by Joan Kent | Sep 28, 2016 | Health and Wellness
Binge eating is legal, of course, and fairly common. It also appears to be a victimless crime. Who cares if you eat 3 quarts of mashed potatoes, or finish off a few pints of ice cream?
But what if we view the victim concept more broadly?
Health
Not many people binge on broccoli or kale. When someone binges, it’s usually on junk that can affect health negatively.
In general, binge trigger foods are known to be high in sugar, fat, or both. The most common binge foods include ice cream, cookies, chocolate, milkshakes, chips, pasta, and bread with butter and jam.
Most of these foods trigger high levels of insulin. That high insulin will result in a short-term increase in serotonin. That’s one reason we choose these foods for bingeing. But we’ll look at serotonin and other brain chemicals later.
Over time, high insulin can cause a variety of health-related problems: insulin resistance; type-2 diabetes; hypertension; high LDL (bad) cholesterol; low HDL (good) cholesterol; high triglycerides; heart disease; certain cancers; formation of series 2 prostaglandins, which trigger inflammation, pain and more; and inhibition of white blood cell function, leading to incomplete healing and chronic inflammation.
Because of food selection, quantities eaten, and the frequency of binges, the long-term health effects of binge eating shouldn’t be dismissed. The conditions may affect work attendance and productivity, and add costs for the companies that provide medical insurance for their employees.
Appetite and Weight
Sugar triggers a release of dopamine. Dopamine, a brain feel-good chemical, can prompt cravings for more sugar — perhaps later the same day, the next day, or even for several days following.
Sugar also triggers endorphins (beta-endorphin). Endorphin increases appetite by inhibiting the satiety function of the VMH (the ventromedial hypothalamus).
Obesity is more than a possible result of this specific effect of sugar on the brain; it’s real and epidemic. The obesity epidemic was brought to us courtesy of the sneaky, underhanded dealings of the sugar industry that started in the 1970s (or before) and continued for a few decades.
Dopamine and endorphins change food preferences in the direction of foods high in sugar, fat, or both. That further contributes to obesity.
Obesity itself has health consequences, many of which are in the list above. Sleep apnea, asthma, osteoarthritis, gallbladder disease, stroke, gout, depression and other mental issues can be added to the list.
These health problems may affect work productivity, and someone pays for medical costs linked with the problems, so again bingeing is not without consequences.
Moods and Behaviors
Bingeing on sugary foods can wreak havoc on mood. Moods can go up and down — and include irritability when glucose drops after the initial temporary boost.
Clients have told me that they’ve snapped at coworkers, their kids, their spouse, or a waiter. They’ve said, “I always promise myself I won’t do it, but then I do.”
It doesn’t benefit their personal or business relationships to have moods that are erratic, or to be irritable and impatient.
For that matter, some of my clients promise themselves they’ll stay away from a particular food, only to end up eating it.
Anytime our behavior is a mystery to us, it always has a neurochemical origin — and the foods people tend to binge on are big brain chemical changers.
It has been postulated that the biological need for serotonin underlies binge eating. Serotonin has been called — somewhat mistakenly — a happiness chemical. What serotonin actually does is lead to more of a lethargic state, which I believe is what binge eaters may be looking for, rather than happiness.
Serotonin opens the space, so to speak, between thought and action, making them less reactive to the stress around them. You might think of it as a serotonin coma: they’ve had a tough day at work, the kids are crying, the phone’s ringing, the dog is barking, but they feel almost distant from it.
Animals Do It and So Do People
Back in 1983, E.M. Stricker wrote, “Animals eat not for nutrition per se, but for optimal arousal.” The arousal Stricker referred to comes from the changes in brain chemistry that certain foods promote.
People do the same thing.
Binge eating is not a victimless crime. Health, appetite, food preferences, and weight may seem to affect only the binge eater. As suggested above, though, those can affect others through the health problems they cause and the costs to businesses in lost productivity and medical charges.
And because moods and behaviors are affected by the most common binge foods, we could say binge eating makes families, friends and coworkers the victims.
