Ever wonder why you can’t seem to stop eating those delicious, saturated fat laden foods? Why you’re still hungry after a weekend indulgence on Monday morning? And What causes compulsive over eating?
Well, new research appearing in the September 2009 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation may have uncovered the answer.
It appears that molecules of certain kinds of fat can actually travel to your brain, which tells your body to ignore built in “stop eating” signals and just keep right on eating.
“Normally, our body is primed to say when we’ve had enough to eat, but that doesn’t always happen when we’re eating something good,” explains study senior author Deborah Clegg, an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern.
Recognizing that the brain might be involved since it incorporates some of the fat (good and bad) that we eat into its structure, the team wanted to isolate the effects of fat on signals in the brain that might be related to how much we eat.
The fatty acid that appeared to cause the most trouble was palmitic acid, one of the most common saturated fatty acids, found in both dairy (butter, cheese, milk) and beef products. The fats in olive oil were given a clean bill of health by the study.
Researchers tested their idea by exposing subject rats and mice to fats in different ways – injecting some types of fat into the brain, infusing fat through the carotid artery or feeding the animals through a stomach tube.
All the animals got the same amount of calories and fat – only the type of fat (palmitic acid, monounsaturated fatty acid and oleic acid) was different.
The work reveals that brain chemistry can be changed in a very short period of time. What happens when you indulge in a fat-laden but delicious treat is that your brain gets hit with the fatty acids, making your body resistant to both insulin and leptin (chemicals that tell you to stop eating) and encouraging you to continue to indulge.
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Tasty Foods Tell The Brain To Keep On Eating Continued…
This mechanism can even be triggered in the brains of those without any current sign of obesity. What’s more, the effect appeared to last a full three days after the subjects ate the fatty food.
Bad news if you’re trying to get back on track with a healthy eating plan after slipping up a bit. These findings might also explain why those who overeat on a Friday or Saturday night out are still feeling hungrier (and likely taking in more calories) on Monday.
Even though the research was conducted using rodents, the results reinforce what nutritionists have been saying for some time – limit the number of saturated fats you consume. Dr Clegg points out, “The action was very specific to palmitic acid, which is very high in foods that are rich in saturated fat.”
The findings of this first-of-its-kind research might also have implications for diabetes patients. While science has known for a long time that a high-fat diet can cause insulin resistance, until now no one has understood the precise mechanism at work, or whether some types of fats are more dangerous than others.
Follow up studies by this team will likely investigate how long it takes to reverse the effects of exposure to all those bad-for-you-fats.
And with obesity rates rising steadily, and the selection of saturated fat laden foods more plentiful than ever before, work like this can’t come soon enough to educate people in their dietary choices and reduce the amount of compulsive over eating.
To your good health,
Daily Health Bulletin
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