Pat Hartman | Childhood Obesity News

ParentCorps — a Program for the Whole Family

Pat Hartman September 25, 2019 No Comments

ParentCorps is a long-running (close to two decades) program of the Center for Healthful Behavior Change, which is part of NYU Langone’s Department of Population Health. It is one of many Family Health Centers programs serving families from “communities that are not historically well connected to the healthcare system.”

In partnership with pre-kindergarten programs and school-based leaders in high-poverty schools, in what are euphemistically called “disinvested” neighborhoods, it is made up of three components:

— a 14-week social-emotional learning curriculum implemented by classroom teachers in all pre-K classrooms

— a 14-week parenting program for all families of pre-K students facilitated by school-based mental health professionals

— professional development for school leaders, pre-K teachers, mental health professionals, and parent support staff, including weekly coaching for pre-K teachers and mental health professionals to support high-quality program implementation

As of 2018, more than 50 schools and centers were implementing the ParentCorps program, impacting nearly 3,000 children and their families each year. The aim is not necessarily to reduce obesity per se, but to prevent many of the co-morbidities associated with obesity. With the teaching of behavior regulation skills, which prevent and reduce unhealthful behaviors, obesity reduction is an almost inevitable side effect.

The evening program for the whole family includes a meal, and care for any siblings who happen to come along. The kids and their parents each have their own activities in different spaces, but there does not appear to be any mandatory separation. It seems to be set up so that an anxious child can stay with the grownups, or vice-versa. A very short (2:19) video clip provides a window into how it works, and emphasizes the non-authoritarian, non-judgmental attitude embraced by the staff members, which is always welcomed by people who might feel like they have already been bossed around all day.

It is never too early to teach parenting skills

Several years ago, journalist Amy Norton interviewed Dr. Laurie Miller Brotman (who now directs the Center for Early Childhood Health and Development). Dr. Brotman noted that previous programs, aimed at decreasing calories, increasing exercise, and decreasing screen time, usually failed.

This recalls the point Dr. Pretlow has made many times about the children and teens who frequent the message boards at Weigh2Rock.com. The great majority of young people know about calories, and know they need to resist destructive urges. What they do not know, is how. Their need is not for additional information, but for skills.

Dr. Brotman adds that the same goes for grownups. They are aware of at least the general guidelines of what needs doing, but lack specific skills — and therein lies the effectiveness of the ParentCorps program for financially struggling urban families with children at high risk for behavioral problems.

Parents learn, among other things, how to reinforce their children’s good behavior and how to discipline them without physical punishment. The kids, meanwhile, play games that teach them social skills and ways to deal with their emotions. By the age of eight, the researchers found, children in the program had less than half the rate of obesity as their control-group peers did.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Center for Healthful Behavior Change,” undated
Source: “ParentCorps,” undated
Source: “Behavior programs may cut child obesity risk,” Reuters.com, 02/07/12
Photo credit: Johnny Silvercloud on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA

Can Parents Change Their Ways?

Pat Hartman September 24, 2019 No Comments

Yesterday’s post reflected on a sad fact that all humans eventually must face. Only three things can be changed: other people, the environment, and the self. Parents can effect a modicum of authority by manipulating the environment; for instance, by maintaining the home free of high-calorie snacks, or at the very least, by keeping such commodities under lock and key. They might change the school environment by campaigning against lunch policies, or traditions that allow birthday treats to be brought in; or by influencing the administration either for or against school weigh-ins.

Other people are the most stubborn challenge. In the case of parents who want to help their children avoid obesity, those wrong-headed opponents may be relatives, medical personnel, teachers, neighbors, and additional walk-on players who seem to need a talking-to, from time to time. Too frequently, however, the kids themselves prove to be the subset of “other people” most adamantly resistant to the introduction of novelty into their accustomed routines.

After enough incidents of running head-first into the wall of the environment or the other people, many parents eventually catch on, and internalize the message that what needs to change is their very own personal selves.

Let’s look at some thoughts that have been voiced and recorded about the role of parents in their children’s recovery. In “I Ruined You Before You Were Three,” a heartbreaking piece permeated with dry humor, Caroline Beaulieu addresses her daughter:

I promise you that every day we wake up wanting to make you better, even if that means doing the hard work of making ourselves better… Someday you’ll love someone so much you’ll ruin them too. And I only hope I’m still around so we can have a beer and laugh about how hard it is to love someone so much.

