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Scientists at Monash University's Biomedicine Discovery Institute have found a mechanism by which the brain coordinates feeding with energy expenditure, solving a puzzle that has previously eluded researchers and offering a potential novel target for the treatment of obesity.
[...] Researchers from the Metabolic Disease and Obesity Program have shown in laboratory models that feeding controls the 'browning' of fat, that is, the conversion of white fat, which stores energy, into brown fat, which expends it. Fat in the human body is stored in specialised cells called adipocytes, which can change from white to brown states and back again.
Their study, published in Cell Metabolism today, shows that after a meal the brain responds to circulating insulin, which is increased after a rise in blood glucose. The brain then sends signals to promote the browning of fat to expend energy. By contrast, after a fast, the brain instructs these browned adipocytes to once more convert into white adipocytes, storing energy. These processes help prevent both excess weight gain and excess weight loss in response to feeding and fasting, meaning body weight remains relatively stable over time.
The researchers showed that the brain's ability to sense insulin and coordinate feeding with energy expenditure via browning is controlled by a switch-like mechanism turned on after fasting to inhibit the response to insulin, repressing browning and conserving energy, and turned off after feeding to facilitate the insulin response to promote browning and to expend energy.
"What happens in the context of obesity is that the switch stays on all the time -- it doesn't turn on off during feeding," lead researcher Professor Tony Tiganis said.
"As a consequence, browning is turned off all the time and energy expenditure is decreased all the time, so when you eat, you don't see a commensurate increase in energy expenditure -- and that promotes weight gain," Professor Tiganis said.
Being able to control that switch can control the body's ability to shed weight.
Journal Reference: Garron T. Dodd, et. al., A Hypothalamic Phosphatase Switch Coordinates Energy Expenditure with Feeding. Cell Metabolism, 2017; 26 (2): 375 DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2017.07.013
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 05 2017, @08:11PM
I do a moderate/lazy version of the ketogenic diet. (search dr. mercola, ketogenic/nutritional ketosis on youtube.) 50% fat, 50% divided between carbs from vegetables and proteins (however it happens any given day). I dropped about 50 lbs in 5 months. I'm also exercising more so that didn't hurt anything. It's gotten easier to exercise with the improved diet though. Watch out for the odd food allergy you didn't know you had when drastically changing your diet. Your friends and family have to eat so often because they are damn near diabetic from their bad diets. Drop all grains, sugar, various poisons(learn where they hide them. "vegetable broth"), etc. substitute them with healthy fats. i used to "have to" eat every three hours and i just thought i had a healthy appetite. uhh, no. We're just highly ignorant of proper nutrition, especially in the US, due in no small part to Big Agra/Food. Watching the videos may open her eyes and once she starts eating these things her cravings will change and it won't matter how often she eats as long as she's eating all the right stuff. i actually crave bowls of fresh greens now, like a damn rabbit. i wonder which is better for me? pizzas by the stack or bowls of fresh greens. Also, once you switch your body over to burning fat you don't need to eat as much. You feel full because fat is what tells your brain that you are full. why do you think the food industry did the whole "low fat" thing? because they know you'll be hungrier and buy more "food" that was cheaper to make because they stole all the food out of it. They even labelled it for people that they know already have eating problems. how clever the little weasels are. The less you cheat on your diet the easier it gets. It's chemical/physical though, not "mentally easier", like diets that aren't really satifying your body.