Obesity impairs brain responses to nutrients, even after weight loss, study finds
“There’s a biological process ongoing that really explains why people are struggling so much with obesity,” the leader of a new study says.
Brain responses to nutrients in the gut are impaired in people with obesity, and that doesn’t change even after they lose weight through changes in diet, a new study finds, adding to mounting research showing the complexity and persistence of the biological effects of obesity.
Using brain imaging, researchers saw that when people without obesity received nutrients, they experienced reduced activity in areas of the brain involved in food intake, suggesting the brain is signaling to them that they’ve received food and no longer need more. But in people with obesity, those changes were not detected, according to the study published Monday in Nature Metabolism.
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