Suffering recurrent episodes of uncontrollable urges to eat, without this being preceded by prolonged fasting, in which you eat faster than normal and also consume more food than normal, all accompanied by feelings of anxiety and loss of control, It may be a sign that the person has an eating disorder.
Judging by data from the US population, almost 3 percent of people suffer at some point in their lives from a disorder like the one described. And of these, more than 8 out of 10 suffered abuse, neglect or other equally traumatizing experiences in childhood.
Sora Shin’s team, from Virginia Tech (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) in the United States, set out to find the apparent link between the tendency to binge eat and having suffered a traumatic experience in childhood.
And what Shin and his colleagues have found is a specific brain circuitry that is vulnerable to stress. This can alter the operation of said circuit, preventing it from properly fulfilling its missions.
Shin’s team has found out how this brain pathway, which normally sends signals in time for us to feel full and stop eating, can be altered by trauma in the first years of life.
The discovery, obtained by analyzing mice, adds a new perspective to behaviors such as binge eating and health problems such as obesity.
Sora Shin. (Foto: Clayton Metz for Virginia Tech)
To identify the connection between unhealthy binge eating and childhood trauma, Shin’s team studied the influence of a brain hormone called leptin. Leptin has long been known to suppress appetite and prevent weight gain by signaling to the brain that it’s time to stop eating.
The team found that in mice in the study that had suffered from childhood stress and displayed binge-like behavior, leptin was less effective in a part of the brain called the lateral hypothalamus, where many behaviors are regulated. Without these brain signals, the binge continues.
The study is titled “Early adversity promotes binge-like eating habits by remodeling a leptin-responsive lateral hypothalamus–brainstem pathway”. And it has been published in the academic journal Nature Neuroscience. (Fountain: NCYT de Amazings)