In upcoming posts, I plan to pursue two main themes. The first is a more comprehensive exploration of what determines eating behavior in humans, the neurobiology behind it, and the real world implications of this research. The reward and palatability value of food are major factors, but there are others, and I've spent enough time focusing on them for the time being. Also, the discussions revolving around food reward seem to be devolving into something that resembles team sports, and I've had my fill.The second...
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
Monday, 26 March 2012
Recent Media Appearances
Posted by Admin in: Food reward overweight
Men's Health interviewed and quoted me in an article titled "Reprogram Your Metabolism", written by Lou Schuler. Part of the article was related to the food reward concept. I'm glad to see the idea gradually reaching the mainstream. Boing Boing recently covered an article by Dr. Hisham Ziauddeen and colleagues in Nature Reviews Neuroscience that questioned the idea that common obesity represents food addiction-- an idea that I often encounter in my reading. Maggie Koerth-Baker asked me if I wanted to...
Thursday, 22 March 2012
Food Reward: Approaching a Scientific Consensus
Posted by Admin in: Food reward overweight
Review papers provide a bird's-eye view of a field from the perspective of experts. Recent review papers show that many obesity researchers are converging on a model for the development of obesity that includes excessive food reward*, in addition to other factors such as physical inactivity, behavioral traits, and alterations in the function of the hypothalamus (a key brain region for the regulation of body fatness). Take for example the four new review papers I posted recently by obesity and reward researchers:Read...
Monday, 19 March 2012
Speaking at AHS12
Posted by Admin
I'll be giving a 40 minute presentation at the Ancestral Health Symposium this summer titled "Digestive Health, Inflammation and the Metabolic Syndrome". Here's the abstract:The “metabolic syndrome” is a cluster of health problems including abdominal obesity, insulin resistance, low-grade inflammation, high blood pressure and blood lipid abnormalities that currently affects one third of American adults. It is the quintessential modern metabolic disorder and a major risk factor for diabetes, heart disease and certain...
Saturday, 17 March 2012
Qsymia (formerly Qnexa), the Latest Obesity Drug
Posted by Admin in: Food reward overweight
There are very few obesity drugs currently approved for use in the US-- not because effective drugs don't exist, but because the FDA has judged that the side effects of existing drugs are unacceptable. Although ultimately I believe the most satisfying resolution to the obesity epidemic will not come from drugs, drugs offer us a window into the biological processes that underlie obesity and fat loss. Along those lines, here's a quote from a review paper on obesity drugs that I think is particularly enlightening (1):Read...
Friday, 9 March 2012
Boing!
Posted by Admin in: diet Food reward hyperphagia overweight
I just had a featured article published on Boing Boing, "Seduced by Food: Obesity and the Human Brain". Boing Boing is the most popular blog on the Internet, with over 5 million unique visitors per month, and it's also one of my favorite haunts, so it was really exciting for me to be invited to submit an article. For comparison, Whole Health Source had about 72,000 unique visitors last month (200,000+ hits).The article is a concise review of the food reward concept, and how it relates to the current obesity epidemic. ...
Saturday, 3 March 2012
Tweet
Posted by Admin
I've decided, on the sage advice of a WHS reader, to join the world of Twitter. I'll be using it to announce new posts, as well as communicating papers that I find interesting, but either don't have time to blog about or think are too technical for a general audience. My tag is "whsource". Head on over to Twitter if you want to follow my tweet...
