Swimming in a Soup of Dopamine: Food Addiction Special

July 17, 2021

Jul 17, 2021

Did you miss me? I missed you, like really… I did. I took the week off last week from my regularly scheduled Newsletter due to, well… LIFE.

We’re diving into dopamine and addiction a little more this week, swimming in a soup of dopamine as this title illustrates .. but with that in mind I also want to fill you in on some other waters I’m now swimming in too…

You see, I’ve had a lot of changes going on lately. New things and new information, confusing information and scary information, exciting information and quite simply too much information to handle.

I’ll mention just briefly:

I left a job that I loved to take a risk on a dream I believe in more
I’ve received questionable diagnosis and surprisingly more and more questions are being asked of the doctors than of me myself - I’m okay, I’m good, so don’t worry… but you probably know that most of us have something we’re struggling with when it comes to our health. Mine? Well those answers are still to be discovered and are not suited for this place here. I’m still writing, so don’t worry :)
Last Saturday, the day I usually send out this weekly newsletter was my birthday, right on the heels of my last day from that full-time career position in an opportunity I wouldn’t have ever thought I could achieve before. Safe to say, now past a quarter-century, I took some time to reflect on my values and my mission going forward, especially since I plunged into the arctic waters of the unknown after just leaving a life well lived in comfort and control with like-minded professionals in a community of support.

Was it too good to be true?

No, it was explicitly delicious with all the beautiful and wonderful things about holistic health and wellness I know, Love, and Preach on a regular basis… but you see the thing is… I started to hear whispers of my heart several months into the position, causing me to question my tenure, my resilience and my diligence to continue to flourish in my role. I had other itches that I needed to scratch, bigger career impactful questions I needed to ask, and those things became insatiably unbearable for me to shake.

You see, I have this inability to look the other way, to silence my values, my desires, those little nagging questions or crevices of thought that come into my brain or rise up in my heart. And I learned oh so much about myself in recent months of this deeper longing and listening before I had to come to face the reality that it was my time to leave for new lands.

I’m swimming upstream in the world of health and medicine, illness and disease. Just as the polluted waters showed us a couple weeks back that upstream events can have terribly detrimental and overlooked downstream effects. I’ve grown tired of seeing one man’s trash become the polluted soils of another while the doctors ask them both separately why they seem to be sick, diseased, and inextricably upset like they’ve given up on life as a whole.

I’m swimming upstream in the decrepit dark waters that we now face. I’m in pursuit of prevention and with hopes for education. And while I’ve just but only started in this newly envisioned, (maybe just more deeply understood and transparent with my heart) journey… I’ve already faced some harsh obstacles in my path, granted that’s come to be expected when you make such lofty, emotional, controversial claims and ask way too many questions as I do in the public’s eye.

I’m honestly excited though because I believe in this mission. I believe in the vision I have for the impact I want to make. And you know, this newsletter acts to support that mission and vision as well. While I do not ask for financial support or benefit monetarily at all from this Newsletter, I give you my word I reap plentiful rewards when I sit down to write and tell stories, to educate and endlessly edit these submissions up until I hit that button for “submit post.”

It’s thrilling, it’s cathartic, it’s healing to know I have someone to write to, to talk to, to help support in their own life. I mean that’s why I’m here after all and at the very least, that’s the greatest hope I can have… to influence but just one person in a positive way.

Over the next several weeks I may be deciding to share more insights and background information for what I have been planning and working on for the future. If you’d like to help in any way at all, do consider sharing this newsletter with a friend or family member, sharing it on social media with a little review on what you’ve learned or a great takeaway you’ve gained. You can even go back through the archives and pull out your favorite quotes, lessons, or stories I’ve told along the way.

Anyway, thanks for being here just yourself, just the way you are. I appreciate you reading and embarking on this journey together. Thank you :)

So, with all that ooooey gooey mushy stuff I’ve mentioned above out of the way as an update for where things are going for me… what do you say we get to the real talk real health education part of the Newsletter this week, ehh? What do you say… shall we ?

Connecting Dots for Conversations that Matter 💫

Over the last several years I have grown increasingly interested in the topics of food and nutrition, addiction medicine, psychology and mental health.

It’s been a heck of a ride - all the way from asking deeper questions of my professors in college with little to no answers being given in return, to me finally finding a community of folks online who share my perspective on nutrition and mental health who are changing the landscape in similar paths as I would like to pursue myself.

“Why don’t we talk about nutrition status for those challenged with mental health conditions? Don’t do you think nutrition and dietitian experts should be working alongside me to help professionals to promote a healthy whole person from the inside out?”

