Fructose that is a very widely used sweetener in most of the eatables does sets off ground for leptin resistance in the body and lead to weight gain. Leptin resistance aggravates obesity condition in the body when coupled with fat and calorie high diet. The fact was outlined in a new study conducted on rats.
The study also revealed a horrifying fact that leptin resistance so developed presents no indications on the body and can develop silently. This is something that no other study did this far though the earlier studies do indicate quick weight gain because of a body being leptin resistant.
The hormone leptin does the work of balancing energy intake and energy expenditure for humans. Getting leptin resistant means this process fails within a person even when the body creates the leptin hormone. This resistance would lead to person going obese or overweight when the intake contains high calorie and high fat diet.
Fructose i.e. the sugar that is found in fruit, was being tested for its role in ever increasing obesity around the world. The problem is not in consuming the fruits as such but it is the table sugar and high fructose corn syrup content that is added to most of the eatables and beverages available.
Fructose is known to produce triglyceride which is found to be a major hurdle in transportation of leptin to the brain in some earlier studies. The researchers worked on this theory and established that since the brain was not receiving required leptin, it could not signal the body to stop eating causing excess intake. This led the body to go obese or overweight especially when the intake was of a high calorie and a high fat diet.
The study was conducted at Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville by Alexandra Shapiro, Wei Mu, Carlos Roncal, Kit-Yan Cheng, Richard J. Johnson and Philip J. Scarpace. American Physiological Society carried the study in its journal ‘American Journal of Physiology – Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology’. The study was titled as “Fructose-induced leptin resistance exacerbates weight gain in response to subsequent high-fat feeding”.