Healing Awareness

Hi All...a large part of my healing from obesity resulted from understanding...reading researched truth about this challenge around food and obesity.  Below you'll find articles that were most beneficial for me:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/26/AR2009042602711.html

'Kessler was on a mission to understand a problem that has vexed him since childhood: why he can't resist certain foods.

His resulting theory, described in his new book, "The End of Overeating," is startling. Foods high in fat, salt and sugar alter the brain's chemistry in ways that compel people to overeat. "Much of the scientific research around overeating has been physiology -- what's going on in our body," he said. "The real question is what's going on in our brain." '

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/10/science/sci-sweet10

'In the experiment, 43 rats were placed in cages with two levers, one of which delivered an intravenous dose of cocaine and the other a sip of highly sweetened water. At the end of the 15-day trial, 40 of the rats consistently chose saccharin instead of cocaine.
When sugar water was substituted for the saccharin solution, the results were the same, researchers said.
Further testing the rat sweet tooth, scientists subjected 24 cocaine-addicted rats to a similar trial. At the end of 10 days, the majority of them preferred saccharin.
"Intense sweetness is more rewarding to the rats than cocaine," said coauthor Magalie Lenoir of the University of Bordeaux in France.'

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2010/distressed-mothers-linked-to-child-obesity/
(* if this is your story, there are free programs to help you heal emotionally:  Emotions Anonymous, Adult Children of Alcoholism and Dysfunctional Families.  There are telephone and face-to-face meetings.)

However, he added, “Childhood obesity has been described as a ‘global epidemic’ by the World Health Organization. With this is mind, it is clear that more needs to be done to investigate the many factors that contribute to childhood obesity. Further studies are needed to address factors that may be modifiable to be able to address the rising trend in childhood obesity.”

Findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Dublin, September 9-11, 2009.

A similar link was found by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Pamela J. Surkan and her team looked at whether maternal depression is related to overweight in infants aged six to 24 months. They gathered data from 589 mother-child pairs living in low-income urban communities in Brazil.

They found that children of mothers with “high depressive symptoms” had around twice the risk of being above World Health Organization weight/height recommendations. A longer duration of breastfeeding (more than six months) reduced the risk, but it was increased when the mother had fewer than eight years of education.

“There is ample evidence of impairments in interactions between depressed parents and their children,” the team writes. In some deprived areas, the link with weight moves in the opposite direction. They report on a study of low-income families in Santiago, Chile, where “anxious mother-infant attachment was related to lower weight-for-age in young childhood.”

This is consistent with the failure to thrive literature, which documents the role of food-related interactions in growth delays, they believe. “Depressed caregivers may be less likely to perceive that a child is sick or respond to his or her needs, and they may be less able to coax the child to eat. Likewise, mothers with depressive symptoms may be less likely to engage in healthy feeding or sleep practices with their infant, less likely to breastfeed, and less likely to provide tactile stimulation.”

The authors suggest that caregiving behaviors such as sensitive interactions and positive engagement with a child, could affect the child’s growth. They conclude that programs focusing on mothers’ mental health, including prevention and treatment of depression, may result in collateral benefits for their children.'

Are you willing to seek the information needed to help in your healing process from obesity? 

"God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change.  The courage to change the things I can.  And the wisdom to know the difference.  Thy Will not my will be done.  Amen."