Once the body digests high-energy food, it sends signals to certain areas of the brain and releases dopamine – a hormone responsible for our feeling of happiness: our body rewards us with a pleasant feeling. At the same time, activity decreases in the area of the brain that motivates us to eat. However, a team led by Merrill Sirli of the University Hospital Amsterdam showed that obese people are generally less motivated by eating than people of normal weight. This has an effect on eating behavior: in order to receive the same level of reward, those affected must consume more nutrients.
the A study in the journal Nature Metabolism. This confirms a common assumption that the brains of obese people have made long-term modifications that affect the activity of the reward system. Like a series in one press release He explains that these adaptations are also very resistant to changes, such as diet. According to the researcher, this provides a further explanation for the infamous yo-yo effect, where one gains weight back after a successful weight loss.
Usually, taste and preferences as well as food processing in the mouth and stomach also influence the reward system. However, in their current study, the experts ruled out these effects by injecting a solution rich in fat or sugar directly into the test participants’ digestive tracts. Then, using brain-scanning machines, they observed how the brains of 30 normal-weight and 30 obese people responded. As expected, the obese subjects showed less brain activity and decreased dopamine release while consuming fat.
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