This fad diet actually disrupts the appetite pathways in the brain
Unsubscribe | Report as spam | Change email preferences
This is how food cravings are born
Our bodies are amazing marvels of engineering.
They require food as fuel, create energy from that fuel, and if we treat our bodies right…
…they are pretty good at self regulation.
The way the body works reminds me a lot of a car.
If you take care of a car, it will likely last you a long time.
But if you don’t, then you are going to have lots of trouble and significant breakdowns.
Our bodies are incredibly adaptive, but if we push them too far our ability to self regulate our metabolism and our health can be disrupted.
In a study published in The Physiological Society researchers found that occasionally eating fatty foods didn’t affect the calorie intake of rats.
New research in rats published in The Journal of Physiology found that after short periods of being fed a high fat/high calorie diet, the brain adapts to react to what is being ingested and reduces the amount of food eaten to balance calorie intake.
But when the rats were regularly fed high fat foods, it disrupted the brain pathways that control calorie intake.
The researchers from Penn State College of Medicine, US, suggest that calorie intake is regulated in the short-term by cells called astrocytes (large star-shaped cells in the brain that regulate many different functions of neurons in the brain) that control the signalling pathway between the brain and the gut. Continuously eating a high fat/calorie diet seems to disrupt this signalling pathway.
This is fascinating, because we’ve been trained to think that maintaining a weight we are comfortable in is simply a matter of calories in and calories out.
The reality is much more complicated.
Our bodies are designed with homeostasis systems or the ability to self regulate.
Homeostasis, any self-regulating process by which biological systems tend to maintain stability while adjusting to conditions that are optimal for survival.
But we can throw those systems off by what we do in our lives.
In this study, the researchers found that eating high fat foods for 3 to 5 days (or what would traditionally be a feast period for humans)…
…didn’t cause problems with the brain regulation of food intake.
“Calorie intake seems to be regulated in the short-term by astrocytes. We found that a brief exposure (three to five days) of high fat/calorie diet has the greatest effect on astrocytes, triggering the normal signalling pathway to control the stomach.”
But if you eat a high fat-high calorie diet over a longer period of 10 to 14 days…
…then your body ACCLIMATES to the higher calorie intake and creates a new set point.
“Over time, astrocytes seem to desensitise to the high fat food. Around 10-14 days of eating high fat/calorie diet, astrocytes seem to fail to react and the brain’s ability to regulate calorie intake seems to be lost. This disrupts the signalling to the stomach and delays how it empties.”
In rats, this change affects both the brain and the body and creates a system in which the body WANTS to eat far more food.
The scientists don’t know yet if this research applies to humans, but I suspect that something similar happens in human bodies as well.
Personally, I am very careful with what I eat because I understand the impact that food has on my body and on my brain.
The way our bodies regulate appetite is far more complicated than calories in and calories out.
When we recognize that, then it’s much easier to hack your way to success.
—-Important Message—-
Men who eat sugar, BURN sugar — and here’s why that’s a GREAT thing
Remember being a kid and being warm and full of energy all the time?
You’d go outside to play in the cold and wouldn’t even want your jacket.
It’s ‘cause as kids, we are always burning up… our bodies are constantly burning SUGAR.
YOUTH is sugar burning. Even scientists agree.
But as we age, our metabolisms get slow and cold, and instead of burning sugar for energy, the body starts burning fat…
And believe it or not, this is a BAD thing.
Do you know what eventually happens to men who only burn fat and not sugar?
Diabetes, low testosterone, “rockiness” problems, obesity, more age-related diseases, even cancer…
So a hot, fast sugar-burning metabolism is the key to remaining young and healthy no matter how old you are.
———-
