Larry Minikes 6/21/17 Larry Minikes 6/21/17

Sleep-deprived preschoolers eat more

Study has implications for childhood obesity

October 13, 2016

Science Daily/University of Colorado at Boulder
Sleep-deprived preschoolers consumed about 20 percent more calories than usual, 25 percent more sugar and 26 percent more carbohydrates, say researchers. The following day, the kids were allowed to sleep as much as they needed. On this "recovery day," they returned to normal baseline levels of sugar and carbohydrate consumption, but still consumed 14 percent more calories and 23 percent more fat than normal.

During the day of lost sleep, the 3- and 4-year-olds consumed about 20 percent more calories than usual, 25 percent more sugar and 26 percent more carbohydrates, said Assistant Professor Monique LeBourgeois, lead study author. The following day, the kids were allowed to sleep as much as they needed. On this "recovery day," they returned to normal baseline levels of sugar and carbohydrate consumption, but still consumed 14 percent more calories and 23 percent more fat than normal.

"With this study design, children missed a daytime nap and stayed up late, which mimics one way that children lose sleep in the real world," said LeBourgeois of the Department of Integrative Physiology. According to the National Sleep Foundation, about 30 percent of preschoolers do not get enough sleep.

"We found that sleep loss increased the dietary intake of preschoolers on both the day of and the day after restricted sleep," she said. These results may shed light on how sleep loss can increase weight gain and why a number of large studies show that preschoolers who do not get enough sleep are more likely to be obese as a child and later in life.

A paper on the study was published in the Journal of Sleep Research.

Even with extensive obesity prevention efforts in the past decade, childhood obesity remains an epidemic. In 2014, 23 percent of American children under the age of 5 years were overweight or obese, said LeBourgeois. Childhood obesity increases the risk for later life chronic illnesses like diabetes and is associated with low self-esteem and depression. Overweight youth are about four times more likely to be obese as adults.

"We think one of the beauties of this study is that parents were given no instructions regarding the kind or amount of food or beverages to provide their children," said LeBourgeois. Parents fed their children just like they would on any normal day.

The researchers also studied each child across all study conditions -- meaning when their sleep was optimized, restricted and recovered -- which gave them control over how kids could differ individually in their eating preferences and sleep.

The children in the study -- five girls and five boys -- each wore small activity sensors on their wrists to measure time in bed, sleep duration and sleep quality. Parents logged all food and beverages consumed by the preschoolers, including portion sizes, brand names and quantities, using household measures like grams, teaspoons and cups. For homemade dishes parents recorded ingredients, quantities and cooking methods.

"To our knowledge, this is the first published study to experimentally measure the effects of sleep loss on food consumption in preschool children," said Elsa Mullins, the study first author and a CU Boulder researcher who worked with LeBourgeois as an undergraduate. "Our results are consistent with those from other studies of adults and adolescents, showing increased caloric intake on days that subjects were sleep deprived," she said.

Other CU Boulder co-authors include Professor Kenneth Wright, graduate student Sherin Cherian and postdoctoral fellow Salome Kurth. University of Michigan co-authors include Dr. Julie Lumeng and Associate Professor Alison Miller.

The new study opens the door for a number of follow-up studies using larger samples, experimentally controlling dietary intake and objectively measuring energy expenditure in children. The study was funded in part by a National Institute of Mental Health grant to LeBourgeois and undergraduate research grants to Mullins from CU Boulder.

Another study involving Kurth and LeBourgeois supported by a Jacobs Foundation grant and in collaboration with Brown University was recently published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Findings showed that the developing brain regions of school-age children are the hardest hit by sleep restriction.

Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161013145906.htm

Larry Minikes 6/21/17 Larry Minikes 6/21/17

Red is good: The brain uses color to help us choose what to eat

November 14, 2016
Science Daily/Sissa Medialab
Red means "Green light, go for it!" Green means: "hmm, better not!" Like an upside down traffic light in our brain, color helps us decide whether or not to eat something. This new study states that vision is the main sense we use to guide us in food choices. To evaluate calorie intake, we rely on a "color code."