Most importantly, of course, binge eating and its effects on health, weight and mood make the binge eater the primary victim. Along with everything described above, there’s the “inner” effect. Binge eaters often experience shame and guilt that affect their self-esteem. Bingeing is typically done alone, and binge eaters worry about being caught.
The neurochemical piece is something I contribute to help binge eaters stop being the victims of their own eating behaviors and start feeling great.
Sometimes binge eaters who’ve tried everything to stop bingeing can’t stop because of cravings. I help them stop cravings and bingeing, so they can lose weight and reverse their health problems. For a free copy of “Stop Bingeing NOW! 3 Simple Steps For Stopping a Binge Once It Starts,” please visit www.LastResortNutrition.com
by Joan Kent | May 13, 2016 | Health and Wellness
Do you get cravings at night? Are they often for alcohol, or for sugar? Do you have trouble getting to sleep without at least one of them? This post covers a simple plan for handling night cravings.
Foods change brain chemistry (and more, but let’s stick with brain chemistry for now).
Both alcohol and sugar can change brain chem in a big way — and in almost the same way.
Serotonin is a brain chemical that makes us feel relaxed. It can reduce rotten moods (dysphoria) from depression, SAD (seasonal affective disorder), PMS, anxiety, and more.
At night, we tend naturally to want to increase our serotonin so we can relax.
Serotonin is also the precursor of melatonin, sometimes called the sleep hormone. (Melatonin is important for many reasons, including its anti-inflammatory benefits, but that’s a separate topic.)
Bottom line, serotonin can help us wind down and get to sleep. It seems logical that, before bed, we’d want something serotonin-boosting to help us do that.
Alcohol and sugar are frequent options.
Will Alcohol Put You To Sleep?
Alcohol can help you fall asleep. In fact, you might even have started using alcohol as a late-night relaxant because it put you to sleep a few times before. The brain remembers that and will prompt a craving for something that worked in the past when it wants to fall asleep. (It’s about brain chem, but let’s keep things simple.)
But if it’s good sleep you’re after, alcohol isn’t the best choice. It will change the quality of your sleep — and not for the better.
Until your body has processed the alcohol completely, you’ll stay in lighter sleep stages. The full sleep cycle includes light and deep stages. Deeper sleep (theta and delta waves) is the most restorative, so sleep brought on by alcohol might leave you feeling less refreshed than more natural sleep.
Is Sugar Any Better For Sleep?
Late-night cravings for sugar might be prompted for a similar reason to alcohol cravings. Maybe eating something sugary helped you get to sleep on several occasions, so the brain sends signals asking for that same sleep “cure.”
Sugar and alcohol can wake us after a few hours and make it difficult to get back to sleep. This has more to do with low glucose levels than with brain chemistry, but the impact on your night’s sleep can be severe. In both cases, the effect in the morning may be dramatic and unpleasant.
It’s easy to be casual about sugar consumption, thinking sugar’s “just” food. Actually, it’s a drug with strong effects on brain chemistry and more.
Don’t underestimate the impact of sugar on your morning-after. One of my clients said that, after eating a lot of sugar at night, she used to wake up feeling “like I’ve been run over by a truck.” Another client described it as a “sugar hangover.” Both are accurate!
Mixed drinks include alcohol and a mixer that typically contains sugar, so you’re likely to get all of the above effects — less restful sleep, middle-of-the-night awakenings, and AM hangovers. If so, you may need a better alternative.
What Works Better Than Alcohol or Sugar?
Please keep in mind that the end game is to increase serotonin. Starches will do that, and usually without side effects.
Starches are the foods that most people call “carbs” — even though plenty of other foods are carbs, too. (Vegetables, fruits, and roots, for example, are carbs. Yes.)
Starches include lentils, quinoa, sweet potatoes, rice, potatoes, pumpkin and other squash, beans, bread, and more. And it doesn’t take a lot to trigger sleep.
A small serving of one of the above starches will help you get to sleep. Just eat it about 60 to 90 minutes before your desired bedtime and let it work for you.
If you feel you need a slightly bigger serotonin boost, try adding a bit of saturated fat to the starch, such as coconut oil or butter. The combination will increase your insulin release and your serotonin production.
