The bigger you get from eating fatty foods, the more you have to eat to feel full. But sadly for dieters, new research suggests it doesn't work the other way around. When a person becomes obese due to a high-fat diet, the nerve responses in their stomach — which tell the brain when a person is full — become damaged. According to a University of Adelaide study, no amount of weight loss or dieting can undo that damage. That’s why people who diet still feel hungry all the time, even after they’ve lost weight. “The stomach’s nerve response does not return to normal upon return to a normal diet. This means you would need to eat more food before you felt the same degree of fullness as a healthy individual,” said study leader Amanda Page, a professor from the university’s Nerve-Gut Research Laboratory, in a press release. “A hormone in the body, leptin, known to regulate food intake, can also change the sensitivity of the nerves in the stomach that signal fullness. In normal conditions, leptin acts to stop food intake. However, in the stomach in high-fat diet induced obesity, leptin further desensitises the nerves that detect fullness. “These two mechanisms combined mean that obese people need to eat more to feel full, which in turn continues their cycle of obesity.” These findings, said Page, have “very strong implications for obese people, those trying to lose weight, and those who are trying to maintain their weight loss”. The study partly explains where the so-called “yo-yo effect” of dieting comes from. People diet and lose weight successfully, but in the long run, they can’t fight the lingering hunger. Read more http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/2013/09/19/diets-doomed-to-fail-due-to-stomach-nerve-changes-study
