Contents:
- Medical Video: Jeffrey Friedman (Rockefeller U./HHMI): The Causes of Obesity and the Discovery of Leptin
- What is leptin?
- Leptin resistance is a disorder that can cause obesity
- What causes leptin resistance?
- How to prevent leptin resistance?
Medical Video: Jeffrey Friedman (Rockefeller U./HHMI): The Causes of Obesity and the Discovery of Leptin
Many people are mistaken, alleging that people who are obese must be caused by eating a lot and cannot control themselves. In fact, cases of obesity are not that simple. Actually there are other things related to obesity, namely the hormone leptin. This hormone resistance turns out to be the main cause of accumulation of fat in humans. How could that be? Come on, learn more about leptin resistance in the following review.
What is leptin?
Leptin is a hormone made by fat cells. His job is to control appetite and hunger. Leptin signals the brain to tell you when your stomach feels full.
In the part of the brain called the hypothalamus, there are special receptors or substances that receive signals of leptin hormone which will be active if the body's leptin levels are too high.
The hormone leptin will increase if you are full and then give a signal to the receptor. Special receptors in the hypothalamus will receive a message that your stomach is fully charged and decreases hunger and appetite.
If the leptin hormone is too low in the body, it can cause a person to overeat.
Leptin resistance is a disorder that can cause obesity
People who are obese have a lot of body fat in their fat cells. Because leptin is produced by fat cells, the amount of leptin in a person's body is proportional to the amount of fat in the body. Therefore, obese people also have very high levels of leptin.
This leptin level should prevent people from eating, because your brain should know that you already have many calories stored in the body.
However, the problem is that this signal of leptin does not work. There is a lot of leptin, but your brain can't detect it. This condition is called leptin resistance. Leptin becomes resistant and does not function properly because too much fat is entered. As a result, too high levels of leptin in the body.
At present, leptin resistance is believed to be a major biological disorder in obese people.
When the brain does not receive leptin signals, your brain will think that your body is starving and needs food, even though you actually have more than enough calories.
This makes your brain change your physiology and behavior to regain fat that your brain doesn't think exists. Your brain mistakenly thinks that you have to eat so you don't starve to death, so you tend to eat more. In addition, your brain also thinks that you need to save energy, so you feel more lazy and make you burn fewer calories at rest.
So, eating mostly and lacking in exercise is not the cause of excess weight, but rather a result of leptin resistance.
What causes leptin resistance?
According to Dr. Guyenet, several cell mechanisms behind the occurrence of leptin resistance, among others.
- Inflammation in the part of the hypothalamus brain is probably the cause of leptin resistance.
- Having high free fatty acids in the bloodstream can increase metabolic fat in the brain and interfere with leptin signals.
- Has high leptin levels.
Almost all of these factors increase in obese people. So these two conditions are related to each other. Where people get fatter and leptin levels will get higher.
How to prevent leptin resistance?
The best way to find out if you experience leptin resistance is to look in the mirror. If you have a lot of body fat, especially in the abdominal area, then you almost certainly have leptin resistance.
To prevent leptin resistance, there are a number of things you can do:
- Avoid processed foods because they can harm the intestines and trigger inflammation.
- Eating soluble fiber can help improve intestinal health and can fight obesity.
- Sufficient exercise and physical activity.
- Enough sleep.
- Lower your triglycerides, having high blood triglycerides can prevent the transport of leptin from the blood and to the brain. The best way to reduce triglycerides is to reduce carbohydrate intake.
- Eating lots of protein can cause weight loss.
