Your brain on cheese. Why you can’t quit, even if you may want to.

Dairy is delicious, but it’s also an addictive substance that actually changes the chemical nature of your brain. But don’t worry, there is hope for those that want to quit.

A lady goes to the doctor. She is complaining of bloating and constipation. She has recurrent sinus infections and pain in her joints. Her doctor asks her a few questions with the final question being,

“Do you eat dairy?”

“Oh yes, I love cheese.” She responds

The doctor looks at her and suggests “Dairy may be the cause of your symptoms. Most people develop an intolerance to dairy at some point in their lives. What if I told you that giving up dairy may relieve all of your symptoms, including the joint pain?”

The woman scoffs, “Oh no! I couldn’t do that. I love cheese too much. Do you have anything you can just prescribe me?”

The doctor continues, “I really think that just by eliminating dairy you can clear up all your issues and feel good again. We have medications but they come with side effects. Why don’t you try going dairy-free just for 30 days and see how you feel? If you don’t feel better than you can come back and we’ll discuss medication.”

“No thanks, doctor. I can’t give up dairy, I love cheese too much. There has to be another way.” The woman responds.

The pleasure trap

Although the conversation above is fictional, it is based on a true conversation that a doctor had with his patient. This woman doesn’t just love cheese, she is addicted to it. She literally can’t stop eating it, even if she tried.

She is stuck in the pleasure trap.

Yep, this is a real thing. Processed foods that are extremely high in fat, sugar, and salt actually cause a chemical reaction in our brains.

I’m going to become Lady Obvious for a second, but just hear me out okay? Food is required for our survival. Without food, we die. In order for life to go on generation after generation, we need to survive long enough to have babies and raise them until they can survive on their own and eventually have babies of their own. Through the process of evolution things that help us live longer and have more babies get favored and things that are harmful or get in the way of our survival go away. Get it so far?

Evolution has found a clever way to make things that help us survive more pleasurable (food and sex) and things that hurt our rate of survival painful and uncomfortable (hunger, loneliness, and injury). Through evolution, the basic instinct to seek more pleasure and avoid pain became hardwired into our brains. Edward Thorndike, a famous psychologist, called this The Law of Effect and said,

“responses that produce a satisfying effect in a particular situation become more likely to occur again in that situation, and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to occur again in that situation (Gray, 2011, p. 108–109).”

Since eating is necessary for our survival it has become a very pleasurable act for us. This is by design. Evolution made us that way. When you eat food, especially when you are hungry, dopamine gets released in your brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in our brain that makes us feel good. And we are hard-wired to go in seek of this feeling. We want dopamine flooding our brains as much as humanly possible. The more dopamine, the better.

When you eat a vegetable salad that is low in fat only a little dopamine gets released. Although vegetables are crazy healthy for you, they aren’t very filling. You need to eat a lot to provide for your energy and caloric needs. This is why only a little dopamine is released. When you eat ice cream, however, a mountain of dopamine gets released. More fat and sugar means more calories. More calories mean more energy and the longer we will survive if we don’t find food again for a while. In this article the researchers state,

“a high-fat diet can change (dopamine) and opioid gene expression within reward circuits. One outcome of this altered gene expression is an increased preference for palatable foods, which are typically calorie-dense.”

This basically means the more junk food you eat, the more junk food you crave.

This is why if you put a salad or a bowl of ice cream in front of a child, that child will always choose the ice cream. 100% of the time. The ice cream is going to release way more dopamine than the salad will and kids always, always make decisions based on how good it will make them feel. They are pleasure seekers.

The problem with the pleasure trap.

Sounds great right? I mean there is nothing wrong with feeling a little pleasure, but if you start eating that ice cream on a regular basis your body gets used to it and now, that bowl of ice cream no longer elicits a huge dopamine response and you don’t get the surge of pleasure from eating it. Now, if you want to get pleasure from ice cream you have to eat two bowls. And that salad, yuck, it tastes absolutely disgusting.

This is the same exact chemical response that happens in our brains with drugs. This is why people get addicted, this is why people need more and more to feel the same effects.

The researchers in this article point out that high-fat diets overtime alter your dopamine reward system and actually decrease the amount of dopamine that gets released. They say,

“This decreased reward system activity can lead to continued consumption of a high-fat diet, as an individual needs to consume more high-fat diet to reach their reward ‘set point”

This means that Dairy and other high-fat foods are just as addictive to your body as drugs.

This article surveyed undergraduates and people in the community and found that some foods were associated with addictive-like eating behavior. Nobody said that eating kale was associated with problematic behavior. Processed foods high in fat and sugar were highly associated with addictive-like behavior, including cheese.

This article looks at the research done in rats and compares feeding rats a high fat, highly processed diet to giving them hard drugs. They both have similar effects on the rat’s brain. The rats couldn’t quit the high-fat diet, even when given shock treatments.

Escaping the pleasure trap.

What happens when you try to quit a drug habit and go clean? You go through withdrawals and feel absolutely awful. Have you ever tried to quite a coffee habit? I have. It’s not pretty.

The same thing happens when you try to quit dairy. You feel like poop. You feel completely awful and you crave that stuff like mad. Your body has become so used to it it needs that cheese to feel good. Your dopamine levels have plummeted to an all-time low.

This is called the pleasure trap, a term coined by Dr. Douglas Lisle and Dr. Alan Goldhammer. You can watch Dr. lisle’s ted talk here.

This is why it is so hard to give up cheese. It’s also the reason it’s so hard to give up sugar and oil.

The good news.

Luckily our bodies are freaking amazing at healing ourselves and if you give up dairy (or sugar, or drugs), your dopamine levels will eventually go back to normal. It takes about 6 weeks of total abstinence for your dopamine levels to normalize, but if you can make it through the six weeks amazing things happen:

You stop craving the dairy.

Foods that tasted awful before start tasting delicious.

Eating healthy becomes easy and actually enjoyable.

It will take bravery and loads of support and unconditional love around you to stay completely away from the addictive foods you want to be free from for a full six weeks.

The great thing about a vegan diet, however, is that you don’t actually have to give up cheese during this withdrawal period. You can just replace it with a plant-based cheese like Daiya, Miyokos, or a homemade cashew-based or potato-based cheese. They don’t taste like dairy cheese but they are delicious and can really help with the transition to a dairy-free lifestyle. And the best part? They don’t have the addictive qualities that dairy cheese has and as you transition to a less processed diet, giving up the plant-based cheeses or replacing them with healthier versions is so much easier than giving up dairy cheese and other dairy products.

And once you successfully give up cheese, all of a sudden giving up other harmful habits doesn’t seem so hard anymore.