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Musings Report #2 1-9-16 Sugar, Fat, Debt and Systems Overload/Instability
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Sugar, Fat, Debt and Systems Overload/Instability
Systems are everywhere--in nature's ecosystems, in human communities and in our bodies.
I have long been fascinated by the study of systems because these apparently dissimilar structures often share similar dynamics.
A recent article in Scientific American on the way sugar and fat can disrupt the feedback/system-stability mechanisms of hunger, satiation, metabolism and fat storage struck me as a good example of how system stability can be disrupted by overload.
In the case of fat and sugar, these scarce-in-Nature substances can overload the feedback loops that limit appetite. This overload desensitizes the sensations of pleasure generated by eating.
As a consequence, the body needs to consume more fat and sugar to experience the same pleasure, and this "hedonic hunger" drives us to overeat substances which in nature are scarce/rare--fat and sugar.
How Sugar and Fat Trick the Brain into Wanting More Food Junk foods can muddle the brain's satiety-control mechanism, sending our appetites into hyperdrive
Excerpt:
Eating for the sake of pleasure, rather than survival, is nothing new. But only in the past several years have researchers come to understand deeply how certain foods—particularly fats and sweets—actually change brain chemistry in a way that drives some people to overconsume.
Scientists have a relatively new name for such cravings: hedonic hunger, a powerful desire for food in the absence of any need for it; the yearning we experience when our stomach is full but our brain is still ravenous. And a growing number of experts now argue that hedonic hunger is one of the primary contributors to surging obesity rates.
By the 1980s scientists had worked out the major hormones and neural connections responsible for metabolic hunger. They discovered that it is largely regulated by the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that contains nerve cells that both trigger the production of and are exquisitely sensitive to a suite of disparate hormones.
As with so many biological mechanisms, these chemical signals form an interlocking web of checks and balances. Whenever people eat more calories than they immediately need, some of the excess is stored in fat cells found throughout the body. Once these cells begin to grow in size, they start churning out higher levels of a hormone called leptin, which travels through the blood to the brain, telling the hypothalamus to send out yet another flurry of hormones that reduce appetite and increase cellular activity to burn off the extra calories—bringing everything back into balance.
It turns out that extremely sweet or fatty foods captivate the brain's reward circuit in much the same way that cocaine and gambling do.
Research has shown that the brain begins responding to fatty and sugary foods even before they enter our mouth. Merely seeing a desirable item excites the reward circuit. As soon as such a dish touches the tongue, taste buds send signals to various regions of the brain, which in turn responds by spewing the neurochemical dopamine. The result is an intense feeling of pleasure. Frequently overeating highly palatable foods saturates the brain with so much dopamine that it eventually adapts by desensitizing itself, reducing the number of cellular receptors that recognize and respond to the neurochemical. Consequently, the brains of overeaters demand a lot more sugar and fat to reach the same threshold of pleasure as they once experienced with smaller amounts of the foods.
“The traditional idea is that we can teach overweight people to improve their self-control,” Lowe says. “The new idea is that the foods themselves are more the problem.” For some people, palatable foods invoke such a strong response in the brain's reward circuit—and so dramatically alter their biology—that willpower will rarely, if ever, be sufficient to resist eating those foods once they are around. Instead, Lowe says, “we have to reengineer the food environment.” In practical terms, that means never bringing fatty, supersweet foods into the house in the first place and avoiding venues that offer them whenever possible."
I see parallels to this overload/desensitization dynamic in personal finance: it's easy to become desensitized to debt and overconsumption when they trigger sensations of pleasure.
In the macro-economy, I see parallels in the Federal Reserve's policies of near-zero interest rates and easy credit: now the economy has habituated to these risky policies, and the slightest tightening of credit and raising of interest rates threatens to destabilize the entire economy.
Overloading the economy with cheap and easy credit provided an initial rush, but this disrupted the feedback mechanisms that limited debt and overconsumption. Now that the feebacks have been disrupted, desensitization has set in: huge increases in debt and spending are no longer generating healthy expansion.
Rather, now the system must create more debt just to keep from destabilizing. This is a system on the verge of breaking down.
Summary of the Blog This Past Week
2016 Theme #5: The Systemic Failure of High Finance 1/8/16
2016 Theme #4: The End-Game of Debt-Fueled "Growth" 1/7/16
2016 Theme #3: The Rise of Independent (non-state) Crypto-Currencies 1/6/16
2016 Theme #2: The Hollow Shell of Democracy 1/5/16
2016 Theme #1: Loss of Leverage 1/4/16
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Homemade yeast rolls, right out of the oven, with a bit of butter (yes, in small doses, highly pleasurable.)
Market Musings: The Wedges Broke as Expected; What's Next?
Last week I shared charts of wedges, patterns that typically break up or down in a big way. As expected, the S&P 500, gold and oil all broke in decisive fashion.
SPX broke down, plummeting from 2,050 to 1,922. A longstanding gap at 1,950 was filled, but a new gap at 2,040 was opened in the descent.
As this chart of SPX shows, gaps get filled, usually sooner rather than later. If we look at the similar "crash" in August (5 days in August, 6 days in January), we see a gap that was opened in the decline got filled a few days later.
Given the 20-day MA at 2,028 and the 50-day at 2,059, 2,040 is a tempting target for a retrace in options expiration week (OEX), which tends to be bullish.
Gold broke to the upside. MACD is looking positive, but the stochastic is looking a bit toppy, so a slight retrace or pause might be in order.
Oil did indeed break down in a continuation-of-trend to $32/barrel. Some slight positive divergence is setting up in MACD and stochastics, which is supportive of a move higher--but how high and how long is difficult to ascertain.
I doubt the Powers That Be will let the market get away from them this early in the year. Various signals (NYMO, CPC, VIX, etc.) are at relative extremes, and a reversal is necessary to maintain the facade of normalcy. Technically, there is a strong case to be made for a sharp reversal back to at least 2,040 to fill the open gap in SPX.
Oil and stocks have plummeted together. Let's see if they move higher together, or continue their decline.
From Left Field
The Tech That Will Change Your Life in 2016 -- or not...
For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions -- two systems, one for the .01% and one for the rest...
Today's Tech Giants Are Creating Loads Of Wealth But Pitifully Few Jobs -- New Normal
Digital Labor and Imperialism -- long but worth a read...
The Saudis Are Stumbling. They May Take the Middle East with Them.
Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? This tale of a single rescued child hints at some of the reasons for the tiny Nordic nation’s staggering record of education success, a phenomenon that has inspired, baffled and even irked many of America’s parents and educators. Finnish schooling became an unlikely hot topic after the 2010 documentary film Waiting for “Superman” contrasted it with America’s troubled public schools.
Helsinki's ambitious plan to make car ownership pointless in 10 years
After decades of car-filled streets, can a modern metropolis really turn its back on the automobile? One city is hoping that it can.
Consume more, conserve more: sorry, but we just can’t do both -- common sense that is now uncommon...
Legendary photographer Ansel Adams visited a Japanese internment camp in 1943, here’s what he saw
How Senior Fashion is Turning Heads in San Francisco’s Chinatown -- never too old to turn heads..
Happy all the time: As biometric tracking takes over the modern workplace, the old game of labor surveillance is finding new forms.
"Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant." Horace
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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