Tongue – The Road to Obesity
Jun 16, 2009
In a recent study conducted at Penn State College of Medicine among the rats it has been confirmed that the obese rats developed insensitivity towards sweetened eatables because of which they ate bigger and sweeter meals. This eating behavior induced further obesity in them and thus created a never ending cycle to get rid of excess weight. The study focused on the criticality of the link between the body weight and taste sensitivity especially towards sugary eatables.
The lead researcher and associate professor of neural and behavioral sciences, Andras Hanjal said "When you have a reduced sensitivity to palatable foods, you tend to consume it in higher amounts. It is a vicious circle."
There have been studies earlier that suggested the insensitivity to sugary eatables in obese being the reason of their consuming the same in larger quantities as compared to the lean. However the specifics of this taste behavior between the lean and obese is not known largely.
The professor along with a colleague tried getting to the root of this difference in OLETF and LETO species of rats and found that the sensitivity in the OLETF rats was much more similar to humans. These species of rats with a normal weight ate more than required because the signaling system of satiation malfunctioned in them. These rats gain weight to get obese and also develop diabetes. The obese preferred to eat more sugary food and were ready to put in more efforts to get access to such food. However their response to the salt was similar in both the varieties.
"We found that compared to the LETO rats, the OLETF rats had about 50 percent fewer neurons firing when their tongues were exposed to sucrose, suggesting that obese rats are overall less sensitive to sucrose," explained Hajnal, whose findings appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology. The response to salt was the same for both strains.
"When you have excess body weight, the brain is supposed to tell you not to eat more, or not choose high caloric meals" said Hajnal. "But this control apparently fails and thus the obesity epidemic is rising, and we want to find out how the sense of taste drives up food intake."
Posted by admin | Tags: obesity
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June 16th, 2009 at 8:45 am
[...] Original post by admin [...]
June 16th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Very interesting post, it something I’d never heard about before, but I suppose because taste play a huge part of what we eat, I can see how this could cause a problem with weight loss.