Stress-sensitive mice who suffer from mood swings, just like many stressed humans, develop a taste for alcohol when the mood swings down.
Chemically speaking, it isn’t a big surprise since alcohol helps release dopamine into the brain’s reward centre, the nuclear accumbens. A visit to the nuclear accumbens is ALWAYS fun, leaving can sometimes be a problem.
Alcohol advances checked by DHA
The alcohol advances can be tough to resist, but researchers from Indiana University have discovered a little fish oil, is able to turn off the alcohol charm in miserable mice.
The researchers added a little DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish oil, to the food bowls of mice, who are genetically predisposed to suffer from bipolar disorder when they are put under stress.
The fishy supplement (omega-3) was enough to keep the miserable mice’s moods stable, when STRESS struck the hapless mice. It also put a stop to their exaggerated desire for alcohol, a big “problem” for these mice.
Fishy food fired up brain gene expression
At the end of the study, the researchers looked inside the brain’s of the mice to see what genes were on or off.
They found the DHA, had worked in a similar way to psychiatric medications used to treat bipolar disorders, normalizing the gene expression in these animals.
Try a fishy pick me up
If you find yourself often attracted to that bottle of booze, because the stresses and strains of life have left you feeling flat and fed-up, try a fishy pick me up.
I’m not suggesting swigging a tot of fish oil, instead of a tot of brandy, as the blues roll over you. It will take regular consumption of fish oil to fix the brain blues and thus equip you to withstand those tempting calls of the bottle of brandy.
You can get your fish pick me up by eating more fish, but if your body chemistry has reached the point that you are being wooed by alcohol, you probably need a flood of fish oil, not just a trickle. To get a fish oil flood you should consider taking an omega-3 supplement.
NOTE : It must be omega-3 ! If the pill includes omega-6 then you’re wasting your money.
Fish pick me up will REALLY PICK YOU UP
The omega-3 pick me up will help you balance your eicosanoids bringing additional health benefits.
So raise your glass and swallow those big yellow fish oil pills – CHEERS.
Convergent functional genomics of anxiety disorders: translational identification of genes, biomarkers, pathways and mechanisms. Translational Psychiatry, 2011; 1 (5): e9 H Le-Niculescu, Y Balaraman, S D Patel, M Ayalew, J Gupta, R Kuczenski, A Shekhar, N Schork, M A Geyer, A B Niculescu.Interested in learning more about the chemistry behind cravings ?
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Further reading
Lubricate those joints with a daub of fish oil to prevent osteoarthritis | Keep the night cap petite for a good nights sleep | Drinking till you’re “motherless” leaves you stem cell less |
The 7 Big Spoons™…. are master switches that turn health on.
Balance Eicosanoids | Rein in insulin | Dial down stress | Sleep ! | Increase Vit D | Culivate microflora | Think champion |
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