"According to some theories, our visual system evolved to easily identify particularly nutritious berries, fruits and vegetables from jungle foliage," says Raffaella Rumiati, SISSA neuroscientist and coordinator of the new study. The human visual system is trichromatic: in the retina, the light-sensitive organ of the eye, there are three classes of photoreceptors (cones) tuned preferentially to three different bands of the visible spectrum. This implies that we can see a large number of colors (more than monochromatic and dichromatic animals, less than those with 4, even 5 types of photoreceptor). "We are particularly efficient at distinguishing red from green," says Rumiati. This sophistication testifies to the fact that we are "visual animals," unlike others, dogs, for example, who depend on their sense of smell. "It is mainly the color of food that guides us, and our experiments show how," explains Rumiati. "To date, only a few studies have been focused on the topic."

What do we look for in food? Nutrition, of course, or calorie-dense content, and high protein. "In natural foods, color is a good predictor of calories," explains Francesco Foroni, SISSA researcher and first author of the study. "The redder an unprocessed food is, the more likely it is to be nutritious, while green foods tend to be low in calories." Our visual system is clearly adapted to this regularity. "The participants in our experiments judged foods whose color tended towards red as higher in calories, while the opposite was true for greens," continues Giulio Pergola, a researcher at the University of Bari, and one of the authors of the study. "This is also true for processed, or cooked foods, where color loses its effectiveness as an indicator of calories."

Actually, the scientific literature shows clearly that cooked foods are favored over natural foods and the phenomenon has been observed even in other species besides humans. "Cooked foods are always preferred because, compared to natural foods, there is more nutrition for the same quantity," explains Rumiati. "With cooked foods, however, the dominance of red over green no longer provides reliable information, which might lead us to believe that the brain would not apply the rule to processed foods. On the contrary, it does, which hints at the presence of ancient evolutionary mechanisms from before the introduction of cooking."

Another nod in favor of this hypothesis is the fact that the color code in the Rumiati and colleagues experiments does not come into play for items other than food: "The preference for red over green is not observed with non-edible objects," says Rumiati. "This means that the color code of the visual system activates correctly only with food stimuli."

Inner traffic light for eating healthier

Our findings, besides increasing our knowledge of the visual system, offer interesting possibilities on many fronts which could have an important impact on the public health: marketing food, for example, and treating eating disorders. "Much is being done today to encourage healthier eating," notes Rumiati. "For example, trying to convince the people to eat foods lower in calories." Some countries propose bans on certain types of products, such as carbonated soft drinks and high fat foods. In some cases, there is a disclaimer on the packaging, as with cigarettes. Perhaps food color could be used to produce significant results, even if artificial.

Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161114081903.htm

Larry Minikes 6/21/17 Larry Minikes 6/21/17

Nutrition protects against the impact of stress on the brain in early life

November 14, 2016
Science Daily/Universiteit van Amsterdam (UVA)
Young mice that grow up in stressful circumstances go on to have fewer cognitive-impairments and memory problems as adults if they are given enriched breast milk, scientists report.

In both humans and other animals, severe stress in early childhood (human examples are abuse and neglect or war trauma) results in impaired brain development and health issues later in life. For example, people exposed to early-life stress have a higher risk of developing depression, anxiety disorders and other diseases such as obesity, and on average have a lower IQ and a less effective memory.

Long-term hospital stay

Previous research conducted by neuroscientists Eva Naninck, Paul Lucassen and Aniko Korosi revealed that stress during early development also permanently changes the brain in mice. This current study conducted by the same group demonstrates that supplementing the nutrition of the mother during this early period can mitigate the harmful consequences of this early-life stress later on. Korosi: 'The fact that nutrients can influence impaired brain development deriving from stress in early childhood is hopeful. It enables us to look in a targeted way for nutritional interventions for children who are growing up in stressful circumstances, for example babies that have to undergo long-term hospital stays.'

To induce stress in young mice, the researchers gave mother mice only a limited amount of material with which to build their nests. As a result, their care for their young changed, and they left the nest more often in order to look for nesting material. Mothers in the control group who had plenty of nesting material at their disposal, on the other hand, stayed in the nest with their young for much longer periods of time.

