"The Addictive Old Energy" – (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)

Kryon.com, August 12, 2017

This live channelling was given in Stamford Connecticut

Lee Carroll

To help the reader, this channelling has been revisited [by Lee and Kryon] to provide even clearer understanding. Sometime information is even added or condensed. Often what happens live has implied energy within it, which carries a kind of communication that the printed page does not. So enjoy this enhanced message given in Stamford.

Greetings, dear ones, I am Kryon of Magnetic Service. My partner steps aside as always, and I now give you a message that he is not aware of. The way it works, dear ones, is that the information that is being given from the other side of the veil is information that perhaps you don't expect, and is given in ways that you might not have thought of.

Tonight is a revelation that goes further than ever into the differences between the old and the new energy. Today my partner tried to set the stage [in the seminar] so that you would understand that, before 2012, there was an energy that you no longer have. It's an energy that you are not going to revisit, and it is not coming back. It's a new kind of energy that is beginning to place itself on this planet, and it is filled with a completely new paradigm of reality.

Changing Ideas Create Dysfunction with Many

We've told you in the past that these new paradigms will often create confusion, because things are not as they were. There is often disappointment, and some have said, "Well, things are not happening the way I thought they would for a renewed energy. It isn't like it used to be, is it? I thought it would simply get better." No, it isn't the old paradigm, just getting better. It's a brand new energy beginning with the old leaving.

The new energy is filled with feelings that are completely and totally different, reactions that are totally different and expectations that are totally different. Within these things hides a truth, and the truth is that there is a development going on of the Human spirit itself and about how you are changing your ideas about certain kinds of things. Since these things don't all happen to everyone the same, there is often a period of shift, change and recalibration.

Humanity is slowly starting to feel more compassion and become less critical of others and their cultures. There is a meld happening, but in the process, however, the ones who are not feeling this way stick out. Some of these are so angry at the new energy that they strike out with their frustration in disappointing and inappropriate ways. Some have formed armies and some go it alone, but they are all showing the profound awakening of the changes within dark and light. Imbalance and illogical actions are the result, as there are those who will die to keep things from changing. However, dear ones, that is not what I want to talk about, since we have discussed this before. Those things are going to happen slowly within the perceptions of who you are becoming and the issues that show themselves with the shift of consciousness you are having - the battle of light and dark.

Tonight, I want to talk about a difference between dark and light that is starting to be seen and is even greater than before. It's the way you perceive things in an older energy compared to the way you perceive things in a new energy. Mostly, I want to show you what happens when you drag the old energy into a brand new light - objections!

We've told you before that this is a time where there can be "no more fence sitting". You cannot claim to be a Lightworker, a compassionate person, and then not be compassionate to humanity. You cannot decide one day to be one thing, then another day to be another. That was the way of it in an older energy, and there was great deceit. We've told you before of the drama that people often create over and over, because it suits them and works for them in an older energy. This is because people pay attention to them and they get what they want. But this is changing, and in the new energy these people often find themselves missing out, not included, not being agreed with and being left behind. They discover that the old energies are not commensurate at all with the old reality they had. They are frustrated, since the "old ways" are no longer working.

Old Energy Addiction

Processes and procedures that many counted on, which got results before, are now starting to shift and change and are no longer working. But we've said that before. Tonight, I would like to tell you how addictive the old energy is. I would like to start showing and telling by example, some of the things we have only marginally discussed before. It's time to expand on some interesting issues.

Can Darkness be Addictive?

It's hard to describe how Humans can be addicted to something that is dysfunctional and dark. The night is dark, and if you've survived a certain way because you couldn't see well, and suddenly the light is turned on, many long for the time when it was dark! This is because they knew how to navigate in the dark, but they don't know how to navigate in the light.

There will be those who are used to a paradigm of struggle. This is what they have understood and have felt was normal. So when the light comes and then there is benevolence, joy and compassion, they long for the old days of struggle over and over. It seems unbelievable that someone would want such a thing, when presented with something so much better! Imagine, the end of struggle and suffering, replaced by a benevolent attitude of expectation and light. However, many have spent so much time struggling and suffering, complaining and reacting, that they can't see the light. Even if it's shown to them, they can't understand it and they don't want it. How could such a thing be? Are there examples of this? Yes, there are examples of it, dear ones, that you can see right now.

