Goomba wrote:
That must be a typo... don't you mean fear of the bill? It's been at
least a half century since folks felt the drilling at all.
People in Louisiana are POOR! The folks here in this rural depressed
area of NY have lousy teeth too, they can't afford dentistry. And
they can't afford those luxuries you mentioned... farming is hard
physical labor, I don't see any fat assed farmers... but I see lots of
fat assed dentists.
Dentistry is EXPENSIVE! Blame the ADA. Dentists charge outrageous
prices for what are essentially simple procedures and typically (by
intimidation) do more than what is needed in order to pad their fee,
and can get away with it because even the relatively few who can
afford dental insurance, its coverage is a joke... there is no reason
a simple crown should cost $1,000... a cleaning, x-rays, and exam
should not cost $300.... and no way should an implant cost $5,000+.
Dental insurance covers only a very small portion of those expenses..
and dental insurance is expensive, few ordinary working folks can
afford it. And let's not even talk Orthodontics. As far as I'm
concerned dentistry should fall under Medical Insurance. I don't see
Dentistry as any different medical care from Dermatology, Rhumatology,
Proctology, Neurology, Cardioligy, etc. Medical insurance should
encompass all forms of dentistry, as well as all optical care... why
are mouths and eyes treated separately from gastrology... I don't get
it. Fortunately I can afford to pay my dentist but more and more
whenever I pay the bill I feel like I just had my pocket picked, and
Dr. Schwartz ain't even Eyetalian. LOL
--=ON TOPIC EXTRA=--
The following news release is being issued February 28, 2011, by the
U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.
***
Binge Eaters' Dopamine Levels Spike at Sight, Smell of Food
Evidence that brain's reward/motivation circuits are linked to
compulsive overeating
UPTON, NY - A brain imaging study at the U.S. Department of Energy's
(DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory reveals a subtle difference
between ordinary obese subjects and those who compulsively overeat, or
binge: In binge eaters but not ordinary obese subjects, the mere sight
or smell of favorite foods triggers a spike in dopamine - a brain
chemical linked to reward and motivation. The findings - published
online on February 24, 2011, in the journal Obesity - suggest that
this dopamine spike may play a role in triggering compulsive
overeating.
"These results identify dopamine neurotransmission, which primes the
brain to seek reward, as being of relevance to the neurobiology of
binge eating disorder," said study lead author Gene-Jack Wang, a
physician at Brookhaven Lab and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Previous studies conducted by Wang's team have identified a similar
dopamine spike in drug-addicted individuals when they were shown
images of people taking drugs, as well as other neurochemical
similarities between drug addiction and obesity, including a role for
dopamine in triggering desire for drugs and/or food.
"In earlier studies of normal-weight healthy people who had been
food-deprived for 16 hours, we found that dopamine releases were
significantly correlated with self-reports of hunger and desire for
food. These results provided evidence of a conditioned-cue response to
food," Wang said.
In the current study, the researchers suspected that binge-eating
obese subjects would show stronger conditioned responses to food
stimuli when compared with non-binging obese subjects.
"Understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying food
stimulation might point us toward new ways to help individuals
regulate their abnormal eating behaviors," Wang said.
The scientists studied 10 obese people with a clinical diagnosis of
binge eating disorder, based on evaluations at St. Luke's-Roosevelt
Hospital, and 8 obese subjects who were not binge eaters.
The scientists used positron emission tomography (PET) to scan the
subjects' brains after injecting a radiotracer designed to bind to
dopamine receptors in the brain. Because the tracer competes with the
brain's natural dopamine to bind to these receptors, the signal picked
up by the PET scanner provides an inverse measure of the brain's
dopamine levels: a strong signal from the bound tracer indicates low
levels of natural brain dopamine; a low signal from the tracer
indicates high levels of dopamine in the brain.
Each subject was scanned four times on two different days to test the
effects of food stimulation vs. neutral stimulation with and without
pre-administration of a drug known to amplify dopamine signals. The
drug, methylphenidate, blocks the reuptake of dopamine from brain
synapses, allowing it to linger longer. In scans without
methylphenidate, subjects were given a placebo drug.
In the food stimulation condition, research subjects' favorite foods
were heated (if appropriate) and waved in front of their mouths and
noses so they could smell and even taste tiny amounts swabbed onto
their tongues. For the neutral stimulation scans, researchers
displayed non-food-related pictures and inanimate objects such as toys
and clothing items in close proximity so research subjects could smell
them while lying in the scanner. In all cases, research subjects had
been fasting for 16 hours prior to scans.
Results
Food stimulation with methylphenidate significantly increased dopamine
levels in the caudate and putamen regions of the brain in binge eaters
but not in the non-binge eaters. Subjects with the most severe binge
eating disorder, as assessed by psychological evaluations, had the
highest dopamine levels in the caudate.
Dopamine levels did not rise significantly in other brain regions or
under any other condition (neutral stimulation with or without
methylphenidate, or food stimulation without methylphenidate) in
either group, and were not correlated with body mass index of the
research subjects. Assessments of the levels of receptors for dopamine
also did not differ between the two groups.
"So the key difference we found between binge eaters and non-binge
eating obese subjects was a fairly subtle elevation of dopamine levels
in the caudate in the binge eaters in response to food stimulation,"
Wang said.
"This dopamine response is in a different part of the brain from what
we've observed in studies of drug addiction, which found dopamine
spikes in the brain's reward center in response to drug-associated
cues. The caudate, in contrast, is believed to be involved in
reinforcement of action potentially leading to reward, but not in
processing of the reward per se. That means this response effectively
primes the brain to seek the reward, which is also observed in
drug-addicted subjects," Wang said.
Inasmuch as binge eating is not exclusively found in obese
individuals, the scientists believe further studies are warranted to
assess the neurobiological factors that may differentiate obese and
non-obese binge eaters.
This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health through the
Intramural Program of the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol
Abuse and the General Clinical Research Center of Stony Brook
University, using infrastructure supported at Brookhaven Lab by DOE's
Office of Science.
Media contacts: Karen McNulty Walsh,
[email protected], (631) 344-8350
or Peter Genzer,
[email protected], (631) 344-3174
Related Links
This news release is posted with related graphics in the Brookhaven
Lab online newsroom at:
http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=1233
Scientific paper: "Enhanced Striatal Dopamine Release During Food
Stimulation in Binge Eating Disorder":
http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/oby201127a.html
One of ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the
Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven
National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and
environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national
security. Brookhaven Lab also builds and operates major scientific
facilities available to university, industry and government
researchers. Brookhaven is operated and managed for DOE's Office of
Science by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company
founded by the Research Foundation of State University of New York on
behalf of Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of
Laboratory facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit, applied science and
technology organization.
Visit Brookhaven Lab's electronic newsroom for links, news archives,
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http://www.bnl.gov/newsroom
