If you've spent a lonely night at home eating chocolates and/or ice cream, you shouldn't feel guilty. A new study found that loneliness can cause an intense desire for sugary foods.|⁠ ⁠ Published in JAMA Network Open, researchers linked brain chemistry from those who are socially isolated to poor mental health, weight gain, cognitive decline, and chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes and obesity.⁠ "While it is established that obesity is linked to depression and anxiety and that binge eating is understood to be a coping mechanism against loneliness, I wanted to observe the brain pathways associated with these feelings and behaviors," said senior study author Arpana Gupta, Ph.D., an associate professor and director of the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience at the University of California in Los Angeles.⁠ ⁠ The researchers explored how brain chemistry is altered and how it processes food cues based on social settings in 93 premenopausal participants. Their fi...