“The MRI shows where neurons in the brain are using oxygen in reaction to the nutrient - that part of the brain lights up,” Farooqi said. As either sugars or fats entered the stomach via the tube, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) to capture the brain’s response over 30 minutes. The night before the testing, all 60 study participants had the same meal for dinner at home and did not eat again until the feeding tube was in place the next morning. Mireille Serlie, professor of endocrinology at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. “We wanted to bypass the mouth and focus on the gut-brain connection, to see how nutrients affect the brain independently from seeing, smelling or tasting food,” said lead study author Dr. The study, published Monday in Nature Metabolism, was a controlled clinical trial in which 30 people considered to be medically obese and 30 people of normal weight were fed sugar carbohydrates (glucose), fats (lipids) or water (as a control). Each group of nutrients were fed directly into the stomach via a feeding tube on separate days.ĭon’t use sugar substitutes for weight loss, World Health Organization advises “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. Sadaf Farooqi, a professor of metabolism and medicine at the University of Cambridge in the UK, who was not involved in the new research. “The study is very rigorous and quite comprehensive,” said Dr. “This study captures why obesity is a disease - there are actual changes to the brain,” said Apovian, who was not involved in the study. Caroline Apovian, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and codirector of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.Īs defined medically, people with obesity have a body mass index, or BMI, of over 30, while normal weight is a BMI of between 18 and 25. “There was no sign of reversibility - the brains of people with obesity continued to lack the chemical responses that tell the body, ‘OK, you ate enough,’” said Dr. How promising are new drugs to treat obesity and who should - and shouldn’t - use them? Our medical analyst explainsįurther, those brain changes may last even after people considered medically obese lose a significant amount of weight - possibly explaining why many people often regain the pounds they lose. (Photo illustration by Mario Tama/Getty Images) Mario Tama/Getty Images Some doctors prescribe Ozempic off-label to treat obesity. In recent months, there has been a spike in demand for Ozempic, or semaglutide, due to its weight loss benefits, which has led to shortages. Ozempic was originally approved by the FDA to treat people with Type 2 diabetes- who risk serious health consequences without medication. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - APRIL 17: In this photo illustration, boxes of the diabetes drug Ozempic rest on a pharmacy counter on Apin Los Angeles, California.
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