Obesity is a carbohydrate addiction problem

I have been observing how obesity is tightly linked to the degree a person is addicted to sugar, and in general, carbohydrates. When we think of addiction usually we think of it as other people’s problems. When we think of other people’s problems it is easy to judge them and say they cannot handle their addiction. 

Addiction to smoking, video games, cosmetics, shopping, Turkish dramas, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube Shorts.. These are all highly likely in our age. How can a person stay able to control his or her instincts to resist the temptation to feed more of the content that the body is craving? The only way out is to give less and less of it. 

For screen time, you can easily manage your time by adding screen time limits. Notice this will only work if you agree that you want and need to limit your time. Unexposed depression will present itself as addiction to watching things in an uncontrollable way, and in that case you cannot think of screen time. If you notice a pattern, might as well reach out for help. Therapy as preventive care will be covered most likely bu insurance. 

Can people be addicted to sugar, carbohydrates, salt, bread, crunchy food, rewarding sensations, or squishies? The list can go on and on. It appears we can get addicted to anything and when that happens we lose control. We do not notice when to stop, cannot interpret the satiety and hunger cues. We start eating for pleasure and not for the purpose of feeding our cells to generate ATP. 

What happens if all of a sudden you decide to remove an addiction from your life? Initially it hits hard, so you may choose to have some replacements or gradual removal. But for example, if you get used to no salt or less sugar, your taste buds can adjust. The cakes you could devour easily are now too sweet to swallow. The food can taste too salty if you get used to the reduced amount. 

Another aspect you can still feed yourself proteins and fats and they do not seem to make you addicted. They are harder to crave. They make you full faster and keep you full longer. 

I have a hypothesis that if people all of a sudden stop eating sugar (carbs), effortlessly they can slim down. The same logic is applied in many books including the "How to lose weight for the last time". Mostly because we regain the ability to sense and be in control. The cell types in the brain that respond to fasting are called Agrp neurons. Overnight fasting results in the highest number of genes changing expression in these cells. Guess what, this is my brilliant student Riya’s work, the response is a lot more pronounced in women. 

Maybe there is a disadvantage that women experience the satiety problems more deeply at least in a psychological perspective, but we also have an advantage to respond to fasting the best. There are famous books like The Hunger code, Fast Like a Girl, that I did not yet read -> pointing in this direction. 

The first chain that needs to be broken to break free of metabolic inflexibility is the PPARγ activation. This is the key to Metabolic Freedom as in Ben Azadi’s book. To get metabolic freedom you have to be able to fast. 

For my diabetic mom, fasting was not an option but she still wanted to get her metabolic freedom back. Because she did not like to be on a clock with medicine and snack times. She started slow and easy. The nighttime is already our longest fasting time. So we gradually added more time to her fasting by removing the evening snack, then evening pill, then stretching the breakfast to later hours over the course of 6 months. Along with exercise specifically focused on belly fat, she was able to get her metabolic freedom back. 

So it is doable! You can get unaddicted to sugar. And if this is making you obese, you will get back to overweight kg in a short time. 

The other angle that I should have mentioned is the genetics. You might have noticed it in your family. For us, my brother and I have inherited a different background of genetics than our sisters. Among my kids my older daughter is more like me than my younger daughter. My sister’s middle daughter is different from her siblings. You can put a name on it like “this

person eats whatever they want and they are still skinny”. The answer is probably some up-regulated basal metabolism and not having a tendency to store the fat. 

Bummer, yeah. At this point I would be super curious to know what kind of genetic variant makeup is bringing such a difference. It can be quite complicated but to simplify you can think of some carbohydrate response elements acting differently. How could we know about our genetic variations? One person sequenced their genome for about $3000. Yes this is luxury, and we cannot afford it. Good news is you can enroll in a population genomics study like the All of Us and they will sequence it for you!! 

Now the next question becomes "Is it going to be safe and secure?". The answer is "We hope so". A good chunk of our discussions in BNFO 411 is on data security, privacy and re-identification risk. The risk is real and there should be additional efforts to help with protection. Nevertheless, you can obtain your genome and study it to find variants which can help you understand your body better!!

What if you are still saying "I actually like sweets, I do not think I am addicted". I will invite you to think again. How much of your brain is already captured when this sentence is formed there? There could be an evolutionary advantage to picking sweets over savory things like poisonous mushrooms. But those days are long gone. The sweets we have in stores are also nowhere near the wild strawberries. 

Obesity is a hijacking problem. See if you can regain power in your kingdom. You can start by challenging your assumptions!