The grittier Anne Lamott wrote…

[…] one of the worst things about being a parent, for me, is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one’s secret insanity and brokenness and rage.

The thing is, a lot a angst can be avoided by starting early and being consistent, exercising parental prerogatives with a steady hand and a light touch. If food is never used to buy love, it’s a lot easier to keep kids from getting hooked on overeating. Dr. Pretlow says,

Controlling a preschooler’s access to food by parents is effective to prevent childhood obesity, if the parent is willing to not enable overeating in the child (no treats, no large portions, no extra helpings, etc.). This doesn’t work once the child is mobile (bike, friend’s houses, etc.), about age 10.

Hopefully, by that time, there will be enough good training in place that it will stick, even when the child is not constantly beneath the parental eye. At the same time, while maintaining expectations, a parent can’t be fanatical, because that may stir up pushback and backlash and all kinds of unpleasant sequelae.

There is a reaction called “last supper” syndrome, says registered dietician and nutritionist Carrie Dennett, the implication being that the person feels desperately needy, as if they will never again have a chance to eat this particular food, or indeed any food at all. If the really yummy stuff is too vigorously restricted, the next step might be obsession, which is certainly a form of emotional eating.

When the Berlin Wall between a person and a forbidden food is breached, shame and guilt can follow, compounding the emotional mess even more. Dennett says,

Make desserts and other favorite treat foods available on occasion, and let your child choose them when they are available. Healthful diets still have room for treats.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “I Ruined You Before You Were Three,” Medium.com, 08/31/16
Source: “Duncan Trussell Family Hour 301: Anne Lamott and Raghu Markus,” iHeart.com, 08/16/18
Source: “What to say (or not to say) to your overweight child,” WashingtonPost.com, 09/13/16
Photo credit: Joe_13 on Visualhunt/CC BY-ND

Only Three Possibilities for Change

Pat Hartman September 23, 2019 No Comments

September is, of course, Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, so we are in its midst. Not surprisingly, it looks much like any other month, here at Childhood Obesity News.

The next few posts will focus on parental involvement. In any family where a child is dangerously obese (or combative, or pyromaniacal), it is widely recognized that while the child is the designated patient, the whole family is, to some degree, sick.

When a heroin addict goes through rehab successfully, then returns to the same set of circumstances where the addiction took hold in the first place, the odds for lasting recovery are abysmal. When addictive behaviors are the issue, the surroundings and the people in those surroundings are crucial. Even if a morbidly obese child is so fortunate as to be granted a year-long stay in the world’s best residential weight-loss facility, sending the child back into the same environment after the “fix” is unlikely to have good long-term consequences.

When journalist-turned-psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb wrote “What Brand is Your Therapist?” she brought readers along on her journey of realization, namely, that psychotherapy had been going out of style for some time. Insurers would much rather pay for a bottle of pills than for an unpredictable, open-ended prescription like therapy. Big Pharma figured out that while influencing doctors with fancy weekends in exotic locales was all well and good, the real money was in teaching patients to nag their doctors for solutions that originated in laboratories.

Branding? No thanks.

When colleagues suggested that a branding consultant might help, Gottlieb found the very idea at first repulsive, and then oddly intriguing. She contacted Casey Truffo, a professional in that field, just to see what such a person might have to say. Before going into the consulting business, Truffo had been a practicing therapist for nearly two decades, a strong indication that she knew what she was talking about, and it was this: “Nobody wants to buy therapy any more.”

What they want, Truffo says, is to buy a solution to a problem. On its face, there is nothing wrong with that sentiment. But in practical terms, what it boils down to is, the solution people hope to buy is that other people will change. While it is true that people sometimes will change in return for payment, too often force is involved. This is problematic because even a dictatorship (or a stay at fat boot camp) can only induce people to change their behavior, not their essential selves. Still, the sad reality remains — three things in the world are amenable to change — the environment, other people, and the self.

Narrowing it down

A neighborhood, an institution, or a legal system can be changed, generally with a great deal of dedication and hard work. The catch is, changing the macro-environment usually entails enlisting a large number of allies, i.e. other people. At that point, the project automatically moves into the territory of the second possibility, changing other people. If those other people were already on board with your desired conditions, the problem would probably not have arisen in the first place.

