Junk Food Nearly as Addictive as Heroin

Junk food appears to be almost as addictive as heroin, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Scripps Research Institute and presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.



"This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neuro-biological foundations," researcher Paul Johnson said.



The researchers fed rats one of three diets: a nutritious diet, a healthy diet with restricted access to junk food, or a diet of unlimited junk food. Junk foods included cheesecake, chocolate, sponge cake and fatty meat. Mice in the third group quickly became obese, while the weight of mice in the first two groups did not change.



To test the effects of junk food on the brain's pleasure centers -- the areas affected by drugs -- the researchers electrically stimulated those areas whenever the mice ran on a wheel. The longer a rat ran on the wheel, the more pleasure it would receive.



While rats in the first two groups did not change their wheel-running behavior, the rats eating junk food soon began running on the wheel for longer periods -- suggesting that their brain's pleasure centers had become less sensitive. Consistent with this finding, the rats began eating more and more food, suggesting that their bodies had become desensitized to the pleasure the food was producing. Read more...

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Adult Weight Gain Tied to Prostate Cancer Risk

(HealthDay News) -- Men who pack on excess pounds as young adults are at heightened risk of developing prostate cancer, although the risk varies by ethnic group, researchers from the University of Hawaii report.



Obesity is a risk factor for many common cancers, including colorectal cancer and breast cancer in postmenopausal women. However, whether obesity plays a role in prostate cancer risk has been unclear, researchers say.



The new study finds that "body mass in both younger and older adulthood, and weight gain between these periods of life, may influence prostate cancer risk," said study author Brenda Y. Hernandez, an assistant professor at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii.



The report is published in the September online issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.



For the study, Hernandez's team looked at the relationship between weight and prostate cancer in a multiethnic population including blacks, Japanese, Hispanics, Native Hawaiians and whites, all of whom who participated in a long-term study called the Multiethnic Cohort. Read more...

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Diabetes triples the risk of liver cancer

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - It appears that diabetes is a strong risk factor for liver cancer, raising the risk two- to three-fold, investigators report.



The study, using data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End-Results (SEER)-Medicare database, is the first population-based study in the US that takes other major risk factors for liver cancer into consideration, according to Dr. Hashem El-Serag, at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and colleagues.



Their analysis included 2161 patients aged 65 and older with confirmed liver cancer between 1994 and 1999. A comparison "control" group included 6183 randomly selected individuals, according to the team's article in the medical journal Gut.



The researchers found that 43 percent of liver cancer patients but only 19 percent of control subjects had diabetes diagnosed during the three years preceding the diagnosis of liver cancer -- to exclude the possibility that liver cancer was the cause of the diabetes. Read more...

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