Dopamine and breakfast

in #health7 years ago

T.S. Wiley wrote a lot about the protein-rich breakfast; here’s my understanding of her take on it.

N.B. I highly recommend her book, Lights out: sleep, sugar, and survival.

Quotes are mainly taken from the text. I’ve tracked down some of the cites; the rest are in the back of the book, albeit somewhat unorganized :/

Part 1. We naturally have a cortisol spike first thing in the morning, known as the Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR). This peak, which can be screwed up by artificial light at night or a big evening dinner, helps support morning light-induced dopamine.

Dopamine is great, but may induce impulsivity if it’s unfettered.

Enter: the protein-rich breakfast. It provides tryptophan and a bit of insulin to promote serotonin synthesis (eg, Manjarrez-Gutierrez et al., 1999).

Not enough serotonin to make you crazy, just enough to balance the dopamine = impulse control.

~ circadian balance achieved ~

My two cents: cortisol gets a bad rap, but I don’t think the CAR is bad at all. It’s actually beneficial. However, if you’re worried about the catabolic effects of cortisol on skeletal muscle (which you shouldn’t be in this #context), then a protein-rich breakfast might be just what you need to counteract it.

*chronically elevated cortisol = no bueno (it actually decreases dopamine, eg, Pacak et al., 2002)… very different from the transient CAR

One of the many problems with artificial lighting is the endless “summer-like” short nights, year-round. Wiley stresses that insulin should be low when it’s dark: on a large time-scale, this translates to low carb availability in long dark winters; on a small time-scale, this translates to an early low carb dinner.

Big evening meals plus artificial light at night messes up the CAR.

“In this state, breakfast is easy to skip” !!!

Not enough cortisol to enhance dopamine, and prolactin shifted into the daytime = “you’re kind of stupid, too, with no memory or ability to plan.” (this book is infinitely quotable!)

[the prolactin shift is more related to short sleep duration, but makes AM cortisol & dopamine more important]

When all your ducks are in a row, “Dopamine controls protein craving just as NPY controls carbohydrate intake. With your dopamine up, your serotonin falls, so you want meat.” Meat = protein-rich breakfast in this #context.

Delaying breakfast long after you wake, see morning sun, and getting a dopamine hit = circadian phase delay, you age faster (theoretically), and are predisposed to many modern diseases (theoretically).

Morning dopamine is also important for glucose control, eg, Cycloset*. It also prevents daytime prolactin, which is a side effect of nights shortened by artificial light. Daytime prolactin also promotes autoimmunity, and hunger via NPY activation.

*Cycloset (bromocriptine) is a dopaminergic drug which, when taken immediately upon waking, improves blood glucose control throughout the day (eg, Pijl et al., 2000).

Part 2: The food-entrainable oscillator (FEO) zeitgeber has remained somewhat elusive, but JP’s hypothesis that ghrelin suppression by a protein-rich breakfast is a strong candidate, imho.

Dietary protein suppresses ghrelin more so than carbs or fats (eg, Bowen et al., 2006 and Foster-Schubert et al., 2008). Insulin is more ghrelin-suppressive than carbs per se, which strengthens the case for dietary protein (eg, Iwakura et al., 2015).

We can garner little information from knockout experiments because another hormone, obestatin, comes from the same gene as ghrelin and appears to have an opposite function. #MouseDoctorFail

Ghrelin promotes sleep in humans (eg, Weikel et al., 2003), so we might not want a big meal late at night suppressing it.

Increased ghrelin is also one of the ways in which sleep restriction increases hunger and appetite (eg, specifically for carb-rich foods, in this study: Spiegel et al., 2004).

These two articles also appear to support the hypothesis:

Ghrelin effects on the circadian system of mice (Yiannelli et al., 2007)

Stomach ghrelin-secreting cells as food-entrainable circadian clocks (LeSauter et al., 2009)

So, why is a protein-rich breakfast important to circadian biology: is it the dopamine/serotonin or ghrelin hypothesis? I don’t know (sorry), but my money is on both and more. Unknown-unknowns and all that jazz.

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Changes in cerebral serotonin synthesis induced by insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10614139

OBJECTIVE:
Evaluate if the rats with diabetes mellitus insulin-dependent have a minor activity of the serotonergic biosynthetic pathway through the decrease of the free fraction of L-tryptophan in plasma.

METHODS:
Diabetes mellitus was induced in rats, and the brain serotonergic biosynthetic activity was evaluated at 7, 14, and 21 days after streptozotocin administration.

RESULTS:
The diabetic animals showed a general decrease in body weight. In plasma they had a decrease in the free fraction of L-tryptophan. Also, in the brain they show low levels of the amino acid, as well as decrease of the activity of the limiting enzyme tryptophan-5-hydroxylase and its product serotonin. Interestingly, the activity of the enzyme was higher in the brainstem from day 14, accompanied with an elevation of the neurotransmitter.

CONCLUSIONS:
The results confirm that diabetes mellitus insulin-depend induce chronic undernourishment. The low levels of L-tryptophan in blood of the diabetic animals suggest a minor transport of the amino acid to the brain and a decrease in serotonin synthesis, in cerebral cortex and hypothalamus. Besides, during the evolution of the disease, the activity of tryptophan hydroxylase was elevated, independently of L-tryptophan concentration in the brainstem of diabetic animals, suggesting a different response according to the brain region and possibly a different functional change, accompanied by an increase in the synthesis of the neurotransmitter.

Energy Intake, Ghrelin, and Cholecystokinin after Different Carbohydrate and Protein Preloads in Overweight Men https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/91/4/1477/2843514

Acyl and Total Ghrelin Are Suppressed Strongly by Ingested Proteins, Weakly by Lipids, and Biphasically by Carbohydrates https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/93/5/1971/2599032

So nice seeing you here @caloriesproper been waiting for real health blogs in here :D Been reading some stuff from you before. Nice to see you on steemit :) keep up the good work :D

Thanks, @camelx! I'm new to the platform... got any tips? Thanks again :-)

i've seen a lot of good health topics not getting enough attention. like when my partner @healthpac (check his posts on health) not getting it in here. hehe many people are follow for follow etc. I would reccomend sharing on twitter too, and Steemit groups on quality on FB and share it there right afterwards. And the tags are most important - u can see what is trending at the home site. so if you write health first. then blog, life, writing, steemit would suit very well. Cause i in my opinion think health should get more on steemit. Not oonly crypto. hehe. resteemed your post - and your post and work are great :) @caloriesproper

thank you thank you thank you! :-)

no problem. dont know if it was that you were asking about. but there are some tips at least :) My pleasure :)

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Chronic Hypercortisolemia Inhibits Dopamine Synthesis and Turnover in the Nucleus accumbens: An in vivo Microdialysis Study https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/64522

Bromocriptine: a novel approach to the treatment of type 2 diabetes https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10937514