Now, think how difficult it can be to change even a mini-environment that involves just one other person. You want to live in safety, but your housemate is incurably negligent about locking the front door. Getting that person to change their level of security consciousness might prove so arduous, it would be easier to simply transform your micro-environment by moving, or replacing the housemate.

Trying to change other people is often a fool’s errand. But that does not stop anyone from signing up for therapy, in hopes of learning the secret formula to make other people change.

As Truffo told Gottlieb about her 18-year psychotherapy practice, “I’d see fewer and fewer people coming in and saying, ‘I want to change.’ ”

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “What Brand Is Your Therapist?” NYTimes.com, 11/23/12
Photo credit: Steve @ the alligator farm on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA

Oxytocin As a Anti-Obesity Drug? Continued

Pat Hartman September 20, 2019 No Comments

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post chronicling the quest for knowledge about the central nervous pathways responsible for establishing metabolic control, and for as much information as possible about how the role of one substance in that context can be intentionally expanded upon. A 2017 study included this elegant sentence:

In recent years, the hypothalamic neuropeptide oxytocin, which is primarily known for its involvement in psychosocial processes and reproductive behavior, has received increasing attention as a modulator of metabolic function.

Researchers had learned that a squirt of oxytocin up the nose “acutely limits meal intake and the consumption of palatable snacks,” which sounds rather magical. Here is another lovely phrase for what the substance does: It causes “the early termination of food intake.” It steps in and says, “Hey, check yourself before you wreck yourself,” and the person stops eating at a reasonable point.

The authors of a University of Minnesota paper remarked that clinical studies are still in their infancy, and opined,

Future implementation of oxytocin-based pharmacological strategies in controlling energy balance will likely depend on our ability to integrate diverse behavioral and metabolic effects of oxytocin in obesity treatment regimens.

Massachusetts General Hospital confirmed that chronic administration of oxytocin “leads to sustained weight reduction by reducing food intake, increasing energy expenditure and inducing lipolysis” — in rodents and nonhuman primates, anyway. The report it published covered important data that shows a similar effect in humans.

“The complexity of obesity aetiology” is an elegant phrase for multifactorialism. It is used in a report that describes how oxytocin improves glucose uptake and lipid utilization, and how the substance has a multi-pronged effect on peripheral insulin sensitivity, pancreatic function, and more.

Earlier this year, news was published of the 10-men, double-blind study where oxytocin weakened “the effective coordination between neural systems in response to a task.” In other words, the subjects did not get as excited about pictures of high-calorie food.

A distinctive feature of oxytocin is that it is not distinctive. The participants cannot tell if they receive it or a placebo. The most usual route of administration is intranasal, which is minimally invasive. This alone establishes a welcoming tone for future examinations of what oxytocin can do.

Plus, as far as anybody knows, there are no side effects. This would seem to make it a substance ripe for development — read “exploitation” — but in this world, we can’t have one without the other.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Current findings on the role of oxytocin in the regulation of food intake,” NIH.gov, 03/08/17
Source: “The effects of oxytocin on eating behaviour and metabolism in humans,” NIH.gov, 09/29/17
Source: “Oxytocin in metabolic homeostasis: implications for obesity and diabetes,” management,” NIH.gov, 09/25/18
Source: “Investigational obesity drug, oxytocin, weakens brain’s reward signals for food,” Endocrine.org, 03/24/19
Photo credit: badjonni on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA

Oxytocin As an Anti-Obesity Drug?

Pat Hartman September 19, 2019 No Comments

Falling in love is often accompanied by weight loss that was not even thought about or tried for, it just comes as an incidental side effect. Coincidentally, falling in love causes the body to produce oxytocin, at least for half a year or thereabouts.

As we saw with the Rat Park rodents, pleasant company and an interesting environment can create enough sense of well-being to keep a creature from the clutches of addiction. (Except when it cannot, but that is a another class of question.) In chronological order, Childhood Obesity News looks at studies and discoveries about the intersection of this chemical with weight loss.

Way back in 2008, a Japanese study mentioned how previous research “showed that mice that have been knocked out of their oxytocin receptors had eventually become obese without actually increasing their usual food consumption.”

This is interesting because the online forums frequented by overweight and obese people are rife with complaints that it is truly possible to gain weight on a calorie-restricted diet. They are angry about being called liars.

