You Are What You CHOOSE to Eat: Chronic Pain, Anxiety, Misery, Obese, Sad.

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By Chris Pierce

I hope that after reading this, you will have discovered an option to relieve stress, anxiety, PTSD, chronic pain, headaches, and conquer food addiction. This article is packed full of information. Details backed with sources that will explain the damage caused by certain foods. Of upmost importance is chronic pain. Anxiety increases pain, the harmful foods I will discuss increase anxiety and pain through inflammation.

Your choice to continue to consume “hyper-palatable foods,” alcohol, table sugar, high fructose corn syrup, artificial trans fats, oils from vegetables and seeds, refined carbohydrates, and processed meat is the reason for many issues that may be decreasing your quality of life. If you suffer from depression, anxiety, chronic pain, bowel issues, or headaches, changing what you eat and overcoming your food addiction will alleviate these issues. Keep reading below. I discuss the diagnostic criteria for food addiction.

Continue reading, and I will explain how these foods maintain inflammation within your body and are the cause of medical issues that your medical provider can’t seem to solve. I will also explain food addiction, clinical diagnosis and how you have arrived at this dependency on food, not needed to survive. In fact, the lack of it is what’s needed for your survival.

In this article, I will describe the type of foods to avoid that fuel addiction, illustrate what happens in the brain when we consume these foods, the changes that have occurred inside our brain when we consume this food and why it is so difficult to break free.

Yes, you are what you eat. These foods have created a body in a constant fight that attempts to maintain normalcy. It has created a body with chronic pain or headaches that cannot be solved as medical providers fail to treat the root problem. But there is hope, our brains are moldable, and we can change our brains’ automatic responses that influence this addictive behavior. Make the change now like your life depends on it!

Hyperpalatable Foods

Salt, sugar, fat, and often wheat flour are combined to maximize pleasure, streaming your brain’s sensation system that simulates the addictive-like properties of a controlled substance.

MICHOUD PHARMACY

In fact, I guarantee you that most of those who have died of COVID-19 who are obese, had diabetes, hypertension, or cardiovascular disease would have had a greater chance of survival had they not consumed large quantities of addictive food throughout their life. These foods weaken your immune system and ability to fight off a virus.

“Indeed, chronic inflammatory diseases have been recognized as the most significant cause of death in the world today, with more than 50% of all deaths being attributable to inflammation-related diseases such as ischemic heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and autoimmune and neurodegenerative conditions.” –Nature Medicine

The Creation of Your Food Addiction

Over time we have chosen to consume foods that are not needed for survival. We have tricked our brains into thinking we need them for survival, and now the addiction and the slow deterioration of your health continues. This deterioration occurs due to the inflammation of key cellular components.

You know that feeling you get when you eat a few pieces of your favorite candy, then a flood of desires influences your choice to continue to eat more? Or you see that commercial for your favorite pizza. Random thoughts and impulses will motivate you to seek after foods that you do not need throughout your day.  For those who partook in drugs, nicotine, or too much alcohol have now since removed them from their lives.

Have you ever had the desire to use again when a familiar smell hits your nose or you hear a certain song? Drugs, alcohol, nicotine, and these poisonous ingredients found in these foods that you cannot stop consuming have similar addictive properties. These ingredients are influencing YOUR CHOICE to be addicted. Hyper-palatable foods with the sugar-salt combination create dangerously addictive ingredients.

Prior to the exposure to environmental factors throughout our existence, throughout generations of time, our bodies were created and designed to seek after certain nutrients for survival, this is an automatic response as our brain motivates and rewards us to seek food when needed.

What is it inside your brain that influences your choice to destroy your quality of life slowly, and how did this change from birth to now create what you perceive as a permanent way of life? The brain’s ability to change how it operates is found in the science of brain plasticity. Brain plasticity occurs when you learn a new skill; it occurs in our children as they watch their parents’ behavior and mirror their examples. Over time your brain has changed what foods it perceives are necessary.

Our body is designed to require specific nutrients, and we are motivated to seek after these nutrients. However, somewhere down the line, our brain has been tricked into thinking it needs these harmful addictive chemicals for survival through brain plasticity.

