher activity.

They were then asked to drink the milkshake or the water. The heavier women exhibited less activity in their pleasure centers.

The researchers believe this may be due to a down-regulation in the reward circuitry of the brain. The more you do things that are rewarding, the less actual reward you derive from the action.

This has also been observed in other animal studies. It is true that the brain systems regulating metabolism play a role in obesity, but so do the systems that regulate the pleasure-response to eating. In mice studies, the system that regulates the hormone dopamine — which is responsible for the pleasure-response — is defective.

Apparently, a variant gene can blunt the dopamine response. This gene is present in precisely those people that have higher risk for obesity. And though they may not be obese yet, they are already getting less pleasure from eating — which means they are likely to overeat in order to compensate. It becomes a kind of addiction to high-calorie food.

Those with the most blunted pleasure-response circuits are the most likely to overeat. They will progressively eat more to get the same level of pleasure.

The situation is similar to drug addiction, where a progressively higher dosage of drug is necessary to achieve the same degree of pleasure.

But the researchers and other experts emphasize that while obesity is similar to an addictive disorder it is also the result of a metabolic disorder. The person involved should pay attention to these two factors.

Safety Tips:

* Make sure your children get less of fatty foods in their diet. You want to change dietary behavior before it becomes entrenched.

* Avoid using diet pills. Pills that target dopamine receptors in the brain are amphetamine-based and will not work.

* Get enough exercise. Dieting is a complex process, and many people do not like it. Physical activity is a good alternative to reduce compulsion to overeat because it also activates the same pleasure response.