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- Anyone who has tried to change diets can tell you that it's not as simple as just waking up and deciding to eat differently.
- New research highlights a possible explanation for this; Diets high in fat can cause inflammation of the hypothalamus, which regulates hunger.
- Mice receiving high fat diets tended to eat more and become obese because of this inflammation.
Your wardrobe will not be the only thing that a bad diet will change in your life – new research published in Cell metabolism shows that diets rich in fats and carbohydrates physically modify your brain and, consequently, your behavior. Anyone who has tried to change their diet can tell you that it's a lot harder than just deciding to change. This could be due to the impact of high fat diets on the hypothalamus.
Researcher Sabrina Diano of Yale and her colleagues fed mice with a diet high in fats and carbohydrates and found that the animals' hypothalamus were quickly inflamed. This small part of the brain releases hormones that regulate many autonomous processes, including hunger. Diets high in fats and carbohydrates seem to create a vicious circle because this inflammation has caused mice to eat more and gain more weight.
"There are specific brain mechanisms that activate when we expose ourselves to specific types of foods," said Diano in a Yale press release. "It's a mechanism that can be evolutionally important, but when foods that are high in fat and carbohydrates are available all the time, they are harmful."
A hamburger and a side of french fries
Photo of Miguel Andrade on Unsplash
The main factor in this inflammation seems to be the way that high fat diets have altered microglial cells in mice. With other glial cells, microglia are a kind of cell found in the central nervous system (CNS), although they are not neurons. Instead, they play a supporting role in the brain by providing a structure, providing nutrients, isolating neurons and destroying pathogens. Microglia are part of the CNS immune system, looking for and destroying foreign bodies as well as damaged plaques and neurons or synapses.
Only three days after receiving a high-fat diet, mouse microglia became activated, causing inflammation of the hypothalamus. As a result, mice began to eat more and became obese. "We were intrigued by the fact that these are very rapid changes that occur even before body weight changes, and we wanted to understand the underlying cellular mechanism," said Diano.
In mice fed a high-fat diet, the researchers found that the mitochondria in the microglia had narrowed. They suspected a specific protein called Coupling Protein 2 (UCP2) likely to be at the origin of this change because it helps regulate the amount of energy used by microglia and tends to s & # 39; 39, express strongly on activated microglia.
To test whether UCP2 was causing inflammation of the hypothalamus, the researchers removed the gene responsible for producing this protein in a group of mice. Then they fed these mice with the same high-fat diet. This time, however, the microglia of the mouse did not activate. As a result, they ate a lot less food and did not become obese.
An outdated adaptation
When humans did not have reliable access to food, this type of behavior change would have been beneficial. If a former human being fell on a high-calorie, high-calorie meal, it would be logical for that person to eat as much as they could without knowing where their next meal would come from.
But there was no Pleistocene Burger Kings. Humanity has been extraordinarily successful in changing its environment, but our genome has not yet caught up. The high availability of food, especially high-fat foods, means that this adaptation is no longer beneficial.
Research like this highlights how difficult it is to really change bad habits. A bad diet is not a moral failure, it is a behavioral requirement. Fortunately, the same big brains who gave us this abundance of food can also control our behavior, even though these brains seem to work against us.
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