Contributor: “Dr. J”Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200.
For the longest time, scientists felt that soon after the age of 2, the brain completes its growth. Then, following groundbreaking research, we discovered that the brain continues to build neural pathways (neurogenesis) throughout life.
All the new work that came in after this discovery was so positive. Learn a new dance, new neural pathways. A new language, new pathways. Establish a healthy habit, new reinforcing pathways. It was all so grand!
Ebenezer Scrooge Could Have Been a Scientist
Our intrepid researchers just couldn’t let a good thing alone, though, because they have now thrown a “Bah Humbug!” into that smooth-running, happy-pathway-building brain theory of ours. They are telling us that our brain will build a bad habit just as well as a good habit, and it isn’t pretty.
In a newly published research paper, scientists from the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have declared like the London town crier that “Neurogenesis Spurred By a High Fat Diet Encourages More Eating and Fat Storage.”
Although it’s been known for a while that the brain can form new nerve cells for our entire lives, until now researchers had felt that this neurogenesis only occurred in two brain areas: the hippocampus, involved in memory, and the olfactory bulb, involved in smell. Recent research, however, suggested that a third area, the hypothalamus — which is associated with, among several other functions, hunger and thirst — can also produce new neurons.
Previous studies have suggested that animals raised on a high-fat diet are at significantly greater risk of wearing the chains of obesity and metabolic syndrome as adults, so study leader Seth Blackshaw, Ph.D. and his research team decided to further investigate whether hypothalamic neurogenesis might play a role in this phenomenon.
Unlike what was the usual for the Cratchit family, the study mice were fed a fabulous spread of high-fat Christmas chow starting at weaning and examined for evidence of neurogenesis. What was discovered was that the adult mice that had eaten the high-fat fare since birth had four times the hypothalamic neurogenesis. These animals also gained more weight and had higher fat mass than animals raised on normal peasant chow.
With the impressive recidivist rehabilitating skills of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the scientists then irradiated and destroyed these new neurons in the high-fat eaters, resulting in the mice finding a whole new attitude! These newfound fitness mice gained significantly less weight and fat than animals who had eaten the same diet and were considerably more active, suggesting that these, now functionless, neurons had been directly involved with regulating weight, fat storage and energy expenditure.
“People typically think growing new neurons in the brain is a good thing, but it’s really just another way for the brain to modify behavior,” said Dr. Blackshaw. Although there may have been environmental advantages for this in our early human development, Dr. Blackshaw believes that now with our almost-unlimited access to food, this neurogenesis is not beneficial and would encourage excessive weight gain and fat storage when they are certainly not necessary for our present survival. He believes that doctors might eventually treat obesity by inhibiting hypothalamic neurogenesis, either by irradiating specific hypothalamic areas or developing drugs that inhibit the cellular growth.
Even Dickens never considered the possibility that we might need to expose ourselves to cell-killing radiation to stop our rush to obesity!
Maybe it can become a new anti-obesity app for our cellphone? That would be rad!
God radiate us, every one!
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As You Build It, So It Will Build You: The Brain, Neurogenesis and What You Need to Know is a post from: CalorieLab - Health News & Information Blog
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