Before thinking of how to shed that extra flab, think about how to control leptin that seems to be the message sent across by a team of researchers from the Colombia University medical center after their new brain scans. Those who have succeeded in losing their weight by strenuous exercises and cutting on their diet had miserably realized that it is easy to lose weight, but difficult to keep it off permanently. They watch helplessly with dejected eyes as the fat piles back up in no time. But it s nothing to get depressed about as there is a ray of hope at the end of the tunnel.
This time, the researchers could really pin down the culprit or so says the Wall Street Journal. No, it is not a fake claim. This leptin, a protein hormone produced by fat cells, can even control your emotions. This would explain your gluttony over food and your lack of will power to resist from chow harmful to your health. Michael Rosenbaum, the principle author of the study in this month s Journal of Clinical Investigation, says that the emotional response to food increases and the ability to control it declines.
While experimenting in humans and rodents, the scientists found that when they lose weight, their leptin levels, the key driver of the system which informs the brain of its fat reserves, falls, kicking off physiological changes to stack that extra calories. In the effort to control this biological drive to regain, it was found that by leptin replacement, it overturned the metabolic changes by overlooking the weight loss. These metabolic changes can be seen in the changed activity of the brain.
Researchers of Columbia University experimented with six obese subjects on liquid diets. After losing weight by 10 they were administered leptin and functional MRI scans were done to observe their brain activity on seeing the effects of food and non food items. In the weight reduced state the blood flow was more in areas of the brain that control emotional and sensory responses to food and was comparatively less in areas that control food intake. The brain activity was limping back to normalcy when the subjects were given leptin replacement.
Though Rudolph Leibel, a co author of the Columbia Study at Rockefeller University is at a loss to say how this blood flow of the brain matches up with the behavior but emphatically says that the brain images are proof of the powerful biological forces that drive humans into survival mode, when the fat reserves decline and food is scanty.
But the saddest part of it is that this leptin problem is contributing to obesity rather than survival due to the global feast at our disposal, just a ring away. The potential of leptin as a drug for weight loss is an area that holds promise and needs more attention, says the Columbia researchers. Dr. Rosenbaum says by constant vigil on food intake and rigorous exercises, one can keep off weight permanently and those who on their own will manage to control leptin effect needs special kudos.
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