“With what we know about the gut-brain connection, how is it we ignore these important connections?”

Thankfully, I’ve been connecting with folks online who discuss many of the beloved topics I live to learn about and love educate others about - and most recently the controversial topic of Food Addiction has been on the rise.

Food Junkies Podcast

I found out that Medical Boards in Canada have actually started to recognize Food Addiction more broadly and the diagnosis of Food Addiction has even been submitted to the International Classification of Diseases by the World Health Organization to offer additional pathways for counseling and treatment support for folks, as well as igniting public health campaigns to combat food addiction (most notably connected to highly palatable ultra-processed foods) with enlightened creativity and open-minds to promote larger scale actions such as junk food taxes, better nutrition education in schools and more.

Article - “Addressing the poison in our food supply”

"What are the causes of food addiction? Quite simply, the same as drug addiction.....In essence, we need to apply the strategies that have been successful in tobacco control to hyper-palatable foods."

Directed by DOPAMINE

A few things to consider as food for thought for today’s topic:

Cells communicate back and forth throughout the human body and brain
Neurotransmitters - chemical messengers transferred between cells
Dopamine - quick hit of pleasure or euphoria - dopamine is a precursor for epinephrine aka adrenaline
Reward-motivated behavior - biological response mechanisms leading organisms (including humans) to continue actioning a behavior - motivating persistent repetition
Anticipation of Pleasure - We can often enjoy the pleasurable anticipation of events more than the actual pleasure attained during the event itself - in other words, pleasure begins when we begin to long for or anticipate the experience as our brain prepares for the expected pleasure
Stress & Mental / Emotional Pressure - the brain and body are naturally inclined for the path of least resistance, striding towards greatest pleasure and reward pathways of action and behavior for survival - i.e. the brain and body don’t want to continue to suffer
Biological Stress Response - aka “Fight or Flight” or Fright / Freeze as it has been dubbed - in times of stress our body responds with a release of chemical response messengers to either defend and attack, run away to safety, or as some of us have experienced ourselves, we freeze in panic instead.
Disarmed Decision Making - In times of stress - we lack adequate critical decision making, rational logic, or long-term thinking. Instead, our brain and body rely on quick, short term survivalist instincts, searching for ‘what will keep me safe, what will soothe my needs and resolve this stress NOW?’ We lose our sense of calm, reflection, and higher mental processing for decisions. In other words, we lose our abilities for what I call ‘recognize and respond’ actions for the latter highly volatile blind ‘reaction’ pathways.
Veracious Vulnerability - When we are in states of vulnerability, when we feel threatened or unsafe, sub-optimal in any way, we are more likely to pursue quick dopamine pleasure pathways of action in our lives, as our brains are in search of pleasure and what it perceives as safety associated with pleasure and reward - things that make us feel good.
Paleolithic Perspectives - The humans that roamed the earth thousands of years ago were equipped with only natural survival instincts that taught them safety and pleasure come from most notably 1) staying in your tribe to support survival for one another (alone you’re at risk of being eaten), 2) nourishing food whole for the body’s needs, and 3) an oasis of fresh water to drink along with others like a safe place to sleep, how and when to change location for optimal temperature regulation and more.
Modern Mayhem - Today’s humans face a vastly different landscape of potential addictive dopamine hits from artificial or super-stimuli beyond what the human system of cells and neuropathways were naturally designed to interpret. In other words, we get hijacked and ‘hooked’ as Michael Moss suggests in his most recent book by the same title. We were biologically designed for survival but in our modern marketing reward and pleasure promoting environments, overstimulating our biology, we get taken advantage of by the non-native stimuli in which we live. From food tastes to sights on screens, to lights and smells, and so much more…

The brain is a fantastic organ that frequently responds to experience and environmental factors. If a person feels burned out, for example, the brain can rewire itself to combat feelings of stress by entering into a type of survival mode.

We can compartmentalize (i.e. divide into sections) our lives in order to avoid pain and emotional distress while still walking through our everyday experiences.

Maybe we have a job we hate, so we shut off our emotions at work and ‘just do the work’ in order to ‘get through the day.’

Maybe we have deep heartache, childhood trauma, or a current rough relationship and we don’t take the time to grieve, so we just bury down deep..

Rather than pursuing prolonged pleasure (such as pathways for serotonin) - or sustained states of elation and inner joy - we can then end up relying on quick-hitting dopamine stimuli to give our brain a sense of pleasure despite our despairing conditions around us where we have shut down our emotional capacity.

