Episode 3: Cookies and Addiction

How we Get Addicted

A reward circuit with a stress response primarily causes addiction, which is in part is due to a connection between the Amygdala and the Nucleus Accumbins.

The Amygdala is apart of the limbic system, which is situated in the brain near the blood supply, and so due to its proximity to the blood supply, it is very sensitive to changes in blood sugars, and other changes, and is used for emotional learning. The Nucleus Accumbins sits in the frontal lobe, and has an important role when it comes to fear, laughter, pleasure and placebo responses.

So the Nucleus accumbins alters your mood in response to thought of stimulus, and the Amygdala is directly impacted by stimuli.

The two sections are very closely associated,, the main function of the 2 of these is to get us to learn what is good and bad for survival. [explanation:] so sweet cookies give us sugar, the amygdala records that the sugar has increased, the nuclease accumbins, knows that we had a cookie, so if we go out and get more cookies, we wil get more sugar spikes.

The neurotransmitter that is associated with this is DOPAmine, so things that can cause an increase in a DOPAminergic response (fancy word) can trigger a positive association with the substance. So Heroin, which acts like Dopamine, or Cocaine, which blocks its re-uptake increase the response, giving positive re-enforcement, can create a neural cycle of addiction. the problem with this is that in the Amygdala, dopamine is also used for a pleasure response, and when there is a lot of something, your body tries to even itself out, so it tries to achieve homeostasis.

So your Brain tries to make itself less sensitive to dopamine, and so the threshold response is decreased, so the amount needed to get the same kind of hit is more than previous time.

Also the Brain can stop producing dopamine, which is also important in things like controlling inhibitory movements, and so can cause Parkinson disease if there is isn't enough.

Also chemicals can be released to that block dopamine from binding as a neurotransmitter, this can cause permanent depression.

Barbiturates also induce the release of glutamate's in high concentrations that starts to kill off the neurons, which should be causing the overproduction, but glutamate's are in-discriminate, and also take out other surrounding neurons, so it can cause a myriad of neural disorders.

It doesn't necessarily take multiple goes to cause this; a single hit can cause addiction

New information on Addiction

There are also genetic factors that attribute to addictions,

According to the April 2009 Nature Review Genetics, the university of Virginia and the University of Michigan found several genes associated with multiple addictions.

Now there are several genes already been identified with addiction, such as modifications of the:

GABRA2

ANKK1

Neurotoxin 1 & Neurotoxin 2

But 3 new ones have been found, and there is an overlapping in different addiction types to different genetic markers such as:

CHRNA 5

CHRNA 3

CHRNB4

ssociations made between them, now with a mapping of where these addictions are, means personalized treatments can now be constructed to ease treatments. But the reasons for why these markers cause the addictions are still unknown.

Can the Cookie Monster Become Addicted to Cookies??

So sweet cookies give us sugar, the amygdala records that the sugar has increased, the nuclease accumbins, knows that we had a cookie, so if we go out and get more cookies, we will get more sugar spikes.

So the cookie monsters compulsive eating of the cookies means that sugar rush that the cookie monster got from his 1 cookie is now not nearly as effective as giving him his sugar rush (kinda like your first cup of coffee), and so he needs to eat more and more cookies. Each time with the positive sugar reinforcement and the insulin hit. And when he doesn't get a cookie, he seems down, and when there are cookies directly in front of him, like the age demographic who he is representing, 3-6 years of age, he doesn't contemplate the guilt of how much time he will have to go to the gym, to burn of the calories that he will be getting from the cookies, as opposed to the potassium and thiamine that he would be getting from a banana.

The problem with his unhealthy cookie addiction is for starters the crazy sugar in insulin spikes that he would be having, so insulin receptors after getting knocked around for so long, (40 years of compulsive cookie cravings) can induce type 2 diabetes.

Because the Brain is kept at a constant sugar level, the way in which the brain recognizes the change in sugar levils in the blood is through an increase in insulin, the hormone released by the liver to induce glucose uptake when levels increase. Because of this, hits of insulin are what give you sugar cravings, which glucagons release, giving the alternative stress response. This can result in a sugar addiction, and whith the stong association with coockies, can result in a cookie addiciton

Now that he is the healthy eating monster, he is eating wholegrain breads and broccoli, which are low GI foods, which when he eats them he gets a small sugar hit, but not as big as when he eats a cookie, but the way that the sensors for blood sugar levels work, because they based in homeostasis, unlike direct dopaminergic responses, he is able to lower the amount of sugar that he needs to get this crazy rush, and so overcome his sugar addiction 1 day at a time.