Current Events

Let's get current and talk about what's happening today. I'm again going to explain something that is seemingly unbelievable and exemplifies the difference between a dark energy and a light energy. Let's look at how addictive the darkness is, even when light could create some amazing solutions to needed issues. Instead, there are some so invested in the old energy, and who wish to wallow in what they used to know, that they can't see the treasure in the light, which is something they have worked for all their lives. Human Beings have an issue: They tend to want something they are used to, not even understanding it's dark and perhaps dysfunctional.

I want to give you an example that's very, very current. Not long ago, approximately 2011, something happened in North Korea. The son of the deceased dictator took over. We're not going to mention his name in the channel, but you all know who I'm speaking of. The boy became an emperor overnight, and he had studied with his ego-based father. He'd also studied in the west, although under another name. So he knows who you are, dear ones, and he knows the culture here in this country. In 2011, one year before the shift, he was at a crossroads. We discussed it with you then, and now we're going to take it to another level.

Let me ask you something. Knowing what he desperately wanted for himself, what would you have done if you were him? Let's review: In 2011 he stands on the precipice of greatness. By 2012, he will be taking over his country, and he's going to be the emperor of all he sees. He has learned what his parent taught him, and all he has done all of his life is watch the egotism of his father. So he has absorbed that method as the way of life for a leader. He needs fame and importance, even more than his father. So, more than anything else he wants to be famous. More than anything else, he wants to be seen and loved by his people. This is what his primary focus is, and what he learned from his father. The mold is set.

So, put yourself in his place if you can. You are the boy, and you are able right now to follow the father's lineage for North Korea or enhance it. The boy started making his decisions in 2012, when the decree came down that he was the emperor and chairman of the people's party, you might say. He began to make the decisions of his reign. So, again, you're him for a moment. What could you do, right now, with a clean slate? What would create something that you want more than anything else on the planet - fame, fortune and respect? What could you do that would almost have you worshipped, be idolized, be seen as important, to be "the one"? What could you do right now at that juncture 2012? And I'll tell you - he missed it. He missed it. Everything he wanted was never seen, because it was in the light. Instead, he actually chose his own demise.

If he had seen the light coming, even in his egotistical mindset, if he understood anything about the current feelings on the planet other than his own darkness and subversion, everything would be different today. Think about it for a moment. What would you have done? Here is the option: With total control of his country, he could have been someone that this planet would have put on a pedestal all his life - all his life! The first thing he does is to unify the North and the South Koreans, bringing families together after all of those years of strife. He'd have been known as the benevolent father of the two Koreas - for a lifetime. Then he would drop any ideas of war. He would understand that it's dysfunctional and illogical and would create horror for his people. Instead, he would be the "great leader of world peace" between his "new" country and the west. He would walk into the United Nations in New York City to a standing ovation and cheers all around! A planet would love him. He'd be on the cover of all of the magazines. He'd be seen by everyone as a world hero, worshipped and adored by the planet for doing something nobody ever had the courage to do. He'd be seen as wise before his years, and it would be a decision that would bring him into the light, helping his people into wealth and happiness - which is exactly what he wanted - getting all the accolades that he possibly could have all of his life, going down in history as changing the earth itself. He'd have achieved the ultimate goal of his life.

So, what did he do? Have you read the paper lately? Is the dark so addictive that he couldn't see it? Yes. He never saw it. Immediately, he killed a relative who may have challenged him. He was his "own man", anchored in the dark, and he completely missed his opportunity. Everything he ever wanted as a young man, as trained by his father so well, everything he ever wanted was in his grasp in that year and the decisions he made instead found him wallowing about in what used to work. However, he is now a pariah for the old energy, raising his hand, making trouble for the planet, thinking that this is what he's supposed to do - and he won't last long. I want to tell you this is how addictive the old energy is. The box of gold was right in front of him and he missed it.