The researchers gave half of the stressed mother mice a dietary supplement containing various nutrients which the body is unable to produce on its own, such as vitamins B6, B9 (folic acid) and B12 and the functionally related aminoacid, methionine.

The researchers found an increased hormonal stress response and reduced methionine levels in the brains of those young mice whose mothers were stressed, but were not given the nutritional supplement. In addition, these mice had an impaired memory as adults; they were less able to remember locations and objects.

The young of stressed mothers that were given supplemented nutrition were more similar to conspecifics growing up under normal circumstances. They had higher methionine levels in the brain and a lower hormonal stress response when young, and as adults they performed better on several memory tasks than the early-stress exposed mice whose mothers did not receive a nutritional supplement.

Human breast milk

The researchers emphasise that this explorative study was unable to fully explain precisely how the stress system and metabolism work together in this early period and in brain development. It is unclear whether the impaired development is due to the fact that stress-exposed mothers produce less nutritious milk, or if the problem lies with absorption in the body or brain of the young mice, who may also experience stress as result of the mother's unpredictable behaviour. However, according to Naninck the results are still valuable: 'Scientists tend to view metabolism and stress as unrelated systems, but we have demonstrated that in fact they work together in early brain programming. We hope that our insights can contribute to new nutrition strategies to mitigate the lasting effects of a seriously disturbed childhood.'

Before this kind of nutritional intervention can be used in people, it first has to be established whether human mothers and babies under serious stress, experience similar disturbances to mice. Currently, the group's first step is to investigate whether the nutritional content of human breast milk also changes under stress.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161114082239.htm

Larry Minikes 6/21/17 Larry Minikes 6/21/17

Mediterranean diet may have lasting effects on brain health

January 4, 2017
Science Daily/American Academy of Neurology (AAN)
Older people who followed a Mediterranean diet retained more brain volume over a three-year period than those who did not follow the diet as closely, new research shows. But contrary to earlier studies, eating more fish and less meat was not related to changes in the brain.
https://images.sciencedaily.com/2017/01/170104174210_1_540x360.jpg
The Mediterranean diet includes large amounts of fruits, vegetables, olive oil, beans and cereal grains such as wheat and rice, moderate amounts of fish, dairy and wine, and limited red meat and poultry.
Credit: © marrakeshh / Fotolia

A new study shows that older people who followed a Mediterranean diet retained more brain volume over a three-year period than those who did not follow the diet as closely. The study is published in the January 4, 2017, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. But contrary to earlier studies, eating more fish and less meat was not related to changes in the brain.

The Mediterranean diet includes large amounts of fruits, vegetables, olive oil, beans and cereal grains such as wheat and rice, moderate amounts of fish, dairy and wine, and limited red meat and poultry.

"As we age, the brain shrinks and we lose brain cells which can affect learning and memory," said study author Michelle Luciano, PhD, of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. "This study adds to the body of evidence that suggests the Mediterranean diet has a positive impact on brain health."

Researchers gathered information on the eating habits of 967 Scottish people around age 70 who did not have dementia. Of those people, 562 had an MRI brain scan around age 73 to measure overall brain volume, gray matter volume and thickness of the cortex, which is the outer layer of the brain. From that group, 401 people then returned for a second MRI at age 76. These measurements were compared to how closely participants followed the Mediterranean diet.

The participants varied in how closely their dietary habits followed the Mediterranean diet principles. People who didn't follow as closely to the Mediterranean diet were more likely to have a higher loss of total brain volume over the three years than people who followed the diet more closely. The difference in diet explained 0.5 percent of the variation in total brain volume, an effect that was half the size of that due to normal aging.

The results were the same when researchers adjusted for other factors that could affect brain volume, such as age, education and having diabetes or high blood pressure.

There was no relationship between grey matter volume or cortical thickness and the Mediterranean diet.

The researchers also found that fish and meat consumption were not related to brain changes, which is contrary to earlier studies.

