6 Reasons Why Cocaine And Sugar Are Essentially The Same Thing

Now that America has reached the point where more than 1 in 3 adults are considered to be obese, Dr. Fortuna thought it was time to create a few research projects in an attempt to explain why this epidemic is occurring and I thought I would translate his information into less scientific language for you all

1. Dopamine

Depending on your background you might be familiar with the fact that the feelings of of euphoria experienced when taking drugs are a result of dopamine and other hormones being released from your brain. But, I bet you didn't know that some pleasantly tasting foods such as ice cream, soda and a number of other sugary foods possess those same addictive qualities as drugs due to their effect on the brain. Additionally, thanks to the help of cute little lab mice in Dr. Jeffrey Fortuna's research lab, we now know that when consuming sugar, the release of dopamine is directly proportional to the concentration of sugar consumption. That means the more sugar you eat in one sitting the more euphoric you will feel! (Which can be extremely addicting)

2. Cravings

In order to speed things up I will quickly inform you that a cingulate gyrus or amygdala are are the parts of the brain that become stimulated when you have feelings associated with cravings. Therefore, Dr. Fortuna decided to hook up a recovering cocaine addict and an obese woman to one of those crazy looking brain monitor things and monitored these parts of the brain while providing them with visual cues. He first showed the cocaine addict a video of a person smoking crack cocaine and then showed the obese women a picture of a chocolate milkshake. What he found was that both of these people had identical neural responses in the brain! That means the obese women craved the milkshake just as much as the recovering cocaine addict craved cocaine!!!!!!!!!!

3. Loss of Control

Fortunately, as humans we have mechanisms like the lateral OFC in our brain that release hormones which keep us from over consuming food. In Dr. Fortuna's next study he again used the brain monitor on an obese person and a drug addict and found that both of their lateral OFC's were significantly less active than that of a normal person. This means that both food and drug addicts have brains that can't control their cravings and in the case of an obese people, their desire to consume sugary food actually overrides the desire to limit caloric intake!

4. Tolerance

Essentially what occurs when a person takes a drug, is that their brain is triggered to release dopamine into the bloodstream which then looks for receptors to bind to and once dopamine binds to its receptor the result is feelings of euphoria. However, if the receptors are over-used, eventually they will become less responsive and the feelings of euphoria will decrease. So, in order to achieve equivalent feelings as before, even more binding needs to occur and the only way this can occur is by consuming more drugs, which eventually leads to an overdoes. This SAME phenomena can be used as another explanation to why some people are guilty of bingeing. Since an obese person will want to feel the same satisfaction as when they had their first milkshake each time they pig out they now must consume more and more to feel the same effects. A FOOD OVERDOSE? I think so!

5. Depression

In addition to the release of dopamine, many drugs work by causing the brain to release serotonin, similarly various components in your food trigger the release of serotonin upon their consumption. Dr. Fortuna once again monitored the brains of a person diagnosed with an eating disorder as well as an alcoholic while they went on their respective bingeing behaviors. He found that before the binge, both of their serotonin levels were abnormally low and they both reported feelings of depression, however during the binge their serotonin levels spiked and they reported feelings of euphoria. This means that in order to combat with depression, the alcoholic turned to alcohol to elevate their mood while the one with an eating disorder would consume copious amounts of food (A little frightening to imagine myself consuming thousands of calories every time I was feeling sad or alcohol for that matter).

6. Relapse

In Dr. Fortuna last study, he first presented his mice to an unlimited amount of sugar for 2 hours in which they consumed the solution a relatively constant rate. The mice were then deprived of any sugar for 12 hours and then finally given back access to the sugar, but this time they displayed extreme bingeing behavior in which they consumed copious amounts of sugar in the first hour. (This sounds suspiciously similar to a relapsing drug addict to me!)