In his book, The Basis of Brain Rehab, Dr. John Hatch, explains that inflammatory food can influence the body’s receptors to create a miscommunications that the body is not full and needs to consume more. He goes on to explain how the central nervous system and its billions of cells and their relation and interconnection with other cells in the body, can lead to tertiary effects on another part of the body resulting in medical providers providing the wrong treatment, when the underlining cause was a dysfunction in your sales due to the food. For example if you have a dysfunction in your vestibular system, you feel nauseous, you go into the doctor and you may get treated for a stomach bug when the underlying issue is a vestibular problem.

When combating agains addictive behavior, the motivation and reward system within the brain is the key area of focus. This motivation reward system influenced through dopamine ensures that our body consumes the required nutrients. However, over time the motivation and rewards felt when consuming unhealthy addictive foods have changed the brain to believe that theses foods are needed for survival.

This determination occurs through various organs in the body, sending signals to the brain that it requires nutrients. Various components within the brain have a role in maintaining homeostasis.  This reaction occurs through the release of chemicals such as insulin and leptin.   For example, when the body’s required water levels decrease, various body changes such as lower blood pressure, digestion of food, or time of day send automatic signals by releasing a chemical called dopamine.  Dopamine creates the motivation to influence the body to seek after water.  Before processing and distributing water throughout the body, the brain has determined the amount of water needed.  Dopamine is rereleased to reward your behavior of consuming the required water.  This process is kept in balance as the mind knows that it will be rewarded for this behavior when it acts on this behavior influenced by dopamine.

This is the natural occurring motivation that occurs to motivate the behavior to consume food.   The reward system influenced by the release of dopamine is the primary factor in food addiction. This is known as a non-homeostatic process. A food addiction mimics the homeostatic process and influences the behavior to consume when the body does not need the nutrients at the moment.   Addiction creates a change and tricks the brain into assuming that it requires subsistence to survive. Over time the brain’s motivation and reward circuits become accustomed to the reward of food and even begin to anticipate the consumption based on cues and stimuli typically present before consumption.   

Some of the riskiest behavior occurs during this span of time as one anticipates the consumption of addictive food.  Their executive function weakens, and one’s ability to make accurate decisions decrease as their mind’s complete focus and desires are to obtain the reward awaiting them with the consumption of this addictive food.

This motivation is just a strong as the motivation felt by a drug addict, and it’s slowly contributing to a decline in your emotional and physical health. Understanding the multiple problems that food addiction causes to the body and the vision of a better life may be the motivation to change now.

Food addictions may be more difficult to overcome than a drug addiction as food is necessary for survival and legal to purchase as drugs are not. Food is a legal substance and is found on every corner in most cities in multiple fast food joints. The food cooperations through manipulative ads and designing foods will ensure we over-consume and comeback for more and keep us coming.

Both the U.S. government and major food corporations are enabling this addiction. Through the Farm Bills, taxpayer subsidies support the growth of the ingredients found in these addicting foods, making healthier foods more expensive. Additionally, food companies are manipulating the minds of food addicts through marketing psychological techniques and by adding substances to their food that inhibit the feeling of being full and influence the motivation to continue to eat more.

For example, food addiction influences anxiety, anxiety triggers the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight), this reduces the energy and blood flow to the digestive system, resulting in nausea, increasing inflammations in the digestive system. This inflamation can them impact it’s neighbors increasing lower back pain. The pain intensivies as the brain prioritizes the problems in the body. The brain decides not to process the lower back pain, which could decrease its effects, as the anxiety and digestive system are the current priority. If the brain wasn’t so occupied, it would have time to process the pain signals traveling from the spine and reduce the intensity. You seek medical assistance and the Dr. treats you for a stomach bug when the underlying cause is anxiety induced by your food addiction.

Variants in several genes may contribute to obesity by increasing hunger and food intake……Families cannot change their genes, but they can encourage healthy eating habits and physical activity. 

CDC: Do Genes Have a Role in Obesity?

Addiction and the Amygdala Highjack explained in this video.

Clinical Diagnosis of Food Addiction

Food addiction definitions have varied but are described as a behavior involved in consuming highly palatable foods (sugar, fat, and salt) beyond the body’s quantities to function in normal healthy behavior, energy, and body operating requirements (homeostasis). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, edition 5 (DSM-5), the primary clinical reference governing mental disorders diagnosis, is routinely updated as science advances in pharmacological and functional neuroscience approaches.  Food addiction has not been included yet in this manual.  The DSM-5 focuses on eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia, which differ from food addiction.

