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Role of addiction and stress neurobiology on food intake and obesity
The United States continues to lead in the global obesity epidemic, significantly affecting public health. While the regulation of weight is traditionally understood as a balance between energy intake and expenditure, recent research indicates that obesity risk is influenced by a complex interplay of social, neurobehavioral, and metabolic factors. This review examines the omnipresence of rewarding foods in our environment and their heightened salience, which activate brain reward and stress circuits, thereby affecting eating behaviors.
Rewarding foods not only elicit conditioned responses but also stimulate metabolic and stress hormones, which disrupt limbic and striatal pathways in the brain, leading to increased food craving and consumption. Additionally, the review discusses how elevated stress levels and trauma, alongside altered metabolic conditions (such as increased body weight and insulin sensitivity), impact prefrontal cortical processes responsible for self-control. These processes regulate emotional, motivational, and homeostatic mechanisms related to food intake and obesity risk.
A heuristic framework is proposed to illustrate the dynamic interactions between neurobehavioral adaptations, metabolic changes, and stress neurobiology that may exacerbate food craving and lead to excessive intake and weight gain. The implications of these adaptations in addictive-motivational and stress pathways are critically examined, underscoring the need for further research to address the complexities of the obesity epidemic. [NPID: Obesity, food addiction, reward, craving, neurobehavioral, neurobiology]
Year: 2018