If you try this a couple of times and find that it doesn’t work, haul out the big guns. Have a little turkey with one of the combinations above, making a powerful sleep-inducing trifecta.
Keep your portions small to avoid feeling stuffed or ill as you lie in bed. The goal is just to change brain chem, not to eat an extra meal.
Much more can be said about cravings, and will be in a future post.
by Joan Kent | May 2, 2016 | Health and Wellness
Are your mouth and jaw getting the food workout they need? Here’s why we should eat — rather than drink — our food and chew it thoroughly.
Chewing Starts the Digestive Process
Digestion begins in the mouth. Saliva contains amylase and lipase, enzymes needed for starch and fat digestion.
Adequate chewing increases saliva to lubricate food, which eases its passage through the esophagus when we swallow.
Chewing signals the GI tract to prepare for food. The stomach makes gastric juice, comprised of enzymes, hydrochloric acid, and other substances. The pancreas prepares to secrete enzymes and bicarbonate into the small intestine. Extra saliva relaxes the pylorus so food can exit the stomach and move into the small intestine.
Enzymes and stomach acid work on the surface of food only. Chewing increases the surface area available for them to work. That’s especially important for the digestion of protein, which has many functions in the body.
But all foods need to be chewed small enough for stomach acid to further reduce them in size. That enhances bioavailability, the faster release and fuller absorption of nutrients and fluids into the GI tract.
In fact, most of the foods we don’t chew enough tend to be carbohydrates, such as bread and rice. They absolutely need amylase for digestion, but can be easy to swallow without adequate chewing.
Dogs eat carbs the right way. A dog will simply swallow meat; its digestive system can process meat in that whole state. Give a dog a piece of bread, though, and the chewing begins.
But back to humans…
Chewing Increases Satiety, the Had-Enough Feeling
Sensors throughout the GI tract monitor nutrient levels and the amount of chewing, tasting and swallowing involved in a meal. Giving your mouth and jaw a good food workout can bring on fullness signals sooner.
Foods with harder, crunchier textures — apples, raw broccoli, carrots, celery — require more chewing. They also provide more nutrients than semi-soft fats, or junk foods. So choosing foods that require lots of jaw action could lead to greater satiation — which ends the meal — and satiety, how soon we want our next meal.
Chewing longer helps to raise glucose levels. Those in turn raise insulin levels. Insulin is involved in satiety and feedback loops that end a meal, again marking chewing as a key satiety factor.
What About Hormones?
Chewing thoroughly helps to release higher levels of CCK (cholecystokinin). CCK is a powerful satiety hormone, so releasing more of it can decrease appetite for a longer time.
CCK is released primarily when we eat protein and fats, but its satiety function tends to be specific to carbs.
The chewing-and-CCK connection could help vegans, for example. They often have strong cravings for carbs generally and sugar in particular, due to their low protein intake and low levels of CCK. Chewing foods for a longer time could help vegans eliminate sugar cravings by increasing their CCK levels. (So could more protein, but that’s another article.)
Then there’s ghrelin, truly a monster hormone. It increases appetite and decreases energy expenditure. Yikes. More chewing increases satiety by decreasing levels of ghrelin.
In a country that produces 3950 calories per day for every man, woman and child, no one needs more ghrelin. So if simply chewing longer can reduce ghrelin levels, by all means chew longer.
Longer chewing time appears to be more important than gastric volume — the classic signal of satiety — when it comes to the feeling of satiety.
Chewing May Help With Weight Loss
In a research study, participants consumed 150 calories prior to serving themselves from a buffet meal. The ones who had been given a pre-meal snack of solid food ate about 150 calories fewer from the buffet, compared with controls.
Those given the 150-calorie snack in liquid form, though, did not decrease their meal size.
Eating fast, taking large bites, and swallowing quickly after less chewing are behaviors that tend to be associated with overeating and higher body weight.
Hard foods (raw broccoli and the like) may decrease bite size, while soft foods (ice cream, cake, pudding) tend to increase bite size. Hard foods also require more chewing, slowing down the meal.
