Obesity May Damage the Brain’s Ability to Recognize Satiety and Fullness, New Study Finds

A new study finds that obesity may damage the brain’s ability to recognize feelings of satiety and fullness, after eating fats and sugars.

In addition, these changes may persist in the brain even after obese people lose a significant amount of weight, according to the study reported by CNN. This may explain why so many people regain the weight they lose.

Obesity is defined as a body mass index greater than 30, while it ranges between 18 and 25 for people of normal weight. BMI is calculated by dividing an adult’s weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared.

In the new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Metabolism, 30 people with clinical obesity and 30 people of normal weight were fed sugary carbohydrates (glucose), fat, or water (as a control), using a tube to introduce these nutrients into their digestive tract. directly.

The night before the test, all 60 study participants ate the same meal at home for dinner.

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography to capture the brain’s response to these elements over a 30-minute period.

The study found that for people of normal weight, brain signals slowed down once sugars or fats were put into the digestive tract, evidence that the brain recognized that the body had been fueled.

“This general decrease in brain activity makes sense,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Merrill Searley, a professor of endocrinology at Yale University School of Medicine. Because once the food is in your stomach, you don’t need to get any more food.

At the same time, dopamine levels rose in people of normal weight, indicating activation of the reward centers in the brain as well, which made them feel that they had enough of delicious and enjoyable food.

In the obese group, the exact opposite happened, according to the researchers. Brain activity did not slow down, and dopamine levels did not rise.

Next, the researchers asked the obese subjects to lose 10 percent of their body weight within 3 months, an amount of weight known to improve blood sugar, restore metabolism to a healthy level, and promote overall health, Surly said.

The study team repeated the tests again. But this time the results were surprising. Surly said they found that losing weight did not reset the brain in obese people.

He explained, “Nothing has changed. The brain could not recognize the feeling of satiety and fullness and did not feel satisfied.

“This finding may explain why people successfully lose weight and then regain it completely after a few years.”

Cearly indicated that these results show that the brain may be largely responsible for people’s inability to maintain their weight at a healthy level, expressing his hope that this information will help empathize with people who suffer from this problem, rather than criticize them.