Obesity (肥胖) may damage the brain’s ability to recognize the feeling of fullness and be satisfied after eating fats and sugars, a new study found.
The study was a controlled clinical trial in which 30 people considered to be medically obese and 30 people of normal weight were fed glucose (葡萄糖), fats or water (as a control). Each group of nutrients were fed directly into the stomach via a feeding tube on separate days. Researchers were interested in how fats and glucose would individually make various areas of the brain connected to the rewarding aspects of food work. They wanted to know if that would be different in people with obesity compared to those of normal weight.
In people with normal weight, the study found brain signals slowed when either sugars or fats were put into the digestive system — evidence that the brain recognized the body had been fed. At the same time, levels of dopamine (多巴胺) rose in those at normal weight, signaling that the reward centers of the brain were also activated. However, when the same nutrients were given to people considered medically obese, brain activity did not slow, and dopamine levels did not rise. This was especially true when the food was fats.
“The study is very strict and quite comprehensive,” said Dr. I. Sadaf Farooqi, a professor at the University of Cambridge in the UK, who was not involved in the new research. “The way they’ve designed their study gives more confidence in the findings, adding to prior research that also found obesity causes some changes in the brain,” she said.
Caution is needed in interpreting the findings, lead study author Dr. Mireille Serlie said, as much is unknown: “We don’t know when these changes in the brain happen during the course of weight gain. When does the brain start to slip and lose the sensing capacity?”
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