Stress Eating is a Brain Thing

As we approach the holidays, our exposure to foods that we wouldn’t normally eat goes up exponentially… and so does the temptation to binge eat. Today, we’ll discuss some new research that just came out regarding some new-found causes that can make binge eating even worse.

📌Key Points in this Episode
2:54    Early Life Trauma is a Risk  Factor for Binge Eating
 4:04   Hormone Changes and Binge Eating
 5:27   What Constitutes a Trauma?
 9:41    How to Reprogram Your DNA in 3 Simple Steps
 11:22  3 Things to Change Binge Eating Habits

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IG:@drbriangbrown
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🧬Find more information about genetics, epigenetics and how they impact your overall health and performance🧬 in Dr Brian's FREE Master Class on Gene Hacking https://drbriangbrown.com/genehack/bootcamp

Transcript

 ITZ_EP99_Stress Eating is a Brain Thing
SUMMARY KEYWORDS

eating, brain, genes, hypothalamus, leptin, trauma, work, mindful, DNA, binge eating, subconscious reprogramming, cascade, belief, reprograms, STAT3 gene, LEPR gene

Dr Brian G Brown  00:06

DNA structures in the brain so stay tuned as we discuss that, but wait till the end. 

 I'm gonna give you three things that you can do to resolve your binge eating, which resulted in damage to my heart, which led to my body having to dump massive amounts of adrenaline to jumpstart my heart back every time my heart would stop, which was happening one to three times a night. And all that exposure to adrenaline led to a lot of weight gain type issues. 

 Now, I'm sure you've heard me talk about this and in previous episodes, and I'm not going to get bogged down into that story, but I had issues with binge eating, especially around the holidays and you know what I'm talking about if you've ever struggled with binge eating. Eating to the point that you “are past full”, to the point that you're just plain miserable. 

By the time your brain gets the message and says, well, well, you need to stop eating. Now. I don't do that anymore. I've used to, but I don't do that. Now. I also used to say things like, well, I'll just wait until after the holidays to get back on track with my eating. I mean, how many people do that? A ton of people I hear over and over. 

In fact, it's so weird, even go into the gym. I hear people say oh my eating on track and I'll wait till after the holidays to get back on track. And what are they going to do? I mean, realistically, are they going to get it on track for about six weeks and then they're right back to square one. 

So we've got to look at things that can permanently hold, change the structures in our body and our brain to help us move past this, especially if you struggle with binge eating, or eating to the point where you're feeling too full and your brain just doesn't get the message that is that can be binge eating. 

It took me years to realize that the best time to start getting on track is actually now. It's not necessary to wait until after the holidays. You can do that. Now. And the times that I've been most successful in my life, especially with relation to weight has been the times that I did it no matter what time of year was 

I remember when I made the final push and this is years ago to say okay, I'm gonna be back on track at this point. The Holidays didn't matter. In fact, I got back on track in October, which was before Thanksgiving, which was before the December holidays, Christmas and New Year's and things like that. And I decided in October I'm gonna get back on track now, I'm not gonna let these things affect me or slow me down. And I made up my mind to do it. But enough of that. 

My issues with weight, food binge eating. They all involve a series of biochemical and bio energetic changes in my body and I'm gonna explain more about that in a moment. And how that applies to you as well. But let's talk about the study that just came out a few days. ago. 

A study published this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience revealed that early life trauma, hear that? Early life trauma is actually a huge risk factor for binge eating, as well as obesity. Now the researchers in the study found that early life trauma literally causes physical changes in an area of the brain called the hypothalamus. 

Now this is a pretty important area of the brain that coordinates both the autonomic nervous system when you think autonomic think automatic, okay, so there's things like heart rate and blood pressure and respiratory rate and digestion and sexual arousal, those things that automatically occur. It helps coordinate the autonomic nervous system, as well as the activity of the pituitary gland, and the pituitary gland controls your body's hormone regulation. 

Hypothalamus

And the hypothalamus also is involved in controlling body temperature and thirst and hunger and other regulatory systems in the body to help keep your body balanced. And it also controls sleep and emotional regulation. 

So let me repeat that more simply. Early life trauma leads to changes in the way your body regulates its heart rate. Its blood pressure, its respiratory rate, its digestion, its hunger, its sexual function and arousal, its hormone function and body temperature, thirst, hunger, sleep, and even emotional control. 

Now more specifically, when it comes to binge eating, early life trauma leads to a very specific type of hormone imbalance in the hypothalamus with regard to the hormone leptin, which is your body's natural appetite suppressant and fact that controls how many calories you eat it and when your brain is resisting the effects of this hormone. Your brain doesn't get the message to send back to your stomach to say, whoa, stop eating. Okay? So, it's very important to be sensitive to leptin.

