WARNING: Severe Emotional Eating Area!
Ok, I have to admit I didn’t even bother to keep track of my emotional eating this week. Family drama, work drama, spending a week working on a case study assignment that was nearly done and then finding it “missing” Thursday night. You get the idea; my week was full of emotional eating. Chinese food, seafood salad, Girl Scout Cookies…
A few posts ago I wrote about the hormone cortisol and how it relates to emotional eating. This week I found an interesting article on another hormone, leptin. Leptin is a protein hormone that acts as our energy thermostat; it regulates energy expenditure and energy intake. Researches are seeing that upon significant weight loss leptin levels drop signaling to the brain that it needs more food. On the contrary, when levels of leptin are higher the areas of the brain that make rational decisions are more active than those making emotional decisions. Keep in mind, however, that at some point the body can become leptin resistant as seen with cases of obesity, hypertension, and heart failure and after myocardial infarction.
Check out this article and make sure to read the comments. Great food for thought (pun intended)!
If interested in more information regarding resistance to leptin cut and paste this link:
"I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food."
Erma Bobeck
Hi, your blog is very interesting. I never thought that I would eat something because of my emotion. But as I was writing my log on eating, I tended to like greasy, oily foods when I'm stressed. When there are loads of work and school work to do.
ReplyDeleteSince you are talking about Leptin, Since leptin is protein hormone that controls as your energy thermostat, Can we manipulate this hormone for those who are having hard time with eating disorder or obese people?
Just a thought.
I know when there are lots of things going on it's hard to keep up with our healthy eating sometimes. :)
I read a couple of articles about Leptin and weight loss, but it appears from the below document link that, "...that long-term leptin treatment may not be beneficial to obese individuals consuming a HF diet."
ReplyDeleteI wonder if perhaps there will be more research into leptin or cortisone, that will help those with eating disorders get control over the disease.