A diagnosis for addiction requires at least two of the following: withdrawal, tolerance, use of larger amounts of the substance over longer periods, spending a great deal of time obtaining and/or using the substance, repeated attempts to quit, activities given up, and continued use despite adverse consequences. — DSM-5

Do you think you are not addicted to food? Try to stop all hyper-palatable foods and see if you suffer any of the criteria listed in the DSM-5.

Below I provide a few tips to help you in your battle, but I recommend following one of the 20-30 day challenges listed below. Understanding what is going on in your head when you consume the foods you avoid in these challenges will influence motivation to fight the addictive urges.

These 30-day challenges provide opportunities for you to see the impacts of removing these substances from your life and provide you an opportunity to test the tips I provide in this article. After reading this you will be ready to take on these challenges.

List of a few Challenges

• 21 Day Sugar Detox
• The Whole30
• The 30 Day Real Food Reset
• Anti-inflammatory Diet

Tips for Success

• Identify your WHY, your MOTIVATION, raison d’être. Is it to look good at the beach, not die at an early age of cardiovascular disease or diabetes, and have an enjoyable life full of fruitful experiences, to think clearer, develop a stronger cognition?
• Choose NOW to follow all these steps. Stop now, cold turkey! An abrupt stop will bring you to success faster, and so much growth is found in adversity.
• Conduct a personal study on the topics found in this article to develop further your understanding of the brain’s mechanism and processes when dealing with addiction.
• Share with others the knowledge that you have gained as you study this topic. (this type of dialogue will strengthen the prefrontal cortex, strengthening reasoning and help overcome addictive desires)
• Eliminate all foods that contain chemicals that influence addiction (you will learn about these….keep reading).
• Anticipate the situations that influence addictive eating and prepare the mind to defend.
• Apply mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy, yoga and Thai Chi daily.
• Slow Mindfulness Eating triggers the parasympathetic system and gives time to prepare for digestion.
• Tell everyone about your goal, document it on social media if you want, influence your friends to hold you to your goals.
• Maintain your new eating habits for 3-5 months to achieve brain plasticity and be less likely to relapse; this reverses the neuroplasticity that influenced prolonged addiction.

Your quality of life will drastically change when you overcome food addiction. These highly addictive foods create inflammation in various cells throughout the body, causing malfunction, including decreased cognitive functioning. This could be the answer to all the misery you are encountering in your life right now. Let this be your motivation to change your life around and remove these dangerous chemicals from your life forever. If you don’t believe me, try to remove these foods from your life, put it to the test and see how you feel.

More on PTSD and addiction found in video 10 of my 25 episode series. Watch below.

Sources

• Adult Obesity Causes & Consequences | Overweight & Obesity | CDC
• COVID-19 Patients With Cardiovascular Disease Have In-hospital Mortality Rates of 25 to 38 Percent | DAIC (dicardiology.com)
• Chronic inflammation in the etiology of disease across the life span | Nature Medicine
• COVID-19 in People With Diabetes: Urgently Needed Lessons From Early Reports (diabetesjournals.org)
• Homeostatic and non-homeostatic controls of feeding behavior: distinct vs. common neural systems (nih.gov)
• High Blood Pressure Doubles Coronavirus Death Risk (webmd.com)
• Cellular and Mitochondrial Effects of Alcohol Consumption (nih.gov)
• Mitochondrial Dysfunction Plus High-Sugar Diet Provokes a Metabolic Crisis That Inhibits Growth (nih.gov)
• (PDF) Role of Mitochondria on Muscle Cell Death and Meat Tenderization (researchgate.net)
• How to Optimize Our Mitochondrial Health | BodyBio
• Analytical evaluation of polyunsaturated fatty acids degradation during thermal oxidation of edible oils by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy – PubMed (nih.gov)
• Mitochondria (genome.gov)
• Brain Plasticity and Behaviour in the Developing Brain (nih.gov)
• Neuroplasticity in addictive disorders (nih.gov)

About Post Author

CW Pierce

Utah23.org@gmail.com

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