In 2012 the Abstract of another study on energy expenditure stated,

Despite substantial evidence supporting a role of oxytocin in body weight regulation, it remains controversial whether oxytocin neurons directly regulate body weight homeostasis, feeding or energy expenditure…. [O]ur study suggests that oxytocin neurons are required to resist the obesity associated with a high fat diet; but their role in feeding is permissive and can be compensated for by redundant pathways.

Researchers noted that “its ability to reduce body mass extends beyond that of food intake, affecting multiple factors that determine energy balance such as energy expenditure, lipolysis, and glucose regulation.”

Another Abstract noted oxytocin’s “previously-unappreciated diverse functions in regulating social behaviors and metabolic physiology” and summed up all the recent advances in the field as providing “a promising foundation for the therapeutic strategy of developing innovative OXT peptidyl drugs for the treatment of obesity and related metabolic diseases.”

Yet another described itself,

This review assesses the potential central and peripheral targets by which oxytocin may inhibit body weight gain, its regulation by anorexigenic and orexigenic signals, and its potential use as a therapy that can circumvent leptin resistance and reverse the behavioral and metabolic abnormalities associated with DIO and genetically obese models.

In 2015, there was a study whose title said it all: “Chronic oxytocin administration inhibits food intake, increases energy expenditure, and produces weight loss in fructose-fed obese rhesus monkeys.”

Work originally published in French concurred that “the use of this hormone for weight loss in obese patients or as a complementary treatment in diabetic patients seems to be promising.”

A 2016 study started with the propositions that oxytocin somehow limits food intake, and that its potential to improve metabolic control needed to be explored. They had 20 normal-weight men and 18 obese ones to work with. In both groups, “hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis secretion and the postprandial rise in plasma glucose were blunted by oxytocin.” The text says,

Oxytocin markedly reduced hunger-driven food intake in the fasted state in obese but not in normal-weight men, and led to a reduction in snack consumption in both groups, whereas energy expenditure remained generally unaffected. Oxytocin exerts an acutely inhibitory impact on food intake that is enhanced rather than decreased in obese compared with normal-weight men.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Oxytocin receptor-deficient mice developed late-onset obesity,” NIH.gov, 06/11/08
Source: “An obligate role of oxytocin neurons in diet induced energy expenditure,” NIH.gov, 09/18/12
Source: “Coming full circle: contributions of central and peripheral oxytocin actions to energy balance,” NIH.gov, 12/27/12
Source: “A New Horizon: Oxytocin as a Novel Therapeutic Option for Obesity and Diabetes,” NIH.gov, 06/01/13
Source: “Role of oxytocin signaling in the regulation of body weight,” NIH.gov, December 2013
Source: “Chronic oxytocin administration inhibits food intake, increases energy expenditure, and produces weight loss in fructose-fed obese rhesus monkeys,” NIH.gov, 12/24/14
Source: “Oxytocin: metabolic effects and potential use for obesity treatment,” NIH.gov, 01/14/15
Source: “Oxytocin’s inhibitory effect on food intake is stronger in obese than normal-weight men” NIH.gov, 08/24/16
Photo credit: runran on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA

Oxytocin As an Anti-Addiction Drug?

Pat Hartman September 18, 2019 No Comments

Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that originates in the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland, and some other locations. The kind secreted by the body is endogenous, originating inside. Exogenous oxytocin is the kind synthesized in a lab and introduced from outside, usually intravenously or intramuscularly for obstetrical procedures, and via intranasal spray for other purposes.

The body’s dopaminergic system is influenced by oxytocin, which is why it has been looked at for years as a potential door into dependencies, addictions, cravings, and compulsions.

Oxytocin is perceived as a “potential mediator and regulator of drug addiction.” But not much progress could be made, as long as nobody understood the cellular mechanism of the hormone in regard to the moderation of drug-seeking behavior. Researchers hypothesized about one illicit drug in particular:

These findings suggest that oxytocin mediates cocaine seeking through interacting with glutamate receptor systems via second messenger cascades in mesocorticolimbic regions.

As always, when a substance seems to be helpful in treating one kind of addiction, experts in other addiction-related areas perk up their ears. One study found that the hormone…

[…] has fascinating potential to reverse the corrosive effects of long-term drugs abuse on social behavior and to perhaps inoculate against future vulnerability to addictive disorders.