"It's possible that other components of the Mediterranean diet are responsible for this relationship, or that it's due to all of the components in combination," Luciano said.

Luciano noted that earlier studies looked at brain measurements at one point in time, whereas the current study followed people over time.

"In our study, eating habits were measured before brain volume was, which suggests that the diet may be able to provide long-term protection to the brain," said Luciano. "Still, larger studies are needed to confirm these results."

Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170104174210.htm

Larry Minikes 6/21/17 Larry Minikes 6/21/17

Stimulating the brain with electricity may reduce bulimia symptoms

January 25, 2017

Science Daily/King's College London
Key symptoms of bulimia nervosa, including the urge to binge eat and restrict food intake, are reduced by delivering electricity to parts of the brain using non-invasive brain stimulation, according to new research.

Bulimia is an eating disorder characterised by a vicious cycle of repeated bouts of distressing binge eating and inappropriate attempts to compensate for overeating through vomiting, extreme dieting, or the misuse of different medicines. These symptoms are typically driven by an intense preoccupation with body weight, shape or appearance. Over time these features become compulsive and resemble those of an addiction.

Bulimia typically emerges in adolescence and is much more likely to develop in women. It is thought that 1-2 per cent of women have bulimia at some stage in their life. The disorder is associated with multiple medical complications and up to 4 per cent of people with bulimia die prematurely from the disorder.

Whilst existing treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) are effective for many people with bulimia, a substantial proportion do not get better with talking therapies. There is a pressing need for new techniques and researchers are increasingly looking towards neuroscience-based technologies that could target the underlying neural basis of eating disorders, such as problems with reward processing or self-control.

Previous studies published by the Eating Disorders Research Group at King's found that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), already an approved treatment for depression in the US, was effective in reducing food craving in people with bulimia.

This new study, published today in PLOS ONE, examined the use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a less expensive and more portable form of brain stimulation. tDCS uses electrodes placed on the head to stimulate specific parts of the brain, which could improve cognitive function in areas related to reward processing and self-control. The treatment is painless and the most common side effect is a slight itching or tingling on the scalp.

In the study, 39 people received real tDCS and placebo tDCS, with a period of at least 48 hours between both sessions. The researchers used questionnaires before and after each session to measure their urge to binge eat and a range of other bulimia symptoms, including concerns about weight and shape, restriction of food intake, levels of self-control and self-esteem.

They found that these bulimia symptoms were significantly reduced by the tDCS treatment but not the placebo session. For example, baseline scores on the urge to binge eat scale decreased by 31 per cent following tDCS.

The researchers also used a decision-making task where participants had to choose between a smaller amount of money available immediately and a larger amount available in three months.

They found that people showed a greater tendency to delay gratification following the tDCS session compared to the placebo session. This means they showed more prudent decision-making by waiting for larger, later rewards, rather than choosing the smaller, sooner option.

Maria Kekic, first author of the study, from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London, said: 'Our study suggests that a non-invasive brain stimulation technique suppresses the urge to binge eat and reduces the severity of other common symptoms in people with bulimia nervosa, at least temporarily. We think it does this by improving cognitive control over compulsive features of the disorder.

'Although these are modest, early findings, there is a clear improvement in symptoms and decision-making abilities following just one session of tDCS. With a larger sample and multiple sessions of treatment over a longer period of time, it is likely that the effects would be even stronger. This is something we're now looking to explore in future studies.'

Professor Ulrike Schmidt, senior author of the study, from the IoPPN at King's College London, said: 'The advantage of tDCS is that it's much less expensive and more portable than other brain stimulation techniques, which raises the prospect of one day offering treatment that could be self-delivered at home by patients with bulimia. This could either be as an addition to talking therapies such as CBT to improve outcomes, or as a stand-alone alternative approach.'

Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170125145900.htm

Larry Minikes 6/21/17 Larry Minikes 6/21/17

Some veggies each day keeps the stress blues away

Women who eat their veggies at lower risk of psychological stress

March 15, 2017
Science Daily/University of Sydney
Eating three to four servings of vegetables daily is associated with a lower incidence of psychological stress, new research reveals.

