Scientists have discovered a link to salt appetite and drug addiction in a study by a team at Duke University Medical Center, and Australian scientists reported in the July 2011 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study's findings suggest that addictive drugs may have hijacked nerve cells, and connecfions in the brain that serve a strong, ancient instinct; the salt appetite.
According to Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, "...rodent research shows how certain genes are regulated in a part of the brain that controls the equilibrium of salt, water, energy, reproduction and other rhythms – the hypothalamus. The scientists found that the gene patterns activated by stimulating an instinctive behavior, salt appetite, were the same groups of genes regulated by cocaine or opiates (such as heroin) addiction."
Co-lead author Wolfgang Liedtke, M.D., Ph.D., a DIBS Investigator and Assistant Professor of Medicine and Neurobiology stated, “Our findings have profound and far-reaching medical implications, and could lead to a new understanding of addictions and the detrimental consequences when obesity-generating foods are overloaded with sodium.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
This may be an explanation as to why addiction treatment with the prime objective of abstinence is difficult at best. Relapse rates continue to plague opiate addicts in particular, although there are some appreciable success rates with maintenance approaches such as replacing heroin with methadone, and cig's with nicotine gum, or medications.
Despite the fact that the addict is still using drugs as a treatment method should not be construed to mean the person is somehow not progressing. There are many opiate addicts on methadone who would otherwise be ricocheting around neighborhoods committing crimes but for those clinics they are in.
This study has also brought up the "feel good" neurotransmitter, dopamine. Our internal reward chemical telling us everything is just dandy, and intimately linked with drug addiction.
"The Duke-Melbourne research team found that when the animal harbors a robust sodium appetite, a certain region of the hypothalamus seems to become susceptible to the effects of dopamine, which is the brain’s internal currency for reward. That suggests that the state of the instinctive need, the sodium-depleted state, “spring-loads” the hypothalamus for the subjective experience of reward which follows when animals gratify the need – a satisfied feeling. This concept is substantiated by their finding that the local actions of dopamine on a sub-region of the hypothalamus are critical for the animals' instinctive behavior," reported the Duke-Melbourne research team.
This was the first study to examine the hypothalamus in the brain and gene regulation for salt appetite. This may open up a new field for exploration in understanding drug addiction. And anything that sheds more light on this devastating affliction brings us that much closer to effective treatment.
Peace...
- The adolescent brain is not fully developed, making a young person extremely vulnerable to drug and alcohol addiction among other problems.
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