Dr. Deborah Clegg and colleagues suggest that fat molecules from certain foods can change brain chemistry in a very short period, causing appetite-suppressing signals to be ignored.

Reprinted with Permission of Dr. Deborah Clegg

Blame your brain for sabotaging your efforts to get back on track after splurging on an extra scoop of ice cream or that second burger during Friday night’s football game.

Findings from a new UT Southwestern Medical Center study suggest that fat from certain foods we eat makes its way to the brain. Once there, the fat molecules cause the brain to send messages to the body’s cells, warning them to ignore the appetite-suppressing signals from leptin and insulin, hormones involved in weight regulation.

The researchers also found that one particular type of fat — palmitic acid — is particularly effective at instigating this mechanism.

“Normally, our body is primed to say when we’ve had enough, but that doesn’t always happen when we’re eating something good,” said Dr. Deborah Clegg, assistant professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern and senior author of the rodent study appearing in the September issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation. [Read more...]