Is He Alone? How About You?

What kind of addiction does the old energy have for you? Are you continuing to do things that you think are absolutely correct, working with perceptions that have been given to you in an old energy that you are still wallowing in? Of course, reading this you will say, "Not me." Remember the Korean leader. He still thinks he is right and never saw it. How invested in struggle are you? I have some news. You can't do it for long. First, you lose friends. You can't claim to be one thing and be another anymore.

So let's start extending this teaching. If the darkness is so attractive, is it affecting anything else? The answer? It is absolutely affecting everything else. There's an entire industry we have told you about that will eventually fail because it has been developed in an older energy, worked in an older energy, and has no integrity. The industry is Big Pharma. We've told you that its fall is imminent and the attributes will come from the ones within it, who will expose it. When this actually happens is up to you, since this is free choice of the developing consciousness of your country. However, let's look for a moment, not at the event, but what it may then lead to.

Big Pharma is invested in an old idea that designer chemistry is the answer to healing. This idea has been prevalent for decades and many feel that it is the highest technology available. However, instead, and in the light, there starts to appear another idea entirely: The Human body has an unrealized awareness and it is actually the master healer! The Human body is designed to self-correct. So, therefore, don't put foreign chemistry into it, but instead find out how to give it elegant, specific instruction sets to heal itself. Make them high-technology instruction sets to inform it to heal itself!

This is homeopathy expanded, you might say. There are processes coming that understand that this Human body of yours is so much better than any chemist has ever realized, and the new energy is starting to expose this fact. The answer to healing is not chemistry. The answer to health and healing is by addressing the "smart part" of the Human body, giving it instructions to utilize former unknown systems that are ready to create spontaneous remission and beyond.

Remember my channelling given on the "youthing template" or the fact that you all have dormant "genesis cells" within your body (cells that have the full body blueprint and a source for very young stem cells)? These both were expositions of systems that are smart and ready to create new cells and healing in ways that will seem miraculous! But they need to be "instructed". 

Funding Will Trail for Awhile

How much money do you think is invested in the old ways? Right now, there is an industry of investment that is going to fail. So, do you think all this money will then be invested into the new methods? The answer is NO, not right away. Just like the North Korean leader's blindness, the old ways are just too addicting. "Keep it the same," they will yell. "The fall is temporary," they will say. "It always worked before, and it always will." Many investors will lose fortunes. The dysfunction is already being seen clearly. When you turn on your media at night, much of what you hear in the commercial breaks is how the chemistry didn't work! Now you get a chance to join others and sue the pharma companies for bad chemistry! You think something is beginning to break? It is. You see, they are already wallowing in something that's going to make them fail. They are advertising how broken the very system is. Both big pharma and their investors don't see the light coming yet, even though it is becoming dysfunctional before their eyes.

Major Medicine Has the Same Addiction

Think about those who have studied medicine. They study for years and years, then they take oaths that say, "Do no harm." They become fine physicians doing their very best to help humanity. Then along comes an amazing non-standard healing revelation, but it doesn't suit them because it was not what they were taught would work. In fact, many of them were told during their training that it doesn't work at all! In an older paradigm, their medical education, taught by instructors who they respected, informed them that homeopathy and all that it represented wasn't science at all. Many will still believe this, even with overwhelming new evidence that there are things they simply didn't know back then. So, expect many doctors to also reject new provable science! The reason is because they are wallowing in their addiction to what they thought was accurate and what they thought worked. It's almost a betrayal for them to even examine it! It's a betrayal of those very good teachers who told them something completely different.

Younger doctors and researchers will come along and say, "Look, I can prove this new approach to you. Just look at this, look at this proof we have. Take a day with me and look at this amazing proof!" Many physicians will say, "No thanks." Younger researchers will say, "Why not? It won't hurt you to see it!" And they'll say, "Because I don't believe it." This scenario doesn't even make sense, but it represents how addicting the old energy is. Watch for it, even within your own physicians. Human nature says that if it worked before, it's going to work again. "This is what I understand. This is what I do. Don't show me anything new because I was taught that what you have simply cannot work."

