It is so hard to curb eating certain foods and being on the obese level of the weight chart is awful. I recently tried a fasting program that had the most disgusting milkshake I’ve ever had. In Endocrine News I’ve read an interesting study.
A doctor named Constantine Stratakis, MD, DSci, PhD, thinks clinicians could soon offer their patients with obesity a nasal spray they could take every day that would not only entice them to exercise, but also avoid unhealthy foods. It sounds like a miracle but there’s more research to be done. If this happens, I’m on board.
In a mouse study recently published in JCI Insight, Dr. Stratakis, chief of the Section on Genetics and Endocrinology at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and his team found that by knocking out a single molecule in the brain — Prkar2a — the affected mice showed “decreased consumption of palatable, ‘rewarding’ foods and increased motivation for voluntary exercise.”
Edra London, Ph.D., the lead author says, “The researchers turned to the brain — specifically an area that has been somewhat overlooked when it comes to metabolic dysregulation — the medial habenula (MHb). This area is really intricately involved in reward pathway signaling, aversive stimuli, and processing both positive experiences and negative.”
The authors of the study are careful to point out that this line of research may not be an answer to all types of obesity, but since Prkar2a is expressed in an area of the brain associated with addiction, targeting that molecule could provide some answers in disordered eating.
Meanwhile, exercise and a healthy diet remain the first line of treatment for patients with obesity. (yawn)
Yeah, it sure would be nice if there were a miracle and you didn’t even like fattening foods, and you were enticed into exercising.