Published in the British Medical Journal Open, the longitudinal study of more than 60,000 Australians aged 45 years and above measured participants fruit and vegetable consumption, lifestyle factors and psychological distress at two time points, 2006-08 and 2010.

Psychological distress was measured using the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, a 10-item questionnaire measuring general anxiety and depression. Usual fruit and vegetable consumption was assessed using short validated questions.

Key findings

People who ate 3-4 daily serves of vegetables had a 12 per cent lower risk of stress than those who ate 0-1 serves daily.

People who ate 5-7 daily serves of fruit and vegetables had a 14 per cent lower risk of stress than those who ate 0-4 serves daily.

Women who ate 3-4 daily serves of vegetables had an 18 per cent lower risk of stress than women who ate 0-1 serves daily.

Women who ate 2 daily serves of fruit had a 16 per cent lower risk of stress than women who ate 0-1 serves daily.

Women who ate 5-7 daily serves of fruit and vegetables had a 23 per cent lower risk of stress than women who ate 0-1 serves daily.

At the start of the study, characteristics associated with higher stress included: being female, younger, having lower education and income, being overweight/obese, a current smoker and being physically inactive.

Fruit consumption alone had no significant association with a lower incidence of stress.

There was no significant association between higher levels of fruit and vegetable intake (greater than 7 daily serves) and a lower incidence of stress.

"This study shows that moderate daily fruit and vegetable consumption is associated with lower rates of psychological stress," said Dr Melody Ding of the University of Sydney's School of Public Health.

"It also reveals that moderate daily vegetable intake alone is linked to a lower incidence of psychological stress. Moderate fruit intake alone appears to confer no significant benefit on people's psychological stress."

These new findings are consistent with numerous cross sectional and longitudinal studies showing that fruit and vegetables, together and separately, are linked with a lower risk of depression and higher levels of well-being assessed by several measures of mental health.

"We found that fruit and vegetables were more protective for women than men, suggesting that women may benefit more from fruit and vegetables," said first author and University of Sydney PhD student, Binh Nguyen.

The investigators say further studies should investigate the possibility of a 'threshold' between medium and higher levels of fruit and vegetable intake and psychological stress.

This research was based on data from the Sax Institute's 45 and Up Study.
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170315094543.htm

Larry Minikes 6/21/17 Larry Minikes 6/21/17

Scientists are gauging how mood influences eating habits

Researchers have found a way to track how you feel when eating snacks or a meal

March 16, 2017
Science Daily/University of Southern California
Researchers are presenting details of how specially-programmed smartwatches monitor family member's emotions and eating behaviors for a study on obesity.

Many of us lie or can't remember what we ate when asked to reveal our eating habits, and that makes it difficult for doctors and researchers to guide us toward better diets and behaviors. But what if there was a way for them to monitor us?

Donna Spruijt-Metz, director of the mHealth Collaboratory at the USC Center for Economic and Social Research, and her team are testing an innovative approach to address obesity: devices that measure mood and eating behaviors rather than focusing on dietary intake.

"The three-day multiple pass dietary recall that asks people to remember what they ate is the gold standard for measuring food intake, but we can't accurately measure someone's diet or food intake," said Spruijt-Metz, a research professor of psychology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "We really have no idea what people eat, because people lie. People don't remember."

In 2015, Spruijt-Metz, along with her colleagues John Stankovic and John Lach at the University of Virginia, and Kayla de la Haye at USC, received a $1.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study obesity and eating habits within families through wearable, mobile health devices.

The approach to monitoring mood and food, called M2FED, enables the researchers to detect eating behaviors and emotional responses of the study's participants. The researchers aim to develop a real-time intervention that could stop unhealthy behaviors and reduce obesity, which affects more than one-third of adults and 17 percent of all children and teens in the United States, according to federal health statistics.

Jessica Rayo, a California State University, Long Beach undergrad assisting on the project, presented details of the technology at this year's annual conference of the American Psychosomatic Society held this week in Spain.

