Posted on 10/21/2007 10:36:35 PM PDT by neverdem
Find it hard to say no to dessert? Blame it on your brain, for after you've eaten your fill, it's the pleasure centres that tell you when to put down the fork.
The discovery comes from an experiment that measured the brain activity of volunteers offered an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet. Rachel Batterham at University College London and her colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of eight people while they received an intravenous drip either of saline or PYY, a powerful appetite-suppressing hormone that is naturally secreted by the gut after eating. Half-an-hour after being scanned, Batterham dished out an all-you-can-eat buffet of each subject's favourite meals.
The fMRI scans revealed that when the volunteers were given PYY, which effectively mimics having just eaten a big meal, activity increased in their hypothalamus, the part of the brain that controls basal metabolism. However, activity also increased in higher processing areas of the brain involved in reward and pleasure, notably the orbital frontal cortex.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Is there any sin which junk science will not explain away?
Uh oh. That’s going to piss the fat people off.
Having had gastric bypass surgery 5+ years ago, I have since always said that there is a physiologic chemical change in my body that allowed me to lose the weight and keep it off (210 lbs). Sure, my stomach is smaller, and I don’t absorb as many nutrients as before. But an even greater influence is that of the “chemical change”; I no longer have a constant urge to eat, and I know when I’m full. I know there are a lot of people here who are skeptical (”junk science”), but I have personally experienced this phenomenon.
I had the nicest cupcake for dessert last night.... heaped high with some sort of frosting, and a messerschmidt cherry on top...
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