And let me be clear, dopamine isn’t the devil… but you know the enticing kind of biological overload or even psychiatric hijacking of our biology from our environment… well, that’s the kind of hell fire that gets me heated up to talk about more. But Hades aside, dopamine itself is a fascinating chemical messenger to our brain for short term stimuli typically saying “hey that’s good, I like that thing, that’s a good thing, keep doing that thing.”

Dr. Andrew Huberman - Harnessing Your Biology in a Whole New Way, Using Dopamine to Your Unlock Your Greatest Growth and Keep You Motivated
- Video Link (less than 5 min)

We shouldn't be ignoring or silencing our natural emotions or the biochemical response signals strategically designed to keep us alive at any level of our lives, for they are the messengers to help us learn so much more about ourselves. “I like this, I don’t like that. This made me feel sad, that made me feel happy,” etc.

Yet, without living a life in a more natural state and within a more natural environment of stimuli, we fail to feel any sense of deeper interconnected self-reflection or self-awareness and it is nearly impossible to step into understanding ourselves at a deeper level to think, reflect, and learn how to be our very best selves in a truly optimal state of not just survival - but state of ambitious striving and thriving.

Okay, that was a mouthful… let’s take a breath…

…

As I continue to support the overall pursuit of iterative optimized states for human flourishing and for humans to reach for - step into - and believe in their abilities to live a life fulfilling their greatest human potential, I can’t help but speak on the impacts on our environment that chain us down and restrict us from leaping onward and upward with our imaginations and aspirations leading the way.

While many of us may have prevailed to move beyond living life in explicit survival, many more people still live in ways that prevent their fullest potential from taking the stage. From the potential for smoking or vaping locking someone into fragile nervous system resilience.. to dopaminergic stimuli from artificial food flavors, spiking pleasure signals from ultra-processed foods, or highly-sweetened products or even “natural” ingredients like stevia that drive motivational pathways for repeated use and are subject to lead our biology to behavioral overuse, misuse, and substance abuse.

We Don’t Want to End Up Tied to Consumerism, Living Blind to the Realities of Our Environments

Food Focused:
The 5 As of Industrialized Addiction:

Advertising - telling us we want it, others are doing it and we should too
Availability - here, there, and everywhere, triggers & stimuli everywhere
Affordability - industrialized to be cheap and easy to purchase anywhere
Addictive Capacity - how addictive can the biological response be
Age of Onset - the earlier the deeper the addiction

From Tobacco to Soda & Cereal to Vaping & Social Media Use today..

If You Didn't Know.. NOW YOU DO. No Longer to be Duped.

No longer to be taken advantage of by the marketing ploys and millions of dollars for scientifically induced addiction. Everyone deserves the chance for freedom and their own potential for greatest human flourishing.

These principles were well researched and defined by THE textbook author on
Food Addiction, Joan Ifland.

A few additional tips recommended for resilience and recovery include:

Clean up your Environment - removing triggers, time exposed to marketing messages, highly stimulatory food products, flavorings, etc.
Consuming more protein – amino acids play a critical role in structuring balance between regulatory neurotransmitters such as dopamine
Exercise Frequently – studies suggest mood improvements begin after 10 minutes of aerobic activity, and you can find movement that feels lovely and enjoyable for you, and take on the challenge to push yourself whenever you feel comfortable
Ensuring Adequate Sleep – high-quality sleep helps with concentration and coordination while also supporting natural balance, regulation for emotion and mental health support and even promoting better decision making
Get Outside – fresh air and sunlight can do wonders for happy chemicals in the brain and support the overall health of the body
Find Your Tribe - the power of the people you live and work around, those you speak with and walk with have a strong influence on your life now, and also your future. Find the folks who want to pursue the same lifestyle you desire for yourself and you may need to adjust the time and dedicated effort you spend in different communities of folks.

The Shared Playbook for Addiction:

🧠 Human Biology and Psychology

You’ve probably heard it before that Big Sugar learned from Big Tobacco and they shared their playbook to how to get us hooked, by marketing those Camels to Kiddos and they still sell cigarette candies today.. how disgusting.. 🐫 🐪

They sold it to doctors, to women, and even to kids. They created a movement around smoking, as many have suggested similar to major soft drink companies today.

Now today, we see the same exact ploys directed towards vaping, which I’ve discussed in the past. At the end of the day, every product marketplace is out to get our attention, our consumption and our return-customer ROI.

