A few months ago, I learnt how the new weight loss jabs not only help people to lose weight but dampen ‘food noise’. I hadn’t heard of ‘food noise’ before and quickly found out that the term was coined in the 2000s and relates to ‘food-related intrusive thoughts’ – the constant chatter about food that goes on in a person’s mind even when they’re not hungry. I recognised it immediately as something I used to experience (along with ‘alcohol noise’) and still experience to a certain degree. It has been labelled in eating disorder communities as ‘the eating disorder voice’.
Other the past few years, I had worked out that my food and alcohol related thoughts were just a couple of the varieties of the many types of noise generated by my over-thinking mind and had learnt to quieten them with meditation. Thus, I was shocked and intrigued to find out that an injection can mimic the effects of a practice I had taken a number of years to develop and still struggle with. This got me researching how the weight loss jabs work and how they affect the same neural pathways that are affected by meditation.
The medications in the weight loss injections are called GLP-1 receptor agonists. They are synthetic variants of GLP-1, an essential gut hormone, which lowers blood sugar, reduces appetite, and brings about feelings of satiety. Variants include semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro).
When a person eats a meal, GLP-1 is released, and travels through the bloodstream and the vagus nerve to the brain, where it causes appetite suppression. It also goes to the pancreas, which produces insulin, lowering blood sugar.
GLP-1 ‘effectively shuts down areas in the brain involved in feeding response, homeostatic controls, energy balance and decision-making about food—as well as the liking and wanting of food and impulsive behaviours associated with eating.’ Thus, it dampens cravings and food-related thoughts.
Researchers have identified that GLP-1 shuts down the Default Mode Network – the background setting of the brain which drives mind-wandering, ruminating on the past, planning for the future, and self-reflection. This is responsible for us getting stuck in negative thought loops and food-related thoughts.
Like GLP-1, meditation, which involves training the mind to concentrate on one object of thought of a time, also shuts down the Default Mode Network. It not only stops ‘food noise’ but all other types of noise as well.
GLP-1 has also been shown to have an effect on the reward pathways that are not only associated with addiction to food but with other addictions. ‘Neurons that produce dopamine—a chemical with pivotal involvement in motivation and pleasure—project to the nucleus accumbens, a midbrain structure important for experiencing reward… Like other brain structures, the nucleus accumbens has GLP-1 receptors. Studies have shown that in animals, dopamine release peaks after they eat a sweet meal of sucrose—and after they are exposed to cocaine or opioids.’ GLP-1 dampens this effect, meaning the peak to such rewards is no longer received, weakening these pathways.
Meditation strengthens our ability to recognise cravings as just thoughts and not to act on them, thus weakening the neural pathways of food addiction. Both could thus be helpful for people with binge eating disorder and bulimia.
It’s notable, here, that restrictive eating disorders, such as anorexia, re-wire the brain to get the dopamine hit from restricting food intake and / or over-exercising to lose weight. Meditation can also help with addiction to restricting and excessive exercise.
It has been shown that people who use weight loss injections usually gain weight afterwards if they do not continue to follow a healthy lifestyle. Combining taking a GLP-1 receptor agonist with learning meditative techniques can help people to lose weight and keep the weight off.
SOURCES
Cook, Geoff, Quieting “Food Noise”: How GLP-1s and Mindfulness Rewire the Default Mode Network (DMN) and Reward Circuits, NIH, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41502834/
Young, Lauren, ‘Ozempic Quiets Food Noise in the Brain—But How?, Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ozempic-quiets-food-noise-in-the-brain-but-how/
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