Ho Hos and Heroin…more in common than you might think!

By Dan

Ok well maybe that’s a little extreme but scientists have found a link between the effects of junk food consumption and the effects of heroin (and other drugs) on the brain. Scientist Paul Johnson and his team wanted to understand how parts of the brain play a role in obesity and addiction.

We’ve all experienced the “I can’t eat just one” syndrome. It happens with all kinds of delicious, not-so-healthy foods like chips, fried anything and sweets. We know how it feels when this happens to us, but would the same thing happen in rats?

Johnson and his team studied the “pleasure center” of the rats’ brains. This intricate network of nerve cells release chemicals into the body that make it feel happy and good. It’s sort of like a reward system. For example, if a rat (or person even) exercises or eats, it makes the body feel good and they will want to repeat said behavior.

This is also where the heroin comparasion comes into play — Sometimes these pleasure centers release the chemicals in less healthy ways, like drugs or alcohol.

Johnson gathered up the fattiest, most high-calorie junk food he could find — stuff like cheesecake, bacon and Ho Hos to a special group of rats. The control group of rats were given a nutritious diet. He soon noticed that the rats who were eating the junk food began to consume more and more.

Why was this happening?

To investigate further, Johnson and his team figured out a way to deliver a small electrical charge to the pleasure centers in the rats’ brains. The charge would stimulate the brain to release the pleasure-causing chemicals. The rats could control how much pleasure they got by running on a wheel. The junkfood rats had to run more and more to achieve a good level of pleasure. It seems as though these rats needed more brain stimulation to feel good vs. the rats on a normal diet. Their pleasure centers were becoming less sensitive and their usual amount of junk food didn’t make them feel as good so they had to have more! This is also what happens in the brains of drug addicts.

Johnson found that this effect was hard to reverse. He gave the junkfood rats a normal healthy meal and they refused to eat…for two weeks after their junkfood was taken away!

Hopefully with more studies like this one, scientists will be able to understand obesity and addiction and help people avoid them in the first place.

www.sciencenewsforkids.org