And if you're not sensitive to leptin, you don't get the message that you need to stop eating. So therefore, you overeat. And by the time your brain actually gets the message and figures it out, you're miserable. And that's binge eating. So leptin is involved in binge eating, but leptin insensitivity if you will, is related to early life trauma because the early life trauma changes the hypothalamus. 

Now, the golden question is this. What constitutes a trauma because I know people automatically think about physical or sexual abuse and they'll say, well, I don't have any trauma because I wasn't physically abused or sexually abused as a child. But wait a minute. Trauma could be like me being electrocuted. I've never met another patient that's been electrocuted. And all of my years of seeing patients. 

Trauma

However, it could be something traumatic, like being electrocuted age five. It could be that you witnessed someone die in front of you. It could be that you when you were in a bad car accident or an early age, or you went through the prolonged death or the sudden death of a parent, or maybe even a grandparent that you were really close to and that loss just impacted you. The list is almost endless, and so be quite honest with you. But the key here is this is that it occurs to the child brain. The most impressionable time of our life for our brains is our childhood. And when traumatic events occurred to the child's brain, our little pediatric childhood brain is the time in our life when our brains are evolving and growing at such an alarming rapid rate that any insult or injury in there is incorporated into that growth pattern. 

So, it grows abnormally because of that traumatic event. But how, how does this happen? I mean, what's the process, right? I mean, if early childhood trauma leads to changes in the hypothalamus, which leads to changes in leptin, which leads us to binging, then how does all of that happen? What's the pathway? 

Well, the article doesn't really point this out. But in my own research, and clinical practice studies, here's what I've figured out and I'm writing about this. In fact, I felt like it was so important that I've actually put it into one of the final chapters of my book that'll be coming out in 2023. Because it's very critical to understand this pathway because it affects our genetics tremendously. 

The Pathway

So, here's how it goes. We receive some type of external stimuli, in this case, an early childhood trauma and we develop a perception about that event. Now all of that perception stuff are thinking about it. That's all subconscious. We're not consciously developing our perception, but we develop a perception on the list, and this activates the brain to not only, you know release chemicals that go throughout the body, but it activates the brain to develop and store a new belief pattern. Again, this new belief pattern is also subconscious is occurring without our knowledge and this leads to a cascade of electromagnetic and these are actually measurable. 

There are studies that actually measure these, it leads to a cascade of electromagnetic and neuro chemical messengers released from the brain to go out to the body. 

Dr Brian G Brown  08:39

Well, in this particular case, the next step is that these neurochemical and electromagnetic signals that go to the body are actually received about the organs and tissues within the body. And the next thing that happens is these organs and tissues release their own cascade of neuro chemical and electromagnetic magnetic messengers to the surrounding cells. 

And then the cells receive them impact they pass that electromagnetic and neurochemical chemical message on to the DNA and deep inside the cell, and then the DNA receives that new message and it says, Okay, we've got to just programming it reprograms the DNA, and then it sends a message back out to the organs and the tissues to keep doing business as usual. That's how it works. 

Now, I know that was a lot to process, but the bottom line is this and I'll summarize it in one sentence. Some new experience happens to us whatever that is: 

That new experience leads to a subconscious belief and that subconscious belief reprograms our DNA. 

So, if you could put it into three simple steps, that's it, 

1)     A new experience

2)     A subconscious belief and 

3)     It reprograms our DNA. 

And we have, we have studies that are proven, the study that I'm talking about today proves this. So even as a child when we experience an early life trauma, we develop in our little child brain, we develop a new belief and that new belief creates a chemical and electrical cascade of messages are sent from the brain to the organs and subsequently to the cells and subsequently to the DNA. The DNA reprograms itself to adjust for this new belief pattern and the newly reprogrammed DNA sends messages back to the organs and the tissues, and in many cases, the cells to keep doing business as usual. 

And in this particular case, it's doing that with the hypothalamus. And it's telling the hypothalamus listen, you need to be less sensitive to leptin. We need to turn those genes off so that you're less sensitive and therefore, the host human that you're housed in and that this brain is housed in, it doesn't get the message that you're full, and that host human being cheats. 

So, we know from the study that I'm talking about today that I mentioned today, that there are two genes which control leptin response in the brain and tell you that you're full, and you need to stop eating. And those two genes are the STAT3 gene and the leper gene, LEPR gene. 

Now the activity of both of these genes is drastically affected by trauma. According to these researchers. So here are three things you can do about this. And I gotta give you a little hint, if you think I'm going to tell you that you need to eat less and exercise more. Totally wrong. Okay, because eating less and exercising more isn't necessarily going to fix this problem. And it's the bane of every person's existence who's ever struggled with weight is to be told, Hey, it's your fault. You just need to exercise more and eat less. Nothing could be farther from the truth. 