Dear ones, physics and biology discoveries will change everything, and suddenly the sun comes out [a metaphor]. Suddenly, there are new ideas. Can you imagine telling some of the greatest inventors in history to cease and desist? Could you tell the Wright brothers they were crazy? Two bicycle makers should stop trying to create powered flight? Should someone have told Louis Pasteur to stop believing in "germs"? How stupid can you be - invisible microorganisms? It's fantasy! Can you look at Tesla and say, "That's foolishness! You're going to electrocute people with that system"? Well, there are those who actually said those very things to all of them! The doubters were invested in old paradigms that were so addicting that they actually believed them. It's the same attitude as what is coming soon. So now let's switch and make it a little more personal.

Personal Metaphysics

Dear ones, if you've grown up in metaphysics, perhaps you call yourself a learned, educated, shamanic one. If you've been doing it for years, you know the processes and how they work. Perhaps you've been a healer for a very, very long time and you're proud of your knowledge? You should be. You've helped the planet, you've helped all those around you. Then suddenly, the energy itself begins to shift. The frequencies of energy that you have been working with, which connect you to "the source”, begin to move. Things start to slow down or not work at all. Yet when somebody shows this to you, instead of looking at it and saying, "Show me more," you say, "I'm shutting the door on this because I don't want to go there. Energy is always the same. It's fine for me. It will return to the way it was. I'm just a little out of sorts at the moment. I'll wait."

So I will ask: Is it working for you? Is life joyful? Healers are starting to lose the connection that they have had. Even meditators are starting to ask where Spirit has gone: "I sit down and I don't feel it anymore." We have been telling many of you for years now to expect the "frequency of God itself, inside you, to start vibrating at a higher level”! It is beginning to get higher than you ever thought it could be, but you continue to tune-in to the older, lower frequency, expecting everything to work. It won't!

Think about it, really. What's your joy factor? If you are tuned to the higher frequency, you are going to feel it! If God is real to you and the frequency has started to lift, and the veil is starting to be lighter, the older ways won't be near as effective. The magnetic grid of the planet has shifted, allowing new consciousness, and everything is becoming tuned for the old soul and the Lightworker. Have you taken advantage of it? Have you looked at yourself and said, "Alright, okay, all the things that I knew, maybe, just maybe they've changed a bit." Or do you say, "I know what I'm doing. I've had years of experience and this is the way things work." Is this too personal to examine?

Old souls are the ones listening and reading this. You are the ones who will eventually move into the light, but the old energy is so addicting, so addicting! In almost all of your dealings, things are beginning to change.

Can you believe the story of the North Korean leader having turned down being adored by the whole planet all his life - having everything he ever dreamed of in a heartbeat? He never saw it coming because he only knew what worked in the dark. He only knew old consciousness thinking. What I'm telling you is this: If you are a Lightworker, it's time to step into the light. The things that you thought you knew well may have shifted slightly. This includes what you believe is "truth". When you start to turn on the light in a dark room, you see new things. Perhaps your "truth" was based on seeing things dimly in the dark and assuming what they were? But when these same things are illuminated, and you clearly see them, truth becomes fully revealed! Truth can change based on the revelations of time. It changes when the light is turned on.

The one who steps into the light is going to live a lot longer, dear ones, because it's going to be frustrating to stay in a place that you don't understand or that's getting worse just because you think you know what you're doing and won't change. This ages all of you.

So the plea is this: There is an entourage around you, which comes from the Creative Source. It's here because your soul has a piece of God in it and it's busting to get out of the box you keep it in! The box is called old, addictive energy. Break the box! Listen, you will never have to unlearn what you know, but in the process of looking at the light, you can enhance what you know and go to the next level in beauty and joy in a smooth transition, not a hard one. This is a new energy and new paradigms are just waiting for you. Just waiting!

