Some foods promote weight gain more than others. But what we know now is that in addition, some of them activate the vicious circle which leads people to eat more than necessary.

It is that according to researchers from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canadathere is a relationship between the inflammation of the hypothalamusa part of brain regulates energy balance and the feeling of hungerand consumption of high-fat diets.

As published in the magazine PNAS“High-fat diets can lead to vicious cycle hard to stop”.

A distinction must be made between the healthy fatssuch as those included in avocado, nuts or olive oil and which specialists recommend to include in a healthy diet in the recommended portions, and excessive consumption of ultra-processed foods high in fat industries that affect health.

“These foods produce inflammation of the hypothalamus which increases appetite to levels that cause us to eat more than we need and gain weight,” explain the study authors, who observe, however, an apparently paradoxical effect: “Inflammation of this region of the brain is also associated with diseases such as anorexia and others that lead to weight loss.

The team led by Michiru Hirasawa demonstrated in the study that the high fat diets do it prostaglandin E2 (PGE2)a molecule that regulates immune system processes such as fever, activates the hormone MHC in the hypothalamus, which makes people hungry.

This mechanism may also explain why brain inflammation sometimes leads to excessive weight gain and excessive loss at other times. If it is in a high concentration and produces intense inflammation, PGE2 suppresses appetite, but if the concentration is lower, it increases it.

Hirasawa and his collaborators used animal models try to find out how this regulation is regulated relationship between inflammation and appetite disorders. And, as they saw, by genetically modifying the mice that participated in the study, the receptors for this prostaglandin in the MHC neurons were eliminated, and the animals were protected against obesity or fatty liver disease which caused inflammation of the hypothalamus linked to a high-fat diet.

According to Hirasawa, it is not easy to predict “the outcome of inflammation, because low or high intensity is relative, it can be acute or chronic and involves many different organs, cells and molecules.”

However, for the researcher, although they produce different ailments, “reducing inflammation can alleviate both symptoms”. Therefore, for her, any strategy that produces this effect can be useful in many ways. “For example, the Mediterranean diet is anti-inflammatory and is known to help reduce weight in overweight or obese people,” he recommended. But it’s also essential to be selective about how and when to use anti-inflammatory treatments, as inflammation is also necessary for our daily functioning, for example healing wounds or fighting infection.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines the obesity as an abnormal or excessive amount of accumulated fat that poses a risk to the person’s health.

And the figures for the disease, which continues to grow around the world, speak for themselves: almost a billion people were living with obesity in 2020, or one in seven people, and estimates ensure that this number will climb to 1,900 million in 2035. Or almost one in four people.

If we talk about childhood obesity, the forecasts assume that nearly 400 million children worldwide will suffer from obesity in 2035. That is almost one in five children, which means that the disease will increase in the youngest by more than 100% from 2020 to 2035 (from 10% to 20% of this population).

At the same time, Obesity is a disease which causes over 200 other conditions, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea, fatty liver disease and certain types of cancer to name a few.

Hence the importance of recent discoveries, which, according to Hirasawa herself, “could one day lead to treatments for obesity”. For her, “knowledge of the mechanism that begins with the intake of fatty foods and causes inflammation that increases appetite would make it possible to develop treatments using this target”.

Thus, the genetic modification to which the mice were subjected in the study published in PNAS seems a very radical option and it must be taken into account that PGE2 has many other functions, in addition to inflaming the hypothalamus and inducing hunger. And although the expert acknowledged that “treatments that block this mechanism should have an anti-obesity effect”, she concluded that “it is essential to identify possible side effects and test their safety before using them”.

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