One of the “predictors and indicators” of drug addiction is novelty seeking. Some people become addicted because their brains are too active in pursuit of new stimuli, and their drug of choice is able to order the chaos and make it more manageable. Some become addicted because, even though the brain seeks novelty, the environment is so stultifying that the only solution is to numb the brain to the point where it is incapable of any curiosity or enthusiasm.

So, a 2015 study looked into the association between oxytocin and novelty seeking, which seems to be negative. The substance tends to make people more content to “be here now,” enjoying and appreciating life moment by moment.

Earlier this year, a four-author study from Iran’s Kashan University of Medical Sciences examined the usefulness of oxytocin to alleviate opioid dependence, because the current pharmacopeia is inadequate. Apparently the available choices don’t work that well, and their side effects serve as deterrents. The report says,

Increasing bodies of evidences suggest the neuropeptide, oxytocin (OT), as a potential treatment for drug abuse disorders. The current study was designed to evaluate the effect of OT on withdrawal, craving and anxiety scores, cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate (DHEAS) blood level in heroin-dependent male patients.

These results suggest that OT may be useful in the attenuation of craving, withdrawal symptom in heroin-dependent patients and might be considered a new potential treatment for heroin dependence…

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Oxytocin Reduces Cocaine Seeking and Reverses Chronic Cocaine-Induced Changes in Glutamate Receptor Function,” NIH.gov, 10/31/14
Source: “Breaking the loop: Oxytocin as a potential treatment for drug addiction,” NIH.gov, March 2012
Source: “Association between Blood Level of Plasma Oxytocin and Novelty Seeking among Methadone-Maintained Heroin Users,” NIH.gov, 04/09/15
Source: “The Effects of Oxytocin on Withdrawal, Craving and Stress Response in Heroin-Dependent Patients: A Randomized, Double-Blind Clinical Trial,” NIH.gov, 01/10/19
Photo on Visualhunt

Lessons From Vietnam

Pat Hartman September 17, 2019 No Comments

In the previous post, we mentioned the amazing ability of many medical opioid users to stop using, once the condition that causes them pain has healed.

At a certain point during the Vietnam war, the U.S. government discovered that, in country, as many as one servicemember in five was strung out on heroin. Lee N. Robins, a psychiatric researcher for the Nixon administration’s Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention, took charge, and author James Clear wrote this about her:

In a finding that completely upended the accepted beliefs about addiction, Robins found that when soldiers who had been heroin users returned home, only 5 percent of them became re-addicted within a year, and just 12 percent relapsed within three years. In other words, approximately nine out of ten soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam eliminated their addiction nearly overnight.

Alix Spiegel for NPR adds a detail that is not inconsiderable: “Those who were addicted were kept in Vietnam until they dried out.” In other words, the veterans were not just dumped back in the U.S. in a condition of active withdrawal. Psychological addiction notwithstanding, they were, physically, former addicts.

This information throws a whole different light on matters. Where were they detoxed? How long did it take?

Amazing results

Anyway, the followup data collection carried out by Robins showed that close to 90 percent of returning veterans who had been addicts never returned to the habit. This was an unbelievably, miraculously low recidivism rate. At the same time, an opposite numerical ratio was in play. The proportion of garden-variety, civilian American addicts who graduated from rehab and later dived back into their habit approached 90 percent.

Why? Because in the very large majority of cases, a person comes back from drying out or “getting clean” into the same environment where the addiction took hold. This never bodes well. The veterans, on the other hand, who for the most part stayed away from heroin, had the enormous advantage of not returning to Vietnam. The proposition put forward by Robins was that “addictions could spontaneously dissolve if there was a radical change in the environment.”

This highlights the biggest problem with helping obese kids. Even if they attend the best fat camp in the world and lose half their body weight, few children have any choice about where to go from there. Except in very extraordinary circumstances, the child is going to wind up back in the same house with the same parents, siblings, and neighbors, and attending the same school.

Considering the hopelessness of the situation, perhaps taking kids away and putting them in foster homes does not sound so extraordinarily cruel after all.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “How Vietnam War Veterans Broke Their Heroin Addictions,” JamesClear.com, undated
Source: “What Vietnam Taught Us About Breaking Bad Habits,” NPR.org, 01/02/12
Photo credit: ep_jhu on Visualhunt/CC BY-NC-ND

The Fog of Addiction

Pat Hartman September 16, 2019 No Comments

With congenial company and interesting toys to play with and activities to do, laboratory rodents are really not obsessively interested in pushing a lever to get cocaine. This is what Prof. Bruce Alexander demonstrated with his Rat Park.