I speak to the healers still using all of the methods they used to, just because those methods worked and worked for years. Now we're saying, "How would you like to double the efficiency of everything you are doing?" Some say, "I would, but I know this old way better than I know anything else, and that is why I'm going to stay with it. It's good enough for me." Let me tell you something, old soul. You were born to be here during the shift and this transition to move into the new paradigms and to show the light to others. That's why you are here, and that's why you were born. It doesn't serve humanity or the planet to stay in the dark just because you are "used to it".

Listen, I tell you that the hands of transition from the Creative Source are outstretched to you. They are saying, "This is why you're here! Walk into the light without fearing what it might bring. It will not upset what you have learned already and will enhance it greatly. In the process you, yourself, will start to change. There will be more joy in your heart, more compassion and more knowledge. Think about this."

Imagine a balance that you've never had before. Imagine a maturity where new, intuitive information flies at you from sources that you don't even know about yet. These are things that you've asked for. What did you try lately in the last 20 years that didn't work? Are you going to try it again? The answer is NO. And we say why? You say, "Because it didn't work." Did you ever consider that it may have been bad timing? You simply tried it too soon. Try it again. Don't base your future on what happened in the past. It needed the new energy.

Meetings like this are given for good reasons, so you can meet and know each other and find the Light. You get to be with other people of like-mind who may help you find balance because they may know something that perhaps you don't. Two or more together can create more. That's why you're here. That's why you have chosen to continue reading this.

I leave it there. It's a time of great love, of great change and the beginning of great compassion. Here you are in a world where the majority of citizens and countries want to get along - and that's new. In the past, one unbalanced leader has been able to take the whole world and put it at war for years. Now, suddenly, that is unacceptable. Instead, you've got the entire planet that really wants peace. They want something for their children that other generations never had. Culture after culture, different though they are, they understand the premise that war does not work, and never has. An earth that collectively feels this way will eventually snuff out the ones who would want it otherwise.

We've told you what is coming. We've told you that the wild card that you call Trump has more things that are wild, coming. This creates major shift in an old system. We told you that almost a year ago. We told you that the dark army will be defeated, and we told you to expect major shift.

So, dear ones, this is the juncture between dark and light at a time perhaps that you didn't expect to hear it. We tell you that things are changing fast and if you wish to control that which is the reality of your life, you have every option to drop the barriers and see what's new. You have the ability to begin to understand better why you're here and to take the hand that is outstretched to you called the Creative Source.

The New Children

This darkness that you grew up in, are you understanding and realizing that your children will not have that? There are children coming into this new energy right who will never experience the darkness. They will only know the new magnetic grid; they'll only know the innate smart body that heals itself. They will intuitively know that war solves nothing. They're going to fight the darkness greater than anything that you are doing. There will be no understanding at all of some of your attitudes, because the children will only see the logic of the light. Their patience will be limited for those who are still addicted to something they never experienced and which intuitively does not work.

They may have nothing to do with metaphysics and everything to do with the new Human Being. They may not be spiritual, yet they will have everything to do with God inside. That is the new Human, where spirituality is not necessarily a choice, but rather something that is inherited as truth. It's something they are born with - an innate understanding that they are a piece of the creator, that balance and peace is the primary object of all Humans. They will look at you and say, "Doesn't everyone know this?"

Does that sound like the old energy you grew up in? Dear ones, don't wait for the kids. We need you now to be mature enough to see the light, drop the old, and meet the new energy head-on.

And so it is.

KRYON

Dutch lawyer starts criminal case against tobacco firms

DutchNews, April 29, 2016

Photo: DutchNews.nl

A Dutch lawyer and lung cancer patient are planning to take tobacco companies to court for for producing cigarettes designed to turn people into addicts as quickly as possible. 

Lawyer Benedicte Ficq and cancer victim Anne Marie van Veen are putting together a criminal case against cigarette producers, arguing that out of court settlements do not go far enough.

‘I want to see tobacco firms prosecuted for deliberately damaging people’s health,’ Ficq told television programme RTL Late Night. 

Tobacco firms cannot hide behind the freedom of choice of people to smoke because they are deliberately influencing smokers’ behaviour, Ficq and Van Veen argue. 

