Why Diets Don't Work: Starved Brain Cells Eat Themselves, Study Finds

Why Diets Don't Work: Starved Brain Cells Eat Themselves, Study Finds

This seems very interesting, well I always thought obesity is definitely with brain function and not the overly focused on stomach, but of course the entire system is more complex.

A report in the August issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism might help to explain why it's so frustratingly difficult to stick to a diet. When we don't eat, hunger-inducing neurons in the brain start eating bits of themselves. That act of self-cannibalism turns up a hunger signal to prompt eating.

"A pathway that is really important for every cell to turn over components in a kind of housekeeping process is also required to regulate appetite," said Rajat Singh of Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

The cellular process uncovered in neurons of the brain's hypothalamus is known as autophagy (literally self-eating.) Singh says the new findings in mice suggest that treatments aimed at blocking autophagy may prove useful as hunger-fighting weapons in the war against obesity.