Another study compared pizza chewed 40 times with 15 times per bite. Chewing longer left participants feeling less hungry, less preoccupied with food, and with a decreased desire for food.
Chewing 40 times per bite also increased plasma glucose and insulin, which increases satiety, as described above. So longer chewing time may decrease food intake at a given meal.
But the longer chewing time did not decrease intake at the next meal, given 3 hours later.
Not surprisingly, longer chewing needs to be repeated at each meal to reduce calorie intake successfully.
Chewing May Increase Dining Pleasure
Chewing is a large part of mindful eating, which includes savoring the aroma, anticipating each bite, and experiencing each bite fully. Longer chewing releases more flavors from foods, and longer contact with the taste buds may lead to greater satisfaction with the meal — as well as a greater sense of fullness and satiety.
All of this can decrease the total amount of food eaten at a meal. The pleasure from a given food decreases during the meal. It’s commonly referred to as the “satiety cascade,” but I learned it in science journals as “aliesthesia,” a decrease in a food’s palatability as hunger subsides.
Staying more aware of the change in taste sensation by chewing longer could focus the meal on quality instead of on quantity. That may be particularly true if and when the meal slows down.
Again, choosing harder foods with crunch and texture will take longer to eat and may contribute to increased satisfaction with the meal.
Increase Your Oral Processing Time (Say What?)
Keep food in your mouth longer. Here are guidelines.
– Eat when you’re physically hungry so your body is really ready for food.
– Include plenty of harder, crunchier foods, like vegetables.
– Take small bites.
– Don’t chew right away. Hold the food in your mouth for a moment or two before starting to chew.
– Slow down. The method that seems to work best is to start the meal at a normal rate until the initial hunger has passed. Then slow to about half speed.
– Chew longer! This may be an individual thing that takes some explanation:
Apparently, we don’t like chewing food more than we have to, and that can vary with a given food. In the pizza study above, researchers postulated that 40 times per bite changed the characteristics of the food enough to make the food less appealing and decrease appetite.
Maybe it’s necessary to get used to this new eating practice by counting at first. Once the habit is there, instead of counting chews per bite, just chew till the texture of the food — not the taste — no longer reveals what the food is. For example, if you can distinguish between a broccoli stalk and a floret in your mouth, you need to keep chewing.
Whatever your reason for chewing more — better digestion, better health, greater dining pleasure, increased satiety, weight loss — all can start with this one change.
“Nature will castigate those who don’t masticate.” — Horace Fletcher (1849-1919)
by Joan Kent | Apr 11, 2016 | Engage Your Students, Health and Wellness
My last post covered food intolerances and the changes that occur over time, from the acute reaction to a more chronic one.
The immune response to a triggering food involves a release of stress hormones, opioids, such as endorphins (beta-endorphin), and chemical mediators like serotonin. The combination can produce temporary symptom relief through the analgesic action of endorphin and serotonin, plus mood elevation and a feeling of relaxation.
In that way, eating the triggering food may make someone feel better almost immediately and even think the food is beneficial.
Endorphin release typically involves a concomitant release of dopamine. The combination of those two brain chemicals and serotonin forms what I’ve always called the “addictive package.” Avoiding the addictive food could lead to withdrawal.
After long-term use, someone may eat the triggering food not to experience the pleasure of the chemical “high,” but to relieve the distress and withdrawal without it. It’s almost textbook addiction.
How Does Intolerance/Addiction Affect Health?
As someone addicted to a triggering food continues to eat more of it, the immune system must keep adapting, and may become hyper-sensitized, reacting to more and more foods — especially those eaten together with reaction-triggering foods, or with sugar.
The constant demand on the immune system can lead to immune exhaustion and degenerative reactions, depending on genetic weaknesses. The signs and symptoms listed above are just a start.
Sugar can be a major player in this because it causes inflammation in the body and makes it more susceptible to food reactions. Eating triggering foods plus sugar can make it even more likely that new reactions will occur.
I recall an old book by Nancy Appleton (Lick the Sugar Habit) who suggested that eggs might trigger reactions in many people because they’re so frequently eaten at breakfast with orange juice. Cake is another example: sugar plus wheat, eggs, milk.
