The reason why some people who eat a high-fat diet remain slim, yet others pile on the weight has been discovered in an international study.
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MODI director and Australian Life Scientist of the Year Professor Michael Cowley said there were two clear outcomes from the findings.
'We discovered that a high-fat diet caused brain cells to become insulated from the body, rendering the cells unable to detect signals of fullness to stop eating," Professor Cowley said.
"Secondly, the insulation also created a further complication in that the body was unable to detect signals to increase energy use and burn off calories/kilojoules."
The research showed that support cells in the brain developed overgrowth in a high-fat diet. This prevented the regular brain cells (the melanocortin system or POMC neurons) from connecting with other neural mechanisms, which determine appetite and energy expenditure.
Professor Cowley said the study findings provide a critical link in addressing the obesity epidemic.
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Eating a high fat diet causes more "insulation" in the nerve cells, and makes it even harder for the brain to help a person lose weight.
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Professor Cowley and fellow MODI researcher Dr Pablo Enriori collaborated with Research Chair and Professor of Comparative Medicine and Professor of Neurobiology Tamas Horvath and his team at the Yale School of Medicine in the United States, together with teams of scientists in Cincinnati, New Jersey, Mexico and Spain.
For a period of four months, the researchers monitored the eating and body composition of groups of mice and rats and found that those with a neural predisposition to obesity gained 30 per cent more weight compared to six per cent of the group with obesity-resistant cells.
Source-Eurekalert