Frustrated that the diets you've tried never seem to work? According to Dr. Daniel Amen, you could be picking the wrong type of diet - for your brain! While studying the electrical patterns of people's brains, Dr. Amen claims to have discovered a connection between patterns and how people approach food. "The scans give us a roadmap of what to do to balance your brain so you can have a better life," he says. "What we've seen in our clinic is not everyone's brain is the same, and for people who have issues with weight we've actually seen that there are different types; if you know your type you can get on the right program for you."
Dr. Amen breaks down the five different brain types among people who are struggling with weight:
Type 1: The Compulsive Overeater: "These are people who think about food all day long."
Type 2: The Impulse Overeater: "I call them grabbers - whenever they walk past something they grab it."
Type 3: The Impulsive-Compulsive Overeater: "A combination of type 1 and
type 2, they have very little control over their impulses."
Type 4: The Sad Overeater: "These are people who tend to be sad, maybe depressed - these people eat as a way to medicate their sadness."
Type 5: The Anxious Overeater: "These are people who tend to be filled with anxiety, tension, and they eat as a way to medicate their anxiety."
A lot of people blame their weight problems on a lack of willpower, but mounting scientific evidence points toward obesity as an addiction rather than a simple character flaw.
In people with addictions, the brain’s reward system gets hijacked. The brain’s reward system is an intricate network that involves the neurotransmitter dopamine, which drives you to seek out pleasurable things, and the prefrontal cortex, which puts on the brakes to keep you from overindulging in those things.
When this system is balanced, it works beautifully to keep your behaviors in check. In people with addictions, however, the reward system goes haywire. The dopamine centers take control and reduce the effectiveness of the prefrontal cortex.
Here’s how the reward system can hijack the brain. Whenever we do something enjoyable—taking a walk on the beach, listening to music, holding a lover’s hand—it’s like pressing a button in the brain to release a little bit of dopamine to make us feel pleasure. If we push these pleasure buttons too often or too strong, we reduce their effectiveness. Eventually, it takes more and more excitement and stimulation to feel anything at all.
Cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin, alcohol, and nicotine all cause dopamine surges that can make you crave these substances. The amount of dopamine released when drugs are taken can be two to 10 times more than what your brain produces for natural rewards.
Certain foods can produce the same effect. In The End of Overeating, Dr. David Kessler, a former FDA commissioner, writes that the high-fat, high-sugar combos found in many mouthwatering snacks light up the brain’s dopamine pathway similar to the way drugs and alcohol do. He suggests that some people can actually get hooked on chocolate chip cookies the way other people get addicted to cocaine.
A recent feature on ABC News reported that scientists have found that overeaters experience the same effect. Overeating overstimulates dopamine, and eventually, these people have to consume more and more food to feel any satisfaction.
The ABC News feature included researchers who have conducted brain imaging studies of obese patients using PET-CT scans. The brain scans of the overeaters revealed patterns that looked very similar to those found in people addicted to drugs or alcohol.
The researchers also found that having a higher body mass index (BMI) was associated with a decrease in function in the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s self-control center. This helps explain why obese people have less willpower to control their eating or stick to a healthy diet.
The Secrets of Joy Workshop
- Nov 3 – 5, 20010 - Eagle Crest Resort - Bend, Oregon
Why is joy and happiness important?
Medicine today tends to focus primarily on: drugs, surgery, genes, germs, microbes, and molecules. However, there isn’t any other factor in medicine – not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery – that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness and premature death from all causes than loneliness and isolation. Most people do not know what to do about it, WE DO!
Numerous studies demonstrates that changes in lifestyle can change our health. There are four areas these studies are concern with:
1. Diet
2. Exercise
3. Stress Management
4. Love & Intimacy
Diet, Exercise, and Stress Management are things you can accomplish on you own.
Love & Intimacy involves OTHER PEOPLE.
You cannot do it alone.
You have to learn to work with other people.
There is very little information how to do this, how to have more Intimacy, how to be connected, how to be satisfied with life, how to have a meaning life,or a sense of well being that is not religious base.
This is why the divorce rate would not be over 50%.
We do not know how to have the things we want the most - Love & Intimacy.
Our workshop will demonstrate how to do it.
Our Workshop is not about Diet or Exerice, it is 6 days of understand how to have more Love and Intimacy in your life.
Any kind of intimacy can heal. It's a basic human need that often goes unfulfilled in our culture. It matters not only in the quality of life, but in the quantity. It's a need as basic as eating and breathing and sleeping. When we don't know that, there are serious consequences that threaten not only our well-being, but also our survival. Studies show that people who feel isolated are three to five times more likely to die prematurely and get sick than those who don't.
This web site is about on how to increase your Love & Intimacy and improve your life satisfaction.
Have you ever wondered from makes you tick?
Why are some people always happy and other always sad? Why are some people are very agreeable and other like to argue.
For sake of argument, we call the patterns people have –
Temperaments. You can call it what ever you want. Your life’s strategy, your style, your way, your nature or “just the way you are.”. It makes no difference what you call it, it exists and we can define nine
Temperaments Types.
Would it surprise you to learn that you were born that way? You were born with a fixed
Temperament Type. It is in your genes. You inherited your
Temperament Type from your ancestors. Yes, your
Temperament is fixed as you were conceived, before you even started your life’s process. It is nearly impossible to change your fixed
Temperament Type, but you can learn to “manage it.”
The research from
Positive Philosophy shows that 50% of your happiness is determined by your
Temperament Type. That means that 50% of being loved, having Intimacy, being connected, being satisfied with life, having a meaning life, and a sense of well being is a function of your genes you were born with. But:
1. The better you “manage” your
Temperament, the happier you can be.
2. The better you “manage” your
Temperament, the better you will understand yourself, your family, your friends, your customers, and the culture in you live.
3. The better you “manage” your
Temperament, the more successful you have with money, marriage, family, health and the society in which you.
Our genes may determine our
Temperament, but they do not control our Fate.
Connection is the root of sickness and health. It is what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. If a new drug had the same impact, virtually every doctor in the country would be recommending it for his or her patients. It would be malpractice not to prescribe it -- yet, with few exceptions, doctors do not learn much about the healing power of love, intimacy, and transformation in our medical training.
The question is how to have more connections? How do increase your love and intimacy? If you alreadyknew how, you would have already done it. Attendance at our Workshop will give you new methods and proven techinque to help you. The methods and techinques were developed from the research from Positive Philosophy.
The Secrets of Joy Workshop