Poison

‘To limit that freedom, addictive chemicals such as nicotine and other additives are put into cigarettes,’ they say. ‘And [the companies] overcome our natural aversion to poisons by adding substances like menthol.’ 

Nor does the argument that the government does not ban smoking hold water, Ficq said. ‘If I fed my children rat poison every day and they eventually die, I would be prosecuted for murder,’ she said. ‘The tobacco industry is simply getting away with it.’ 

Ficq and Van Veen are appealing for other people to sign up to their campaign.

Related Articles:

California raises tobacco buying age to 21

The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest docu-series - official trailer

The Truth About Cancer: A Global 

Quest docu-series - official trailer

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. 

The Next Ones to Fall

There's something potentially coming that you should know about, and I've reported it before two other times. But I want you to hear it again. What other very large industries don't have integrity, but also have a great deal of money? Prepare for the crumbling of big pharma in America. It is starting now and when the reports happen and the movie is created [smile], Americans will wake up to the fact that they have an enormously wealthy industry that keeps people sick for money.

You're not going to like it and you're not going to tolerate it. Watch. What I say today is not fortune telling, dear ones. I am reporting the potentials of Human nature before me. I'm reporting that awareness is starting to grab that which is inappropriate on this planet, what you call old energy, and slowly is beginning to move it to a place you never thought it would go. It's a place of integrity that your parents told you was impossible for large institutions, but here you are living it. Along with this also will be changes in the very large business of insurance, as we told you before. …”

"THE BRIDGE OF SWORDS" – Sep 29, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) - (Text Version)

“…I'm in Canada and I know it, but I will tell those listening and reading in the American audience the following: Get ready! Because there are some institutions that are yet to fall, ones that don't have integrity and that could never be helped with a bail out. Again, we tell you the biggest one is big pharma, and we told you that before. It's inevitable. If not now, then in a decade. It's inevitable and they will fight to stay alive and they will not be crossing the bridge. For on the other side of the bridge is a new way, not just for medicine but for care. Paradigms that have not yet been thought of, which don't represent any system that currently exists, will be created and developed by young minds who have concepts that the seniors don't know about. Things that don't have integrity today will fall over tomorrow. Just get ready. It's all part of what's on the other side of the bridge. And the old energy won't like it, and they will object. …”

Fatty foods may cause cocaine-like addiction

CNN, by Sarah Klein, Health.com, March 28, 2010 2:42 p.m. EDT

Cheesecake and other fatty foods overload the pleasure centers in the brain.

(Health.com) -- Scientists have finally confirmed what the rest of us have suspected for years: Bacon, cheesecake, and other delicious yet fattening foods may be addictive.

A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction, the study found.

Doing drugs such as cocaine and eating too much junk food both gradually overload the so-called pleasure centers in the brain, according to Paul J. Kenny, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular therapeutics at the Scripps Research Institute, in Jupiter, Florida. Eventually the pleasure centers "crash," and achieving the same pleasure--or even just feeling normal--requires increasing amounts of the drug or food, says Kenny, the lead author of the study.

"People know intuitively that there's more to [overeating] than just willpower," he says. "There's a system in the brain that's been turned on or over-activated, and that's driving [overeating] at some subconscious level."

In the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Kenny and his co-author studied three groups of lab rats for 40 days. One of the groups was fed regular rat food. A second was fed bacon, sausage, cheesecake, frosting, and other fattening, high-calorie foods--but only for one hour each day. The third group was allowed to pig out on the unhealthy foods for up to 23 hours a day.

Health.com: How the pros curb food cravings

Not surprisingly, the rats that gorged themselves on the human food quickly became obese. But their brains also changed. By monitoring implanted brain electrodes, the researchers found that the rats in the third group gradually developed a tolerance to the pleasure the food gave them and had to eat more to experience a high.

Health.com: Eat this and burn more fat

They began to eat compulsively, to the point where they continued to do so in the face of pain. When the researchers applied an electric shock to the rats' feet in the presence of the food, the rats in the first two groups were frightened away from eating. But the obese rats were not. "Their attention was solely focused on consuming food," says Kenny.

