Tuesday 7 February 2012

The Role of Pleasure and Reward in Food Addiction

There is a link between food addiction and how our brains are hard wired for pleasure and reward. Most unhealthy foods have addictive qualities. One way to overcome food addiction is to learn hypnosis so that you can be in control of you. With self-hypnosis you can take back your power from addiction.

Hedonic (Happy) System Our brains are hard wired for pleasure and reward in the mesolimbic system (a.k.a. “twinkie circuit”) which can make food act like a drug addiction. Dopamine motivates our behavior and strengthens our anticipation. It encourages us to engage in a complex set of pursuit- and- acquisition behaviors. Dopamine drives desire through a survival-based capacity known as “attentional bias”, which is the exaggerated amount of attention paid to highly rewarding stimuli at the expense of other (neutral) stimuli. This gives rewarding foods (and other rewarding experiences) prominence in our minds so that we focus our attention on pursuing them. We get a hit of “happy.”

Food activates brain reward circuitry both through palatability (involves endogenous opioids and cannabinoids) and through changes in ghrelin, insulin and leptin concentrations (this is how homeostatic and hedonic systems normally interact in the control of food intake and regulation of body weight.

Drugs activate this same circuitry via their direct effects on dopamine cells or indirectly through neurotransmitters that modulate dopamine cells such as opiates, nicotine, y-aminobutyric acid or cannabinoids.

Through hypnosis for weight loss, you can end the addiction to food and create healthy and natural ways of happiness.

Source: Hypnosis Health Info