Change Your Brain Every Day - The Science Behind the Food Addiction with Dr. David Perlmutter

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

Why is it that we so often turn to unhealthy food for comfort, even when deep down we know that food is contributing to this discomfort? The answers may surprise you. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen is joined again by Dr. David Perlmutter for a discussion on the food industry, specifically how it genetically engineers foods to act on certain areas of your brain, making it harder to resist.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Okay, welcome back. I am here with Dr. David Perlmutter. We're talking about food and the brain. And in the last podcast, we just started talking about some of the addictive nature of food. Who knew when Lay's Potato Chips came out with the slogan, bet you can't eat just one, that they weren't lying. That food is actually engineered to get stomach share.

You know, there's this thing called shelf share or no, it's stomach share that that's what food companies are after. So continue with your thought on the opiate epidemic. Well, where we were, we were looking at the wheat protein called gluteomorphin and caseomorphin that is a product of consumption of dairy products from cows. And just the notion that we are consuming then these morphine-like substances that are constantly bombarding those receptors in our brains. When we don't have them, we still need to satisfy those receptors because they're calling out. They're like the little baby birds in the nest that just keep their mouths open until mom drops a worm in their throat. And that's what the

receptors look like. And when we stop stimulating them, they want more. And I'm going to take it a little bit further, if I may, that many of our activities that are not necessarily food-based stimulate from an area of the brain called the VTA, the ventral tegmental area, dopamine, the neurotransmitter to the nucleus accumbens, then causes our bodies to create these endogenous morphine-like chemicals that stimulate morphine receptors in the brain, not even food-related. This dopamine surge we can get from gambling, from online shopping, from being obsessed with the number of likes that our selfies get, any of these forms of activities that ultimately can be looked upon as addictive creates a situation where we are further stimulating our brains with these opiate-like

chemicals. So we look at that in the context of the so-called opiate epidemic and the number of deaths related to opiate exposure these days. So I think it's both supply and demand. I think, yes, it's a supply issue, but we've got to understand that the demand is being cultivated and manipulated by the very people who want you to eat that Lay's potato chip or who offer you up online gambling or pornography or whatever it is that you may be drawn to and cannot satisfy. And it's often that these things are offered up as a sense, as a way of achieving happiness. And they do everything but.

I mean, they, you know, happiness is a, is connection to that decision part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, empathy, happiness, compassion, forward thinking, understanding the consequences of your actions, executive function, making the right decisions. You wrote in your book, your recent book, about how, why is it when you go to the restaurant, what do they serve you first, bread and white bread

and alcohol? Page 222 in Feel Better Fast. Got it right here, matter of fact. Thank you so much. Why do they do that? And it's not like they understand neurochemistry, but it's clear that when people eat simple carbs as well as alcohol, you distance yourself from the decision-making part of your brain and you go to the impulse part of your brain where you do things impulsively. And that whole circuitry continues ultimately to stimulate the opiate part of your brain, if you will, and keeps you more and more locked in and further keeps you from accessing that prefrontal part of your brain, prefrontal

cortex that allows you to be the better person that you want to be. It allows you to connect with other people and to understand how today's decisions might play out in terms of consequences for tomorrow. So what I'm developing here is this theme that our food, for example, simple carbs, foods that cause the dopamine surge, as Dr. Robert Lustig talked about in The Hacking of the American Mind, ultimately are keeping us from making connections to empathy and compassion and forward thinking and causing us to be far more narcissistic and wanting to be involved in immediate gratification and impulsivity. You know, if somebody says something about you, you immediately fire back a tweet in

response as opposed to taking a deep breath and thinking well maybe there's a reason that they were critical towards me i should work on something whatever and planning for the future and worrying and making changes in your life that have an impact on the health of the planet for example on environment. So as we look around and we see the involution of countries, the nationalism that's rising, paying attention only to our needs as opposed to the planet's needs, that very well, through this mechanism, may well also represent the westernization of the global diet, a more inflammatory diet,

a diet that inhibits our connection to that part of the brain that defines us as being human beings. Right. So the prefrontal cortex, that front third of your brain, largest in humans and any other animal by far, is that it's getting turned off repeatedly by foods, by our behavior. It's why I've never been a fan of alcohol as a health food, because as a psychiatrist, I just see so many more problems with it. And in Feel Better Fast, I talk about tiny habits. So what's the smallest thing I can do today that'll make the biggest difference? And so thinking of our time together, the ultimate tiny habit for brain health is ask yourself, is what I'm about to do good for my brain or bad for it? And if you know the list that we've been talking about in this

series of podcasts, your brain is going to be so much healthier, which means you're also going to start preventing chronic preventable illnesses. And let's add to the list you will regain happiness and contentedness you know contentedness by definition is you have enough and it's really the opposite of what is being perpetrated and presented to us we that we never have enough we never are rich enough thin enough sexy enough uh we don't have the best car with a bigger house whatever it may be buy all this stuff online that that is what that is what our goal should be and that's being perpetrated upon us as being the keys to the kingdom and it's not in fact it's keeping us from achieving those goals so as you've written about, thinking about, just thinking about what are those factors

that you can initiate immediately that can help protect your brain, it's the execution though. You have the knowledge, but it's the actual execution of those right decisions that we are being detracted from quite actively. You know, the targeted ads that come to in your inbox that somehow, you know, know what your interests are. You know, is it a conspiracy? Yeah, by every definition, it is a conspiracy. Becoming aware of it and turning off what is not social media.

It's anything but social. So let's talk about it. We have one more podcast to do. And I actually would love to talk a little bit about BrainMaker and how important the gut is. And the book you have coming out next year, BrainWash, because it is so in line with the thinking that Tana and I have, that you are in a war for the health of your brain, and you need to be armed, prepared,

and aware to basically win the fight of your life. Stay with us. We're here with Dr. David Perlmutter. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warrior's Way and the Brain Warrior's Way cookbook we give away every month.