In previous studies, rats have exhibited similar brain changes when given unlimited access to cocaine or heroin. And rats have similarly ignored punishment to continue consuming cocaine, the researchers note.

Health.com: 25 diet-busting foods you should never eat

The fact that junk food could provoke this response isn't entirely surprising, says Dr.Gene-Jack Wang, M.D., the chair of the medical department at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, New York.

"We make our food very similar to cocaine now," he says.

Coca leaves have been used since ancient times, he points out, but people learned to purify or alter cocaine to deliver it more efficiently to their brains (by injecting or smoking it, for instance). This made the drug more addictive.

According to Wang, food has evolved in a similar way. "We purify our food," he says. "Our ancestors ate whole grains, but we're eating white bread. American Indians ate corn; we eat corn syrup."

Health.com: 10 'Last Supper' paintings: Bigger portions over time?

The ingredients in purified modern food cause people to "eat unconsciously and unnecessarily," and will also prompt an animal to "eat like a drug abuser [uses drugs]," says Wang.

The neurotransmitter dopamine appears to be responsible for the behavior of the overeating rats, according to the study. Dopamine is involved in the brain's pleasure (or reward) centers, and it also plays a role in reinforcing behavior. "It tells the brain something has happened and you should learn from what just happened," says Kenny.

Overeating caused the levels of a certain dopamine receptor in the brains of the obese rats to drop, the study found. In humans, low levels of the same receptors have been associated with drug addiction and obesity, and may be genetic, Kenny says.

Health.com: The real reasons we eat too much

However, that doesn't mean that everyone born with lower dopamine receptor levels is destined to become an addict or to overeat. As Wang points out, environmental factors, and not just genes, are involved in both behaviors.

Wang also cautions that applying the results of animal studies to humans can be tricky. For instance, he says, in studies of weight-loss drugs, rats have lost as much as 30 percent of their weight, but humans on the same drug have lost less than 5 percent of their weight. "You can't mimic completely human behavior, but [animal studies] can give you a clue about what can happen in humans," Wang says.

Although he acknowledges that his research may not directly translate to humans, Kenny says the findings shed light on the brain mechanisms that drive overeating and could even lead to new treatments for obesity.

"If we could develop therapeutics for drug addiction, those same drugs may be good for obesity as well," he says.

Alcohol Problems Plague 1 Out of 3 Americans

Abuse, Dependency Affect Many but Few Seek Treatment

By Dan Child, ABC News Medical Unit. July 2, 2007


Whether it's binge drinking or addiction to alcohol, Americans have a real problem with the bottle.

So says new research released Monday, which found that nearly one out of three Americans can expect to have a problem with alcohol at some time during their lives.

"We found that 30.3 percent of the U.S. population at some time in their lives -- though maybe not currently -- has had an alcohol use disorder," said study author Bridget Grant of the Division of Biometry and Epidemiology at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

But the nature of this problem can vary widely -- from a sustained streak of binge drinking behavior all the way to serious physiological addiction to alcohol.

The findings, generated from face-to-face interviews with more than 43,000 U.S. adults, appear in the July issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

To find out whether subjects had experienced problems with alcohol, interviewers questioned them looking for the symptoms of alcohol abuse and dependence listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition.

What researchers found was that 17.8 percent of those interviewed reported that they had abused alcohol at one time or another, and 12.5 percent reported alcohol dependence.

But perhaps most sobering was the fact that few with alcohol problems ever reached out for help.

"What we found was that very few people who have lifetime disorders ever seek treatment," Grant says, adding that only 24 percent of those suffering from alcohol dependency seek help. The percentage of those seeking treatment for alcohol abuse is even lower, at 7 percent.

"This is a big problem in our society, and every time we write a paper it becomes more clear," says Dr. James C. Garbutt, medical director of the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"Nearly 100,000 people die every year of alcohol-related causes. Alcohol carries a $200 billion or more cost to society. These are huge statistics."

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