Forget measuring dietary intake

"As a behaviorist, I began thinking that we do know that behaviors affect eating, such as the attitudes around the table, whether or not you are angry or if you are depressed or you don't like what your mother said," Spruijt-Metz said. "We can now reliably measure that with sensors. Forget measuring dietary intake."

Spruijt-Metz, along with the University of Virginia team, developed algorithms for this cyber-physical system to detect, based on audio data collected by in-home microphones, the mood of a study participant and his or her family.

The system also detects eating behaviors based on signals from a wrist-worn smartwatch. The devices are being programmed to improve accuracy through machine learning, allowing the researchers to increase the accuracy of their monitoring with each use.

Family members participating in the study wear the smartwatches on their wrists. The device sensors pick up wrist movements to detect a person's eating behaviors, including when, how long and how fast they eat, said Brooke Bell, a doctoral candidate in health behavior research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC who is involved in the project.

"We are also placing beacons -- small sensors -- around the home that can identify where someone is located in the home," Bell said.

Rayo, a research assistant on the project supported through a National Institutes of Health grant for biomedical, undergraduate research training, is helping to refine the protocols that will enable the research team to understand the family eating dynamics. She co-monitors the families' emotions while recording them in 15- to 20-minute sessions during which the families discuss topics that she suggests and eat. Rayo said she enters codes into Noldus Observer XT, the device software tracking the moods of the family.

One of the primary components of this system is the detection of conversation, stress and mood.

"One of the primary components of this system is the detection of conversation, stress and mood," Rayo said. "This system detects and models eating events and eating rate, mood and interpersonal interactions in home environments. The system includes sensors that capture acoustic signals and analyze the audio data for mood and stress."

Tested on participants -- five female and five male -- the devices can gauge the following moods with a high rate of accuracy:

•   Anger (94.5 percent accuracy)
•   Anxiety (95.7 percent accuracy)
•   Boredom (97.5 percent accuracy)
•   Happiness (88.7 percent accuracy
•   Sadness (88.9 percent accuracy)

Spruijt said that the literature has shown that food intake and mood go hand in hand.

"There is scientific literature showing that people are stress eaters," she said. "The culture at home, within the family, can affect how people eat."
Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170316093031.htm

Larry Minikes 6/21/17 Larry Minikes 6/21/17

Low-fat dairy linked to lower tendency towards depression

April 18, 2017

Science Daily/Tohoku University
People who consume low-fat milk and yogurt, rather than whole-fat dairy products, are less likely to have depression, according to researchers.

Dairy consumption has long been linked to a wide range of physical health benefits, but its effect on emotional health has remained unclear. Now, a new study published in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology reveals that people who consume low-fat dairy products may be less prone to depression

Professor Ryoichi Nagatomi of Tohoku University and colleagues in Japan and China investigated the association between whole and low-fat dairy consumption and depressive symptoms such as exhaustion, sadness, anxiety, helplessness and hopelessness. This is the first study to consider different components of dairy products (whole fat and low fat) and the occurrence of depression.

The study involved 1,159 Japanese adults between the ages of 19 and 83. There were 897 men and 262 women, of which 31.2% and 31.7% respectively, were depressed.

The researchers asked the participants in a questionnaire how often they consumed whole- or low-fat milk or yogurt. Depressive symptoms were evaluated using the self-rating depression scale, which consists of 20 questions and is a tool to distinguish people with and without depression.

The result showed that people who consumed low-fat dairy products between one and four times a week are less depressed. The correlation remained even after considering other critical factors such as age, sex, health status, nutrition status and life style.

The study found no association between whole-fat milk consumption and depressive symptoms. The researchers speculate that this is because trans-fatty acid contained in whole fat milk, which is associated with depression, cancelled out the anti-depressive effect of another milk component, tryptophan.

The researchers note that since this was a cross-sectional study that analyzed a population at a single point in time, it could not explain what actually caused such outcomes. Other dairy products, such as cheese and butter, were not included in the study. It is also unclear whether milk or yogurt had a stronger influence. Further studies are necessary to confirm and clarify the causality of the findings.

Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170418114626.htm

Larry Minikes 6/21/17 Larry Minikes 6/21/17

Study shows differences in brain activity between men, women who are obese

May 19, 2017
Science Daily/University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences
A new study of obese people suggests that changes in their brains’ reward regions make them more prone to overeating, and that women and men exhibit different brain activity related to overeating.

Researchers from UCLA found that women who are obese showed more prominent changes in the reward system related to dopamine responsiveness, suggesting that emotion-related and compulsive eating play a larger role in their overeating. Men who are obese showed a different pattern of brain remodeling in sensorimotor regions, a sign that their eating behavior is affected by a greater awareness of gut sensations and visceral responses.

A new study of obese people suggests that changes in their brains' reward regions make them more prone to overeating, and that women and men exhibit different brain activity related to overeating.

Background

Stress and drug use are known to affect how sex and sex hormones modulate the function of the mesolimbic dopamine system, which is involved in the reward system in the brain. It's possible that these factors lead to reduced dopamine signaling, according to research. Past studies have also demonstrated how altered processing of rewarding stimuli results in excessive eating. These new findings show that obesity has similar types of effects on the mesolimbic dopamine system.

Method

The researchers collected brain images from 124 individuals (61 males and 63 females) who did not have significant medical or psychiatric conditions. They then calculated how the brain's reward, sensorimotor, and salience -- the brain's way of making appropriate responses based on biological and cognitive stimuli -- networks are related to information flow. The individuals were divided into four groups based on their body mass index and sex: males with high BMI, males with normal BMI, females with high BMI and females with normal BMI.

Impact

A person's sex has not been sufficiently considered as a factor when it comes to devising a plan for treatment of obesity, according to the study's authors. This research is the first to examine sex-related differences in characterizing the prominence and signaling of brain regions in obesity. A better understanding of sex differences in obesity may allow medical professionals to more precisely tailor individual treatments.

Larry Minikes 6/21/17 Larry Minikes 6/21/17

Sleep loss affects your waistline

May 22, 2017

Science Daily/European Society of Endocrinology
Sleep loss increases the risk of obesity through a combination of effects on energy metabolism. This research will highlight how disrupted sleep patterns, a common feature of modern living, can predispose to weight gain, by affecting people’s appetite and responses to food and exercise.

In the 24/7 culture of the modern world, an increasing number of people report routine reduced quality of sleep and several studies have correlated sleep deprivation with weight gain. The underlying cause of increased obesity risk from sleep disruption is unclear but may relate to changes in appetite, metabolism, motivation, physical activity or a combination of factors.

Dr Christian Benedict from Uppsala University, Sweden and his group have conducted a number of human studies to investigate how sleep loss may affect energy metabolism. These human studies have measured and imaged behavioural, physiological and biochemical responses to food following acute sleep deprivation. The behavioural data reveal that metabolically healthy, sleep-deprived human subjects prefer larger food portions, seek more calories, exhibit signs of increased food-related impulsivity, experience more pleasure from food, and expend less energy.

The group’s physiological studies indicate that sleep loss shifts the hormonal balance from hormones that promote fullness (satiety), such as GLP-1, to those that promote hunger, such as ghrelin. Sleep restriction also increased levels of endocannabinoids, which is known to have appetite-promoting effects. Further work from Dr Benedict’s team shows that acute sleep loss alters the balance of gut bacteria, which has been widely implicated as key for maintaining a healthy metabolism. The same study also found reduced sensitivity to insulin after sleep loss.

Dr Christian Benedict remarks, “Since perturbed sleep is such a common feature of modern life, these studies show it is no surprise that metabolic disorders, such as obesity are also on the rise.”

Although Dr Benedict’s work has shed light on how short periods of sleep loss can affect energy metabolism, longer-term studies are needed to validate these findings. The group are now investigating longer-term effects and also whether extending sleep in habitual short sleepers can restore these alterations in appetite and energy metabolism.

Dr Christian Benedict says, “My studies suggest that sleep loss favours weight gain in humans. It may also be concluded that improving sleep could be a promising lifestyle intervention to reduce the risk of future weight gain.”

Science Daily/SOURCE :https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170522081109.htm

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