A happy, busy rat is a non-addicted rat, and to a certain extent, this is true of humans as well. Absorbing activities and peer relationships help an entity to steer away from the temptations of involvement with substances, whether those substances are problem foods or harmful drugs.

For The Huffington Post, Johann Hari relates the agreement of Prof. Peter Cohen that human beings have a deep need to attain satisfaction from bonding and forming connections:

If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find — the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe. He says we should stop talking about “addiction” altogether, and instead call it “bonding”. A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn’t bond as fully with anything else.

In other words, sobriety is not the opposite of addiction, but human connection is. Hari describes his observations at a meeting of Gamblers’ Anonymous where the participants “were as plainly addicted as the cocaine and heroin addicts I have known in my life.” How is this possible, when no hypodermic syringes are present, and no powder is being snorted?

The prescription needed, he concludes, is not an antagonist drug, but reconnection with the world. He quotes Prof. Alexander, who…

[…] told me that for too long, we have talked exclusively about individual recovery from addiction. We need now to talk about social recovery — how we all recover, together, from the sickness of isolation that is sinking on us like a thick fog.

In developing the WeightLoss2Go smartphone application, Dr. Pretlow has been sensitive to the importance of social activities and interactions. Peer support and face-to-face meetings are parts of the program, which is designed to foster openness, camaraderie, and connection. The app includes the ability to work with a mentor, a section on distractions, a program for fostering self-esteem, and a peer support area, all of which contribute to the creation of a life that is full of satisfactions other than food and overeating.

A wrinkle in the narrative

Heroin addiction has formerly been regarded as a virtual death sentence, impossible to escape. In the words of Dr. Sanjay Gupta, it was…

[…] scientifically regarded as one of the most dangerously addictive drugs on the planet, in terms of dependence, withdrawal, tolerance, reinforcement and intoxication. Relapse is almost guaranteed…

Hari describes addiction as neither a moral failing nor a disease, but an adaptation. This relates to the widely known saying of Krishnamurti: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” People strive to avoid the above-mentioned “sickness of isolation that is sinking on us like a thick fog.” The methods by which addicts go about it may be difficult for others to understand, but in their own way, they too are also looking for a better life.

This brings us to an interesting and crucial difference between different kinds of addicts. Hari cites Dr. Gabor Mate, who explained to him that,

[…] medical users just stop, despite months of use. The same drug, used for the same length of time, turns street-users into desperate addicts — and leaves medical patients unaffected.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think,” HuffingtonPost.com, 04/18/17
Source: “Vietnam, heroin and the lesson of disrupting any addiction,” CNN.com, 12/22/15
Photo credit: Pai Shih on Visualhunt/CC BY

Oxytocin Again

Pat Hartman September 13, 2019 No Comments

The neurohormone oxytocin, comprising nine amino acids, is made in the hypothalamus and stored in the pituitary gland. The brain and gonads can manufacture it too. Way back in 1955, it was the first polypeptide hormone to be synthesized, for which a Nobel Prize was awarded. It has been widely used for obstetrical purposes.

Oxytocin is of course produced in volume during the first six months of being in love, and in the presence of one’s newborn child. When it hits the brain, it can affect cognition, emotionality, and social behavior. This is why it has been tried in the treatment of schizophrenia, autism, and depression. It is said to facilitate relaxation, attachment, altruism, bonding, psychological stability, and quick healing of the intestinal lining, which is very helpful to people with certain conditions.

Domestic harmony

The early part of 2019 saw an explosion of interest in oxytocin. In fact, speaking of love, word came from Baylor University that when a couple plays a board game, they get an oxytocin rush, and even more so if they take a painting class together. On average, the men who paint release at least twice as much oxytocin as the women painters, and more than either sex playing board games.

Also, research seems to have confirmed what marriage counselors have long advised — that a couple should take some time and go away together, because in new environments they release more oxytocin than if they stay home. (No doubt, other studies say the opposite, and confirm that travel can be stressful enough to destroy the fabric of a relationship.) Still, all the positive benefits whose confirmation seems to lurk on the horizon are very important. The happier a person is, the less likely that person is to engage in self-destructive behaviors like compulsive overeating.

