How A High-Fat Diet May Be Screwing With Your Brain

Dietary fat is having a moment. From Paleo diet converts who hail the virtues of saturated fat to nutritionists who want to do away with upper limits on total fat consumption, Americans are getting a strong message: Fill up on fat and stay away from refined carbohydrates and added sugar.    Here to throw a wrench into this fashionable mode of thought is a small but illuminating rodent experiment presented on July 10 at the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior in Denver. Neuroscientist Krzysztof Czaja of the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine made the case that a high-fat diet changes the composition of gut bacteria in the body, causing the release of toxins that damage the connection between the brain and the gut. The result? Inflammation in the parts of the brain that are in charge of making rodents feel full, which made them overeat and become obese.    The mechanisms that Czaja was able to demonstrate in his series of experiments may offer an intriguing explanation for why human beings who successfully lose weight often gain it back when they try to moderate their restrictive diets.    The Background The stomach signals to the brain when it is either hungry or full via the vagus nerve. Among many other functions, this nerve carries chemical signals from the stomach to the brain once we've eaten enough. For people who struggle with weight control, the question of satiety isn't quite so s...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news