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Together, dopamine and opioids create a pathway that activates every time you are reminded about the particular food. This happens regardless of whether you are hungry or not.
    Most of us are vulnerable to conditioned overeating. There's a lucky 15 percent of the population that do not have the mechanism of overeating built in to their system, so they are less affected. In primitive times, these people probably would have starved, but now they have the advantage that they can control their response to food.
Sugar and High-Fructose Corn Syrup
    Sugar and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) are powerful contributors to the food addiction phenomenon—so much so that HFCS in soda is the number one source of calories in the United States! These sugars have a direct detrimental impact on your brain function and an indirect effect on your body through its ability to make you fat. So both thin and thicker persons alike need to stay away from these sweet temptations.
    Foods with a lower glycemic load (less sugar per weighted amount of food) should be central to the diet. Vegetables, fruits, and beans; lean organic, grass-fed meats and cold-water fishes; and whole grains are at the top of the list.
EXERCISE
    With the “progress” of modern medicine and society over the past hundred years, lifestyle changes that alleviate depression have all but gone by the wayside. The ability to patent and sell medication has trumped all other forms of medical intervention. About 2,500 years ago, Hippocrates recommended regular exercise as treatment for depression. Since then, many common-sense and learned people, both ancient and modern, have used exercise as a means of preventing disease and promoting health and well-being.
    Exercise is possibly the strongest single antidepressant we have. Known to elevate mood by reducing anxiety, depression, and negative mood and increasing self-esteem, exercise also improves a number of biological risk factors for depression. It balances blood sugar, raises good cholesterol (which you will learn more about in chapter 4 ), and improves heart and blood vessel health.
Exercise and Mood
    So how does exercise accomplish all these great feats? Modern research shows that when we exercise, our bodies produce helpful molecules which can fix a broken brain. One such molecule is brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF is a key player in stimulating the growth of new neurons and pathways that the nerves use to communicate and create better mood.
    The hippocampus is an area of the brain that is a key for memory, mood, spatial relationships, and much more. The hippocampus has also been shown to shrink in people who are stressed out much of the time. Exercise, however, can reverse this shrinkage. Collaborative studies between the Salk Institute in California and German universities in the early 2000s found that animals that voluntarily ran wheels showed increased cell building and growing in the hippocampus.
    This has been shown not only in animals—this almost magical effect has also been shown in human beings. One 2008 Dutch study of almost six thousand twins found that the more that peopleexercised, the happier they were. The first-ever proven neurogenesis (nervous tissue generation) within a living human brain was accomplished by exercise. The study, published in 2003, followed eleven people of below-average fitness as they trained four times a week for twelve weeks using the exercise regimen given below. The results showed that exercise targets an area of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus, which is very important for mood and memory as you age. Some research has shown that when antidepressant medications work, they're likely building up the hippocampus—something that exercise effectively does without drugs.
    BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO GROWING YOUR BRAIN'S HIPPOCAMPUS
    Four times a week, do the following:
1–5 minutes of low-intensity warm-up on a treadmill or stationary bicycle
2–5 minutes of stretching
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