Assignment 4 Exploration

The deed is done: I have submitted Assignment 4.  What a fascinating journey it's been.  I would like to start off this post by answering some more questions (as promised to my faithful readers in a previous post) from the oral presentation feedback.  I am not just saying this to be polite—that there were some very thoughtful comments that I tried very hard to include in my final paper.

I was asked whether the inclusion of Food Addiction in the DSM would encourage people to seek treatment because it could be covered by insurance that way.  For those who missed my presentation (of which, there were many), the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual) is essentially the most widely accepted, universal handbook for psychological disorders.  I searched and uncovered numerous requests for such an inclusion.  Although the reality of food addiction has gained considerable traction in people accepting its validity recently, what I have found is that it is fairly easy for someone with food addiction to be diagnosed with another disorder that is contained within the DSM.  As I discussed in my presentation and my paper, food addiction has an extremely high comorbidity with myriad other disorders such as Binge Eating Disorder and Depression.  For these reasons, I don't believe insurance reasons are a primary barrier to people seeking treatment; if anything, the barrier lies in the stigma associated with obesity—which I argue could be alleviated by adopting the addiction model for obesity.  Critical and academic sources on this topic of including food addiction in the DSM are scarce, so I was unable to include it in my paper unfortunately.  I hope this information helps!

Another question I received whose content I was able to include in my paper concerned the brain's pleasure center.  In class, I showed a video (see earlier post) that described food's activation of the brain's pleasure center.  Someone asked if there was a way to simply turn the pleasure center off.  To answer this question, I can say: sort of.  Here is a picture of brain cell, or neuron connecting to a bunch of other neurons (see right).  Whether they are gustation chemical receptors in the taste buds or olfactory receptors in the nasal cribiform plate, these receptors begin a cascade.  When neurotransmitters transmit impulses, the pathways travelled by the electrical signals are known as signal transduction pathways.  All drugs that affect the brain act at one or various places in the brain's signal transduction pathways.  This can include messing with neurotransmitters or receptors in depression, anxiety, insomnia, and numerous other disorders.  I have found that pharmaceutical treatments have, in fact, been administered to affect the signal transduction pathway associated with overeating.  Specifically, I came across a patent designed to block odorant molecules from ever triggering the pathway stimulated through our sense of smell.  When calcium channels are blocked in these receptors, food moderation can be achieved.  There are numerous other ways to affect the pathway, but I stuck with one that seemed most prominent and interesting to me.

Another question I had was regarding confusion during the aforementioned video.  The video states that as one eats the chocolate milkshake, pleasure decreases.  This phenomenon, as I have come to learn, is known as sensory-specific satiety.  Essentially, it demonstrates the law of diminishing returns, in which each subsequent bite of the same thing yields less of a reward than something novel would, which leads people to eat less.  This could prove fruitful in studying if following a food with monotonous diet caused people to feel less of the rewards from food.  An adverse effect, however, may occur in which people's cravings for novel food stimuli increase and cause binge eating of new food if forced to eat the same food for long periods of time.  I did not focus on this very much because little to know significant differences have been found between obese and not-obese people when it comes to sensory-specific satiety.  The topic, though, is very interesting and has garnered quite a bit of attention, as evidenced by the Sensa fad. Basically, you pour Sensa, whose method of action I have yet to really explore, on food, and it makes you feel full.  Although this did not make its way into my paper, I would love to look into this and discuss it in my next blog post!

Those were the primary new additions to my paper that had to do with class questions.  In my next blog post, I would love to tell you all (however many of you there are still reading) about the ideas of "framing" campaign ads and how they may help in public health campaigns.

Hope you're all getting through finals okay!

Best wishes,

Graham