When we are exposed to shock and pain, the body releases

beta-endorphin to protect us. The beta-endorphin "numbs out" our

physical and emotional feelings, soothes us and keeps us safe.

Beta-endorphin is a powerful brain chemical. Morphine and heroin

evoke a beta-endorphin response, so you can well imagine why we

get attached to the feeling even if it comes in response to "bad"

things happening.

I believe that sugar-sensitive people have lower levels of

beta-endorphin. The brain compensates for this by opening up more

beta-endorphin receptor sites so we get a bigger response to its

effects.

Sugar Sensitive Comfort

Because of this heightened response, we are drawn to things that

evoke beta-endorphin-alcohol, opiate drugs such as morphine, heroin,

percodan, codeine, sugars, fats and white things. The things we

call "comfort foods" are usually the ones that are evoking a

beta-endorphin response in us.

Sugar-sensitive people are more attached to these foods than other

people are. We find more emotional comfort in these foods because

we are getting a bigger beta-endorphin "hit" from them. We not only

feel good at the moment, but our body "remembers" that

beta-endorphin means "safe." The feelings of comfort and emotional

safety become linked.

As many of you have been reading Potatoes Not Prozac, you have

really come to understand how powerful an effect beta-endorphin

has on our behavior and our eating. But the story is bigger than

you may have realized.

More to the Story than Food

The comfort and numbing effects of beta-endorphin can become

cumulative over time. When emotional trauma or "numbing" occurs

repeatedly, the soothing quality of the beta-endorphin that is

evoked shifts into something really problematic. The numbing from

trauma (or from long-term, heavy use of sugars) becomes generalized

into what is called learned helplessness.

Those of you who suffered childhood abuse, molestation or incest,

or who have experienced any kind of adult trauma get a triple

whammy. Bad things happened and your brain literally kept you alive

by cushioning you from the mind-blowing reality of your pain. You

were flooded with the soothing protection of beta-endorphin.

The flood of brain chemicals numbed you in the face of things that

you had no control over.

You learned to be helpless in two ways. One, you literally were

helpless in the face of the bad things that kept happening and two,

the biochemical reaction which was saving your life did also

generalized into the biochemical pattern of learned helplessness.

You survived the bad things that happened over and over, but the

learned helplessness remains encoded in your body. The pattern

will be both unconscious and deeply affected by what you are

eating and what you are doing.

Learned Helplessness in Action

Our many discussions about foods and sugars have taught you the

impact of eating sweet foods. If you have comfort foods, you get

triggered and you want more. If you try to stop, you experience

withdrawal. And if you are using a lot of them, you feel overwhelmed

and hopeless. This is learned helplessness in action. It may be a

feeling that is very familiar to you.

However, you may not realize that there are other things besides

foods that can trigger these feelings and activate a global sense

of learned helplessness.

Recreating Safety

As an adult you may have intuitively found ways to recreate this

feeling of beta-endorphin "safety" not just with substances, but

with activities. The bad news is that the activities you may be

drawn to are harmful. That is, you may unconsciously recreate the

early trauma in order to get the beta-endorphin release that will

make you "safe" from your pain and reinforce your feelings of

helplessness.

You can unconsciously be drawn to abusive situations because the

abuse evokes the comfort of beta-endorphin. You may even create

bad situations like having your utilities turned off or your

credit taken away because inside the "bad" experience is coded

with the biochemical memory of of beta-endorphin comfort.

The more these bad things happen, the more helpless and inadequate

you feel. You simply feel "done to" and have no idea that you are

unconsciously participating in creating these situations as a way

to stay in a familiar and safe pattern. And the more helpless and

inadequate you feel, the more you want to eat ice cream and

chocolate. So the spiral goes down and down.

As you start taking care of the food, you assume that things will

get better. You cannot understand why you keep slipping into old

and perhaps abusive situations at the very time you are committed

to being so intentional about your healing.

The Drive For Beta Endorphin

Beta-endorphin withdrawal will drive you to get beta-endorphin -even

at the price of abuse. Learned helplessness will wind its sticky

little arms around you. And you will feel terrible shame because

now you think you "should" know better. You may not understand this

at all. You may assume it's a personal problem. You may either feel

victimized or totally inadequate. You may not have a clue about the

biochemistry of it, and may feel that the only way out is years of

therapy. Even then, therapy can take care of the "feelings" but not

the biochemistry.

The joy of the biochemistry is that you can change it fairly quickly.

You can start to see that learned helplessness is one of those sugar

feelings. It may be deeply encoded, it may be sticky, but the reality

is that you are in charge.

That Which Causes The Problem Can Heal It

Learn about beta-endorphin and you can set yourself free with a

sense of purpose and power that you could never have imagined. You

have started to learn that there are many things that raise

beta-endorphins (BE's) other than abuse. Exercise, prayer,

meditation, sexual intimacy, playing with your pets, healthy

food and laughter, enjoying your grandchildren, holding babies,

and music. Lot's of options! But you gotta choose them to take them.

Learned helplessness usually means that your first line of action

is to retreat and isolate_the worst things you can do. Healing

requires one choice at a time, BE's the good ways. BE intentional

(be beta-endorphin-intentional) when you feel overwhelmed. Hold

the ice cream and CHOOSE from the list above of healthy

beta-endorphin-evoking activities.

For Further Reading:

Maier, SF et al, The opioid/nonopioid nature of stress-induced

analgesia and learned helplessness .J Exp Psychol Anim Behav

Process, 1983 Jan:9(1):80-90.

Miczek KA et al, Opioid-like analgesia in defeated mice.Science,

1982 Mar 19; 215(4539:1520-2.

Segato FN, Sucrose ingestion causes opioid analgesia.Braz J Med

Bio Res, 1997 Aug:30(8);981-4.

Tejedor-Real P, et al, Implication of endogenous opioid system

in the learned helpless model of depression .Pharmacol Biochem

Behave, 1995 Sep;52(1);145-5