As the addictions continue, cravings occur, probably leading to increased consumption. As more and more foods trigger an immune response, the result may be malnutrition, as explained in the last post.
Stats say that rates of food intolerances are rising. My theory is that it’s at least partly due to sugar in our diets — including sneaky sugars that are often viewed as healthful, such as agave, fruit, fruit juice, and sweeteners.
Stopping the Cycle
Definitely give up any foods you suspect may be causing any reactions — even if you love them. Think about foods you eat with those triggering foods on a regular basis, and consider eliminating those, as well.
Above all, avoid sugar. Follow this plan for 3 weeks, something J.J. Virgin also recommends.
In the meantime, you may have cravings. If so, use my proven, time-tested recommendation of a teaspoon of liquid B-complex (complete B-complex) to kill the craving within minutes.
At the end of the 3-week elimination, you should be feeling — and looking — much better.
by Joan Kent | Feb 22, 2016 | Health and Wellness
About a year ago, I received questions from a man in my email community. They were good ones, so I devoted part of a seminar to them.
“I want to know how food can create low mood and low energy. I mostly want a methodical way to fix things. I'm also interested to know if your tastes can change over time so that you'll like good foods.
“As someone who has never really had high mood or energy for the better part of 8 years now despite trying many exercise programs, diet is really my last thing to try. It would be nice to have some idea what can happen.”
Overall, low mood or energy is probably the result of how the foods we eat can affect glucose and brain chemistry.
I’ll simplify (oversimplify) and keep the answer to three basic aspects: glucose, serotonin, and protein.
Food Affects Glucose, Mood and Energy
Some foods can cause large fluctuations in blood glucose. The result can be a pattern of sharp rises in glucose, followed by sharp drops. Some people are highly susceptible to those fluctuations, so they feel good when glucose is up, and crummy when it’s down.
The most important factor in the glucose drops is not how low, but how fast, it falls.
Those fast glucose drops can bring on a variety of symptoms in susceptible people. Some symptoms may be physical (headaches, low energy), some may be emotional (irritability, depression, mood swings), and some may be mental (confusion, decision-making difficulties). Yet all of them — and many more — may be related to glucose peaks and valleys.
Foods that can trigger big glucose fluctuations are typically junkier carbs, such as cookies, cakes, pastries, white flour breads and other products — or even combinations of starches and saturated fats (potatoes with butter, for example).
Food Affects Brain Chem, Moods and Energy
If someone who’s carb-sensitive — defined as exaggerated insulin release in response to certain carbs — eats lots of junky carbs, he/she can make lots of serotonin. It’s linear: big insulin means big serotonin production. We’ll skip the mechanism because I’ve covered that in previous posts, and in my book.
We know that serotonin receptors can and do down-regulate — for example, in response to anti-depression meds that target serotonin levels.
Down-regulation is a decrease in the number of receptors plus a decrease in the sensitivity of the ones that remain. The result? Serotonin won’t work as well.
That’s why dosages may need to be adjusted over time.
Now, to my knowledge, no one has researched serotonin receptor down-regulation with respect to food.
But ever since I did the research for my dissertation, I’ve had a theory that such a down-regulation of serotonin receptors might very well occur in carb-sensitive people who eat lots of junky carbs, such as sugar. Call it an educated speculation.
If that’s the case, it would explain rotten moods resulting from a less-than-optimal diet.
And That Brings Us Back To Protein
Protein in your diet allows you to make the brain chemicals — serotonin is only one — that boost mood and also prevent cravings for junk.
Protein contains the amino acids to make brain chemicals that make us feel alert and mentally energized.
Protein triggers hormones that produce satiety and decrease the desire for carbs. Both can help prevent overeating junky carbs that trigger low energy and low moods. The same hormones can also prevent continuation of a poor diet that may cause those undesirable effects.
I’ve pushed the benefits of protein many times. No discussion of energy, mood and food would be complete without it.
Eating “good” fats will also help to boost mood, but I vowed to keep this to 3 oversimplified points. So let’s save fats and mood for another post….
