Why a person regains weight after the diet

Recent scientific studies on animals show the direct impact of a group of neurons on satiety and hunger. What is the role played by emotions when it comes to eating. A consulted specialists

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If you are assaulted, about the impact of a group of neurons as intermediaries of satiety and hunger, we could say that obesity can treat in a complementary manner not only a specialist in nutrition, but also in a neurologist's office.
The expert in molecular genetics Jeffrey Friedman in an interview provided to the newspaper El País updated somehow the debate over obesity and the forms of dieting today. The question of why a person eats too much, Friedman replied with his latest discovery: the hormone leptin and its role in weight regulation.

Leptin is considered by this researcher at the Rockefeller University in New York and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the scientific world as the satiety hormone.
And also served as the spearhead of a concept that is here to stay among the specialists who study and investigate obesity: focus on the overall health of the individual and not on weight.

Research by Friedman and others put on the table the most transcendent idea and that augurs a change of paradigm in the study of obesity: weight is a trait controlled by genes, in a manner similar to the stature; and think in manipulating it in a meaningful way from diets can be somewhat more complicated than a simple matter of good will and eating habits.



New research

This week, two others who published the newspaper El País, and realize scientific papers in experimental instance in animals and trying to unravel the networks of neurons that manage information and impulses related to the food in addition to investigations of Friedman.

One of the groups, led by Bradford Lowell, researcher at the Harvard School of medicine is one of the discoverers of the AgRP neurons, nerve cells that detect the lack of calories and triggers a series of signs that make us need food. These molecules have higher levels among obese people and lower among the thin.

Other research published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, says the discovery of a circuit that inhibits and controlling the urge to eat. This mechanism, which is regulated by a protein known as MC4R, could become a trigger for creating a drug that helps control appetite and obesity, to reduce the suffering of hunger associated with diet.

In this context, Dr. Monica Katz, specialist in nutrition (MN 60164) conclusive at our site said: "Despite these recent stimulating and encouraging research on the study of obesity, are still in a prehistoric stage. At the level of diuretics in hypertension. And the worst thing is that we continue looking at only one part, the intake."

In a dialogue with the medical neurologist Robert King (65.626 MN), director of the American Institute of neurological research points out: advancing the scientific studies that prove the different ways in which the brain controls appetite. All of us have this group of neurotransmitters such as oxytocin and leptin, among others, dealing with its evolution and movement of liaising with a dual mechanism of satiety ".

King adds: "what was demonstrated in animals in the study were published in Nature Neuroscience and the Harvard School of medicine, is that this group of neurons have an impact on the vagus nerve, located in the hypothalamus. There where precisely this group of sensitive neurons is housed. These neurotransmitters can be stimulated by hunger, by the ability of distension of the stomach and thus operate - positive and negative - on satiety".

Hormones and appetite


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Mónica Katz, for the regulation of what we eat is approaching the accuracy of a watch. "Every time you swallowed food; as we absorb them are releasing hormones - CCK in the duodenum, GLT1 in the colon, for example - as a response to what you have eaten. And all go to the hypothalamus, specifically to a special kernel that is called arcuate, that tells the brain that already you ate enough."

Adds Katz: "already within the arcuate nucleus, interact with other two types of neurons expressing hormones that appetite that are the POMC and neurons AgRP. If the "wins" is the receiver of the POMC is not comés, but if that wins is the AgRP, bad luck, let's eat! "."

For Katz, the deepening of these investigations in definitive vna to obtain drugs that modulate these two pathways, which increases and modulates the hunger to stop thus obesity. Because you have to understand is that it involved the emotional state.

KATZ SAYS: AGAINST OBESITY, THE REAL SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS IS MODULAR NOT JUST METABOLISM, HUNGER AND SATIETY, BUT THE EMOTIONAL RESPONSE.

The neurologist King coincides with the vision of Katz: "what these studies suggest is that in the not-too-distant future there are drugs that have action and regulation on these neuroreceptores. They would be the two poles of the same neuronal line with which there are neurons that mediate as desinhibidoras of satiation, as for example with amphetamines. They inhibit the desire to eat, cause complete inhibition of satiety neurons which in turn cause the feeling of greed".

Strengthens Katz: "just talk about hambre-saciedad does not reach. When we think about emotions, are activated areas of reward and pleasure, or displeasure or rejection. You have to know that we are designed to make survival signals displancenteras".

Simultaneously, the famine also triggers reward signals. They tell you that the dopamine - comes something good-. What the scientists are seeing is what it always was: we should attach to the study of obesity an emotional system.

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