Effects of Obesity
Obesity has been at an all time high in America for many years. The weight problems we face are not secret to the majority of the country with little access to healthy food and cultures which do not emphasize healthy eating or healthy living.
Obesity can be a result of genetics and a predisposition to difficulty regulating metabolism or food intake. Whatever brings someone to a startling and difficult weight, many get exhausted after relentlessly trying to lose weight.
Gastric bypass and other bariatric surgeries are efforts to create permanent weight loss and better lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, new research has found, those lifestyle choices aren’t always positive and often involve alcoholism.
How Alcoholism Can Affect You
University of Pittsburgh recently followed more than 2,000 patients who had received a specific kind of gastric bypass surgery which is more permanent than other kinds. As of 2012, nine percent of patients in the study who did not previously have issues with alcohol developed symptoms of alcoholism within two years.
Alarmingly, by the fifth year of the study, meaning five years after a patient underwent the gastric bypass surgery, 20.8 percent of patients had developed symptoms of alcoholism.
The study’s lead author explained that “earlier research has shown that the procedure is associated with higher elevation of alcohol in the blood over a shorter time period. She said animal studies have suggested that the surgery might also increase sensitivity in areas of the brain associated with reward.” Reward systems in the brain can easily become shifted in their operations due to food.
Food Create Addictive Tendencies as Well
Food can have as much of an emotional reward response as alcohol, which puts the brain at a predisposition for developing a problem with alcohol. If the body is then made more vulnerable to the effects of alcohol, both the brain and body are primed for the issue.
Issues with weight can also cause issues with mental health like depression, anxiety, or trauma from bullying. Mental health issues also create a predisposition for developing alcohol use disorder as a co-occurring issues.
Thankfully, recovery and treatment for alcoholism is focused on the mind and the body. Creating a peaceful relationship and symbiosis between mind and body has to be a focus for successful long term recovery and a healthy lifestyle.
Lakehouse Recovery Center provides each client with private nutritional guidance and numerous activities for connecting the mind and body through healing physical activities as well as therapies. For information on our private residential treatment program for alcoholism and co-occurring mental health disorders, call us today at 877.762.3707.