What to do about it

So, number one thing that you need to do is you need to be mindful and be mindfully present when you are eating and what I mean by that is eat smaller portions. Be mindful enough that when you're choosing what you're going to eat, get smaller portions if you're going out to a restaurant to eat Hey, I'm not gonna pass judgment on you there. But ask for to-go plate when the food is delivered. And go ahead and remove a portion of that into the to-go box so that you can carry that home. 

Because I don't know if you've ever traveled outside of America. I've traveled extensively outside of America. And I will tell you that American portion sizes and restaurants and American restaurants are three to four times larger than anywhere else in the world. So why does America have such an obesity issue? Well, maybe that's part of it. Our portion sizes are huge. And we need to be mindful of that. So just be mindful as you're prepping your food at home and you're putting your food on your plate or you're out to eat. Be mindful of plate. 

I’m gonna eat a smaller portion size right now and be mindful of the bites that you eat. Make sure that they're smaller bites, make sure that you're chewing your food. I know these are elementary things, but when it comes to leptin release, we actually need to give the brain a little bit of time to catch up to what's going on physically on that plate and our hand to mouth action in front of us. Okay, so take smaller bites, be mindful of that. 

And if you're so of a mind to, I know people that struggle with leptin type issues or binge eating type issues, they were literally pick up their fork, take a bite, put the fork down, put their hands in their lap and chew their food. And that allows them to slow down enough and take a break between bites, so that the brain does have time to catch up. And it actually works. I've used this with clients for years. And if you're disciplined enough to be mindful when you're eating, step number one actually works. 

Step number two, you owe it to yourself, especially in the new year to get your gene profile checked so that you know exactly what your internal genetic landscape looks like, what your genetic responses are hardwired, programmed to be. And so, you can nutritionally support those genes that aren't exactly wired the way you want them to be. Because we can actually check those genes related to leptin resistance and we can help them function with at their highest capability by nutritionally supporting those genes. 

Number three, the last thing, work with a qualified person, mental health professional, who is who really understands subconscious reprogramming. Because there's certain techniques that I'm trained to do, where we can do subconscious reprogramming, and we can allow the subconscious to help us identify where these hidden beliefs are not necessarily what they are. That's not really important to subconscious brain knows what they are, but we get to understand where they are and how we can help the subconscious brain, reprogram that into a healthier belief. 

So, in essence, what we're doing when we're changing our mindfulness, about our eating, we're changing what's happening in the middle of that pathway that I described. And when we change our DNA, we're changing the extreme downstream portion of that entire chain of events. 

And when we change our thinking, our belief patterns, that subconscious programming that we've had for years that we didn't even know we had, were extreme upstream. So my approach and I don't know many other people that do this. I've talked to experts from all over the world. 

I went to a conference on German medicine in October, and one of the experts was talking about, because of their modality is to work from the subconscious reprogramming and let that do all the work. And he mentioned that and at the break, I went up to him and I said, Listen, this is the way I do things. I work with the subconscious reprogramming, but I also work with the genetics on this end, and then I put measures in place to support that person in the middle. So I'm working in three different places on that timeline at one time. 

And this guy's from Italy. He's one of the foremost experts in the world on this. And he looked at me and he said, I don't know if anybody else is doing this, and I teach this curriculum all over the world. He said, whatever you're doing, you're doing the work of God and he said, keep doing it. He said, because obviously you're getting changes. And I told them I said we get drastic, radical changes when we approach that from a three-pronged approach.

So, I'll tell you all that to say this going into the new year. If you want to know more about how to set yourself up for success genetically and through your subconscious programming, and kind of everything in between. Reach out to me on Facebook or Instagram. I'll be glad to talk to you. 

In the meantime, if you're serious about the genetic in the downstream end and want to know more about how to start setting yourself up for success related to your genetics. I've got a bootcamp that I created called the Gene Hack Boot Camp and you can enroll in that for free right now. Go to:

https://drbriangbrown.com/genehack/bootcamp

I'll put it up there on the screen if you're watching this live. And there you can register for FREE! And you can start your own journey of self-paced journey, no pressure at all on how you can figure out to start working with your genes and helping them work in your favor. 

As far as the subconscious reprogramming stuff. It's kind of a one-on-one thing you need to work individually with somebody because it's custom tailored to that particular person. And we can have those discussions at a later date. If you'd like to just message me like I said @ Dr. Brian G Brown on Facebook or Instagram. I'd be glad to talk to you. 

Tune in next Thursday at noon eastern standard time for our next in the zone segment where I'll be talking about things like this the latest research how that research applies to you. That research applies to your brain health and your body health. So physically and emotionally, everything that you can do to be as optimal as you can possibly be and in your wellness journey. 

Until next time, stay in the zone. This is Dr. Brian Brown.