Vulnerability

In his 2011 TEDGlobal talk, neuroeconomist Paul Zak suggested that this chemical produced by the body can “make people more trusting, more empathetic, and, therefore, more moral.” Oxytocin has in fact been called the “morality molecule.” All of which urges the question: If this stuff can make you feel like you’re in love, inspire you to be a better person, and fix your irritable bowel syndrome, why isn’t it being sold on every street corner?

Actually, it kind of is. A very large Internet company sells it as a love potion, or pheromone, whose purpose is to attract a mate. The fact that such a useful substance can be manufactured and prescribed to humans is pretty exciting, and many doctors have in fact engaged in “off-label” recommendations.

And why not? If oxytocin helps people suffering from specific named conditions to overcome their social deficits, why must health professionals require a diagnosis? Why not make it available to anyone with mild social unease, who just needs an instant personality re-do?

The answer is, because it can backfire. Like any other psychoactive chemical, it can act differently in different individuals. If increased awareness of non-vocal social cues causes a painful hypersensitivity, that can only make matters worse. Oxytocin is full of paradoxes.

Journalist Brian Resnick, quoted previously, went on to note that the majority of jaw-dropping reports about oxytocin are probably false positives. Apparently, there is plenty of “confirmation bias” afoot. Many people are more than ready for this to be a miracle drug, a silver bullet, and so far, it is not.

Except, perhaps, as an anti-obesity or anti-addiction drug.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Oxytocin,” Britannica.com, undated
Source: “Couples creating art or playing board games release ‘love hormone’,” MedicalXpress.com, 02/12/19
Source: “Oxytocin, the so-called “hug hormone,” is way more sophisticated than we thought,” Vox.com, 02/13/19
Photo credit: Canadian Couple 2013 on Visualhunt/CC BY-ND

More Facets of Oxytocin

Pat Hartman September 12, 2019 No Comments

Various characteristics of oxytocin have been identified over the years. Mainly, this substance is all about intimacy. It shows up for dramatic events like sex and childbirth, and for more sedate activities like breastfeeding and gentle cuddling. A person falling in love is awash with oxytocin, and it also smoothes social relationships that are less crucial than lifelong mating. The street drug known as ecstasy is popular because it calls up oxytocin.

Among the autistic, there seem to be some indications that the hormone helps to build attentiveness to facial stimuli and enhance social aptitude. All these things are wonderful, but here is the biggie. Earlier this year, the open-access journal PLOS published a very long and detailed paper by researchers from the National Institutes of Health and The Scripps Research Institute, artfully summarized by ScienceDaily.com, and here is the gist of it:

The neuropeptide oxytocin blocks enhanced drinking in alcohol-dependent rats… Targeting the oxytocin system, the authors note, may provide novel pharmaceutical interventions for the treatment of alcohol-use disorder.

Administering oxytocin can decrease consumption, withdrawal symptoms, and drug-seeking behavior associated with several drugs of abuse.

As we have seen, any approach that successfully treats alcohol or drug addiction might work on addiction to food and/or compulsive overeating. It might, in other words, not only treat obesity, but prevent it from happening. These developments are worth keeping an eye on.

There is a thing called the “tend and defend” response, which mothers and fathers have for their children. Daniel Quintana, a biological psychiatry researcher at the University of Oslo, told journalist Brian Resnick,

If you administer oxytocin to virgin rats, all of a sudden they begin acting like mothers, and they start collecting all the pups, building nests, and all these kinds of things… Behaviorally, oxytocin appears to draw our attention to personal relationships but doesn’t necessarily direct the emotions of them.

A human male, presented with his newborn child, might totally comprehend, for the first time, the willingness to kill 100 other human beings for the sake of one infant. So while oxytocin helps people and especially families to bond, it can also bring out the worst in us. If our kind of people are the best, then it stands to reason that the other kind of people must be the worst.

But wait, that is not the whole picture. Now, turn it around 180 degrees. Resnick also reported,

[…] a whiff of oxytocin could make people more willing to open up and share painful stories with strangers. They suggested oxytocin might improve theory of mind, or the understanding that other people have thoughts and intentions different from your own.

That last-mentioned idea goes back to the hopes for aiding people on the autism spectrum.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Oxytocin could help treat alcohol use disorder,” ScienceDaily.com, 04/16/19
Source: “Oxytocin, the so-called “hug hormone,” is way more sophisticated than we thought,” Vox.com, 02/13/19
Photo credit: Eric Kilby on Visualhunt/CC BY-SA

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