Weight Loss

Neurotransmitter imbalance and weight loss resistance

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

It won’t surprise you to know that your brain can be intimately involved in your ability to lose weight, especially with respect to neurotransmitter activity. Neurotransmitters are your brain’s chemical messengers and they relay information between the nervous system and the rest of your body. They affect how you think, feel, and act.

One neurotransmitter in particular, serotonin, is among the most relevant to both gaining weight and losing it. Serotonin is responsible for regulating mood, sleep, and body temperature, among other functions. And it can be a key player in weight loss resistance.

Here’s why serotonin is so crucial when it comes to weight gain. Many women respond to a lack of serotonin in the brain through fierce carbohydrate cravings. Carbohydrates help the body make more serotonin by allowing the precursor to serotonin, tryptophan, to more easily cross the blood-brain barrier. Once tryptophan arrives in the brain, more serotonin can be produced.

Tryptophan (primarily found in protein) is relatively small compared to other amino acids, so it has trouble physically getting around the bigger amino acids to cross the tightly regulated blood-brain barrier. Carbohydrates trigger the release of the hormone insulin, which pairs up with the larger amino acids to help build muscle — basically reducing the “traffic” between tryptophan and the brain.

Generally speaking, an intense craving for sweets or other carbohydrates is your body’s way of attempting to produce more insulin and lighten the traffic so that tryptophan can get across the blood-brain barrier and start producing the all-important serotonin. The problem is that women who have a serotonin deficiency also often have a heightened pleasure response to carbohydrates — which can reset the craving for still more sweets. And too often, women blame themselves for “giving in” to these cravings, because they don’t realize that there’s a very real physiological explanation when they eat to satisfy cravings and it isn’t a lack of willpower. This pattern can lead to a lot of self-criticism too.

Now, our emotions enter the picture. Women are often hit harder by emotional issues linked with neurotransmitter imbalances and abdominal weight gain. Anxiety and depression, to name just two, are common in women with neurotransmitter imbalances. Between the emotional issues and the cravings, some women in this group come to believe they are compulsive eaters, feeling as if there’s really nothing they can do to change the pattern. But there are many ways to break out of this cycle. And if we can quiet the physiological cravings, we make it much easier to address our emotional eating.

The Personal Program for Weight Loss Resistance addresses physical and emotional imbalances so women can feel good both when they’re eating — and after they’re done. One idea I suggest in the Essentials Eating Plan is to enjoy a sweet potato or regular potato a few hours after your major meal of the day. The carbohydrates in the potato can help give tryptophan a clearer path to the brain over night.

The reason potatoes work best, and not some other kind of carbohydrate, is that the fiber and micronutrient content provided by the potato and its skin help to keep the insulin response stable over time.

For women with a neurotransmitter imbalance, this can:

• help neurotransmitter production and utilization
• prevent blood sugars from dipping too low during the night
• provide for more restful sleep
• help reduce cravings and mood swings

While the potato option can offer short-term help, in the long run you want to address a neurotransmitter imbalance with a combination of nutrients that provide the building blocks of key neurotransmitters (mainly serotonin, dopamine, and GABA). The right nutrition can also moderate fluctuating levels of these neurotransmitters and optimize how your body uses them. I’ve also found that supplementing with 5-HTP, a serotonin precursor, can help you avoid some of the more difficult emotional aspects of a neurotransmitter imbalance.

Obviously, there are many issues that contribute to weight gain in women — so it’s not just about eating less, exercising more, or getting a prescription for an antidepressant. I’ve found that a one-size-fits-all approach too often falls short for my patients. Instead, we need to work with the body instead of against it, which makes weight loss not only possible, but a natural progression of the process.

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Last Modified Date: 12/01/2011
Principal Author: Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP