Attachment, Dopamine, and Food

[Toasty]

All the buddhist ideas of attachment are simply dopamine circuits in the brain that have formed addictions.

When they go unfulfilled, painful withdrawal happens.

Sometimes, if this is recognized, then bypass circuits can be built around it using acetylcholine neurons instead of dopamine neurons.

This is where the idea that "at your core you are a being of love" comes from, and that all other emotions are simply peripheral.

Food is drugs, and since it happens every day it will shift the emotions around. Grains are all opiates with a noticeable high and withdrawal anxiety.

Fix the food, and it fixes your emotions.

[coreybamboo]

Very interesting Toasty. I currently eat a 100% organic diet with most of the vegetables grown from my garden and the rest from farmer's market/health food store. I do eat some meat, but it is raised by organic farmers that I know personally. I do not drink tap water! I only drink restructured water, and high quality spring water. I do not eat grains...and I don't know if/when I will reintroduce them. Do you know what other food types are comparable too? (Example: Grains: Opiates). How do buddhists view sexuality? Isn't that a pleasurable act? What are other things buddhists consider ideas of attachment?

And what diet would you practice to fix your emotions? Plant-based and raw?

[alkaloidaholic]

I'm still reluctant on giving up my sweet grains... I should start cutting them out as much as possible

I'll start a diet consisting only of eggs cheese and bananas XD

[powerfulmedicine]

Cheese and milk are another group of foods that act as opiates since the casein in them can be metabolized into the opioid peptide casomorphin. So you might have to just eat eggs and bananas Alkaloidaholic.

When you closely examine almost any food, you'll find that it contains things that are potentially addictive or toxic when considered at high concentrations or when isolated.

Fruits and vegetables tend to be considered less addictive and healthier than meats, dairy, and grains, but it can be difficult to subsist on fruits and vegetables alone since they tend to be lower in calories.

You could rely on potatoes, but then you increase your exposure to solanine, an alkaloid that can induce psychotic symptoms and that has been hypothesized to be linked to schizophrenia. Or you could rely on rice, a plant that is well known for bioaccumulating heavy metals. Or you could rely on beans, which increases your exposure to lectins which can cause gastrointestinal and autoimmune diseases.

But there is also a link between low fat diets and schizophrenia since schizophrenic brains have been found to be deficient in some fatty acids that are plentiful in meat. Fats and cholesterol are needed by the body for many things but fruits and vegetables don't contain much of these.

The point that I'm trying to make here is that there are a lot of sensationalized ideas about what foods we should avoid to be healthy. But in most cases, it only makes sense to avoid foods when you have a specific previously identified health problem. Otherwise, in my opinion, the best diet is a balanced diet free of processed foods.

Also, as far as I can find, there is no proof of food derived opioid peptides actually making it into the blood following food ingestion. Peptides theoretically wouldn't make it into the blood easily since they are large molecules and are easily broken down by a wide variety of enzymes.

[Toasty]

I can tell you that I get high on rice, in a way that exceeds the high blood sugar high I feel from potatoes.

There are those who believe that, through gradual desensitization, humans left their original diet of watery, non-starchy fruits and leafy greens and began eating starchy tubers and seeds. When the human body eats foods it did not evolve to eat, it releases mucus into the digestive system as an immune reaction against the foreign substance. Everything except non-starchy fruit and greens causes this reaction, and this greatly accelerates the aging process and causes desensitization to the nerves that line the intestines and sense what happens down there.

There are many people who live purely on juicy fruits, not even bothering with leafy greens or seeds. When fruit is the only thing that is consumed, the body alters the way it metabolizes the fruits. It is able to much more efficiently absorb and distribute the fruit nutrients that are not held up in the digestive tract by foods that break down many times more slowly. An apple is quickly absorbed, and it gives many hours of energy. Seeds and tubers are more difficult to break down, and cause the entire digestive tract to operate at a much less efficient capacity than can be felt as a "heaviness" in the gut. Grains take the longest (besides meat), and they cause even stronger heaviness and unnatural hunger cravings.

It takes a considerable time before the body can readapt to subsisting solely on fruit. If humans were only fed fruit and greens their whole life, they would extract energy from them perfectly as they were meant to. But decades of addiction to starches that were not meant to pass through the gut have altered the metabolism so that fruit feels like it is not enough to sustain us, even though it is one of the ultimate healing tools.

Essentially these unnatural foods like starches are the cause of intestinal yeast growths such as candida. They're not supposed to be there, because we aren't designed to eat starch and live effectively.

This is connected with most of the common mental disorders that affect people today, like anxiety and bipolar and schizophrenic disorders. I get anxiety and euphoria from ricw simultaneously. I get extreme anxiety from almonds. I get suicidal anxiety and schizophrenic voices from peanuts. I get suicidal anxiety, voices, and hallucinations from gluten (wheat, barley, rye). I get voices, hallucinations, and strong sexual euphoria with muscarinic antagonism-induced disinhibition from corn. All of these unnatural foods causw swelling in the intestines, throat, and tongue.

Although these effects may not happen in everyone (I may have leaky gut syndrome that allows the opiate proteins to get into my bloodstream), the premise is the same:
All food is drugs.

For more information read the MucusLess Healing Diet System by Arnold Ehret. The man's a freaking genius