Psychology, Meet Weight Loss

For those of you who don't know, I am a psychology major.  I have enjoyed my time in college learning about gender, the criminal mind, human development, appraisal and measurement systems, relationships, positive thought, counseling techniques, and much, much more.  Psychology is such an interesting field, for me, because there are many areas that can be related back to it and that are involved in the study of psychology, from medicine to sociology to areas of the humanities.

One area in which this can be applied is through understanding addiction and addictive behavior.  When we discuss addiction, in psychology, we talk about how addiction is actually related to an overproduction of chemicals in the brain that make us ''feel good.''  It happens when our brain's ''pleasure centers'' are overloaded, leaving us craving more and more of that extreme ecstasy type of feeling.

People have discussed, jokingly and seriously, for a long time that fatty foods can have an addictive component to them, making it more difficult to give up greasy, cholesterol-filled foods like hamburgers, bacon, and cheesecake!  But, people usually dismiss it as a fat person's excuse for they they're...fat.  Well, some new research conducted on rats -- our fine, furry friends -- shows that those rumors may be true.  Published in the journal of Nature Neuroscience and released on CNN Health last week, some research has shown that fatty foods can cause the same addictive behavior patterns as cocaine and heroine use.  While it hasn't necessarily proven anything, it's an interesting concept to address.

Now, this, in no way, addresses issues of fatty ''bad-for-you'' foods being more affordable than the healthy counterparts (leading to some of an understanding of why obesity is more common in low-income communities), it is something to think about!

Until Next Time...

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-Tyler