I just don’t want us to go around living life all blind and ignorant. I want us to know the truth so we can at least have a chance for freedom and be able to reach for a natural agency towards living a long and healthy life.

I mean, for goodness sakes… it’s difficult to realize just how screwed up our political affiliates and industrial relationships can be as it relates to big issue policies - from sugar to tobacco to agriculture to oil and climate change. Big pockets fund big promotional campaigns and sway political policies in favor of profits. Always.

However, I want to beg the question for all of us, how much is enough before we take a stand and ask for help for ourselves or if not for ourselves for our children. It’s actually quite terrifying for me to look around in all social sectors in which I interact and see just how pervasive food marketing has become.

People joke and laugh and tag #FOODPORN on social media and I grimace and look the other way because of the foul play of words and the association to the world of food. As a chef, a nutritionist, as an educator… it just seems like all too much.

Folks in other countries look at us like:

“What are you doing to the simplicity of eating food with family and friends? You’ve deconstructed food, crafted your own concoctions and now you’ve perverted the entire essence of ‘food for human pleasure and honest nourishment’ itself? Now it’s become something else entirely, dirty, guilty, and shameful.”

It is something strange we often do here in America….

Changing an entire industry, the entire experience for human life globally while inflating our hyperbolic egos and ignore our interconnected natural biology as humans to the planet, our home.

Anyway, I could go on for days about how strange we can be at times..

Takeaways and Tactics:

Okay, so just a few takeaways I think would be good for folks based on this current discussion:

Be aware of the environment, being mindful and acknowledging the situation is the first step
Monitor the messages we hear, see, and even the inner dialogues we tell ourselves
Find trusted sources of information and community connections for support
- (it takes a village, and we should rally together)
Begin taking steps forward towards enlightened understandings for human biology and how the many non-native items in our current lives can disrupt that natural biology.
Take Care of You too Don't forget your own needs too :)

Now, a handful of tactical tools on how to take back your biology by setting up environments that support your goals, your values and how you want to live your life (without what they tell you that you want).

MIITL - Make It Impossible To Lose
- Example: Halloween Candy, don’t bring it in the house, then you won’t find yourself gorging leftovers, stealing from your kids saying “At least I’m saving them from ruining their health…”
Make the Easy Choice the Easy Choice -
- Example: Put the big bright, colorful fruits and veggies EVERYWHERE in the kitchen, in the fridge, in your work kitchens, anywhere and everywhere to help make it insanely easy to make a healthier easier choice to go for a fruit or vegetable versus a highly processed granola bar or fruit snacks or potato chips from the vending machine.
Find A Buddy: We do better when we work together, share our goals, and have support in our personal health journeys. Find someone you know, like and trust and work through personal challenges, steps for success, and keep each other motivated through difficult times with accountability, and gamification.
Withdrawal is Real - it SUCKS - don’t hide from it, don’t fight it…
- let it be real to you then you can acknowledge its presence, and take hold of yourself with restfulness and resolution grasping validating truth that yes indeed you can overcome and you can recover from anything. And sometimes, abstinence is a better path for people who have a true sense, even more hard-wired for addiction… and we can usually see this in their personalities, and they themselves often know it quite well too.
Get Good Sleep - We’re better, stronger, more resilient and more balanced in our mental processes, emotional stabilities, and decision making when we have a chance to truly rejuvenate and reset by getting into our deeper sleep cycles.

Summary

Food Addiction is Real
Ultra-Processed Food Addiction (Sugar, Fat, Salt) is often to blame
Dopamine directs a lot of our biology
Lots of psychology, chemistry, research, science, media and marketing has went into trying to keep you connected as a lifelong customer consumer
Self-awareness is critical for your personal health journey
You can find recovery and a better balance with any battle
It’s easier if you don’t try to do it alone, so stay connected and bring others into your life so you can both be better at striving to live your best lives possible.

Let me know how you really feel about this topic and feel free to share with a fellow health advocate friend or family member. 💙

Every new season brings new delight and new challenges. This is the ebb and flow of life and our values will continue to be our guiding compass leading our steps forward.

We Zig and We Zag, as we learn to adapt. We need help, and we’re in this together! 💪

If you didn’t already know, I run a private facebook group for folks to gain more content, engage in more ideas and discussions. You’re welcome to join and connect.

If you want to follow me on Instagram for more food, health, and visually appealing content, you can do that here as well. I recently shared 5 of my top spices to bring into your life to spice up your cultural palate. I’ll give you a hint, 1) Za’atar, 2) Sumac and the rest are at the full post as well as how to use them if you want to check out more!

With Peace and Love,