Healthy weight

Neurotransmitter imbalance and your weight — a Core Balance approach

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

My patients often ask me, “What are neurotransmitters, and what do they have to do with me losing weight?” Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that relay information between the nervous system and the rest of the body. They affect how we think, feel, and act. There are many neurotransmitters, and the neurotransmitter cascade is a very complicated one, with connections all over the body, including the digestive system, the adrenal glands, our muscles, and much more. I like to think of a neurotransmitter imbalance as the place in which two worlds are meeting: our biochemical world and our emotional world.

If we look first at biochemistry, it helps to understand the role of serotonin, one of the neurotransmitters most relevant to weight gain and loss. Serotonin is responsible for regulating mood, sleep, and body temperature, among other functions. Many women respond to a lack of serotonin in the brain through fierce carbohydrate cravings. What makes the cravings even more troublesome is that people with a serotonin deficiency often have a heightened pleasure response to carbohydrates.

Generally speaking, the body will always seek to recover homeostasis, so an intense craving for sweets or other carbohydrates is the body’s way of attempting the get back into balance. Carbohydrates help the body make more serotonin by allowing the precursor to serotonin, tryptophan (a molecule primarily found in protein), to more easily cross the blood-brain barrier. Once tryptophan arrives in the brain, more serotonin can be produced. But there are other ways to solve this problem without giving in wholeheartedly to your cravings! In fact, if we change the way we eat to serve the body’s balance, these cravings will disappear altogether and weight loss is often a happy side effect.

But eating isn’t everything, and this is where our emotions come into the picture. Women are sometimes hit harder by emotional issues linked with neurotransmitter imbalances and abdominal weight gain, like anxiety and depression, to name just two. And this can lead to a lot of negative self-talk. Sometimes these women feel like they are compulsive eaters, that they may as well just pull up a chair in front of the refrigerator and stay put! But there are many ways to break out of this cycle. And if we can quiet the physiological cravings, we are much more able to address the emotional aspects of eating.

The Core Balance Diet for Neurotransmitter Imbalance addresses the physical and emotional imbalances to help women feel good during and after they eat. One of the things I include in the eating plan is a sweet or regular potato a few hours after the major meal of the day, so the carbohydrates it contains can help give tryptophan a clearer path to the brain overnight. Also, the fiber and micronutrient content provided by the potato and its skin help sustain the insulin response across time. For women with a neurotransmitter imbalance, this helps neurotransmitter production and utilization, prevents blood sugars from dipping too low during the night, provides for more restful sleep, and moderates cravings and mood swings.

Along with the potato, the Core Balance Diet addresses 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 lows and highs of these neurotransmitters and optimize how we use them. I’ve also found that supplementing with 5-HTP, a serotonin precursor, can help circumvent some of the more difficult emotional aspects of a neurotransmitter imbalance.

There are many issues that contribute to weight gain in women — it’s not just about eating less, exercising more, or taking an antidepressant. I’ve found that a one-size-fits-all approach too often falls short for my patients. If we can work with the body instead of against it, weight loss is not only possible, but a natural progression. For a more detailed discussion on healing your neurotransmitter imbalance, read my book, The Core Balance Diet.

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References & further reading on core neurotransmitter imbalance

 

Original Publication Date: 04/16/2009
Last Modified: 02/16/2010
Principal Author: Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP