Free Republic

The results revealed that eating later had a ‘profound effect on hunger’ and appetite-regulating hormones leptin and ghrelin, which influence our drive to eat. Specifically, leptin, which signals satiety, decreased across the 24 hours in the late eating condition compared to the early eating conditions. Nutritionists and dieticians decode the findingsIf you are one of those who believes in late dinners and midnight snacking, then know that you alone are the cause of many illnesses and conditions. Now these are completely avoidable if you shift the heavier food during the earlier part of the day, preferably in the first half....

…Leptin, the satiety or appetite-suppressant hormone, is secreted by the adipose tissue at levels proportional to the body's fat reserves and regulates appetite by controlling the feeling of fullness. It is transported to the brain by tanycytes—cells which it enters by attaching to the LepR receptors. Tanycytes are therefore leptin's gateway to the brain, helping it to cross the blood-brain barrier and deliver satiety information to the neurons. Previous research has revealed that such transport is impaired in subjects who are obese or overweight. This goes some way to explaining their dysfunctional appetite regulation given that it is more difficult...

Gourmands and foodies everywhere have long recognized ginger as a great way to add a little peppery zing to both sweet and savory dishes; now, a study from researchers at Columbia University shows purified components of the spicy root also may have properties that help asthma patients breathe more easily. Asthma is characterized by bronchoconstriction, a tightening of the bronchial tubes that carry air into and out of the lungs. Bronchodilating medications called beta-agonists (β-agonists) are among the most common types of asthma medications and work by relaxing the airway smooth muscle (ASM) tissues. This study looked at whether specific...

Dietary intake of two fatty acids, omega-3 and omega-6, may have opposite effects on the severity of asthma in children and may also play opposite roles in modifying their response to indoor air pollution, according to new research published online in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. In "Omega-3 and Omega-6 Intake Modifies Asthma Severity,” authors report that children with higher levels of omega-3 in their diets had less severe asthma and fewer symptoms in response to higher levels of indoor particulate air pollution. Conversely, children with higher levels of omega-6 in their diets...

A new study led by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers has found that leptin, a hormone that plays a key role in energy metabolism, fertility, and bone mass, also regulates airway diameter. The findings could explain why obese people are prone to asthma and suggest that body weight-associated asthma may be relieved with medications that inhibit signaling through the parasympathetic nervous system, which mediates leptin function. "Our study started with the clinical observation that both obesity and anorexia can lead to asthma," said Gerard Karsenty MD, PhD. "This led us to suspect that there must be a signal coming...

Doctors at the University Clinic in Ulm have discovered a new disease causing obesity while studying an extremely overweight three-year-old. The child weighed more than 40 kilos, almost three times as much as a normal three-year-old, and could not stop eating and gaining weight. Researchers found that the “satiety hormone” that tells the body to stop eating was inactive, meaning the child was always hungry. But in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, they described how they were able to bring their patient’s eating and weight under control within days by giving the child an artificial form...

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have made a discovery in neuroscience that could offer a long-lasting solution to eating disorders such as obesity. It was previously thought that the nerve cells in the brain associated with appetite regulation were generated entirely during an embryo's development in the womb and therefore their numbers were fixed for life. But research published today in the Journal of Neuroscience has identified a population of stem cells capable of generating new appetite-regulating neurons in the brains of young and adult rodents. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally. More than 1.4 billion adults...

Poor diet, a lack of exercise, excess weight and genetics are the usual risk factors for Type 2 diabetes. But a new line of research suggests that in some cases, there may be a surprising contributor: the stomach bacterium known as Helicobacter pylori.People who acquire H. pylori — typically in childhood — are at a greater risk of ulcers and gastric cancer. But H. pylori also is thought to affect two digestive hormones involved in hunger and satiety.The belief is that the bacterium increases levels of ghrelin, the "hunger hormone," which is known to promote weight gain. At the same...

Their mission was to solve a small but nagging mystery of Alzheimer's disease: How would the brain's ability to store information be affected if they "turned off" the obscure protein LRP1? But Guojun Bu and his fellow researchers were in for a surprise. As they expected, mice whose brains had been wiped of the LRP1 gene showed Alzheimer's-like memory problems. But they also started to put on weight - fast. The mice were lethargic. They were on their way to becoming diabetic. And they didn't seem to know when to stop eating.

In 1922, a Toronto teenager with diabetes became the first person to be saved by insulin treatment, and since then injections have sustained millions of diabetics, who don’t make their own hormone. But are there alternatives to a lifetime of insulin therapy? A new study suggests that an appetite-suppressing hormone called leptin is just as effective as insulin at controlling diabetes in mice. The discovery of insulin transformed type 1 diabetes from a fatal to a chronic disease. In this type of diabetes, the body destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, resulting in high blood glucose levels. (The more common...

> "It was surprising to me how potent leptin was in treating diabetes," said Jeffrey Friedman of Rockefeller University. "It had a highly significant impact at plasma levels that were undetectable." >

The discovery more than a decade ago of leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone secreted by fat tissue, generated headlines and great hopes for an effective treatment for obesity. But hopes dimmed when it was found that obese people are unresponsive to leptin due to development of leptin resistance in the brain. Now, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston report the first agents demonstrated to sensitize the brain to leptin: oral drugs that are already FDA-approved and known to be safe. Findings were published January 7 by the journal Cell Metabolism. In 1995, researchers reported in Science that they had isolated a protein...

ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2008) — Eating too much fructose can induce leptin resistance, a condition that can easily lead to becoming overweight when combined with a high-fat, high-calorie diet, according to a new study with rats. Although previous studies have shown that being leptin resistant can lead to rapid weight gain on a high-fat, high-calorie diet, this is the first study to show that leptin resistance can develop as a result of high fructose consumption. The study also showed for the first time that leptin resistance can develop silently, that is, with little indication that it is happening. The study...

ScienceDaily (Aug. 26, 2008) — Terminally ill rodents with type 1 diabetes have been restored to full health with a single injection of a substance other than insulin by scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Since the discovery of insulin in 1922, type 1 diabetes (insulin-dependent diabetes) in humans has been treated by injecting insulin to lower high blood sugar levels and prevent diabetic coma. New findings by UT Southwestern researchers, which appear online and in a future issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that insulin isn't the only agent that is effective. Leptin, a...

A Dallas-based researcher says he’s pulled off a medical first: successfully treating mice and rats dying of insulin-dependent diabetes without using insulin.Dr. Roger Unger, chair of diabetes research at UT Southwestern Medical School, is quick to warn that practical applications, if any, are years away. But the research team he headed used high levels of leptin, a substance naturally produced by fat cells, to somehow reverse the otherwise fatal effects of diabetes. If the experiment is repeated in other labs, and then if leptin can be adapted to treat humans, it might offer the first alternate to the multiple insulin...

ScienceDaily (June 19, 2008) — Exercise does not suppress appetite in obese women, as it does in lean women, according to a new study. "This [lack of appetite suppression] may promote greater food intake after exercise in obese women," said Katarina Borer, PhD, a University of Michigan researcher and lead author of the study. "This information will help therapists and physicians understand the limitations of exercise in appetite control for weight loss in obese people." Borer and her co-workers sought to better understand how changes in body fat level influence appetite and a hormone called leptin,

(CBS) Human beings spend on average one third of their lives asleep. We know we need to sleep but most of us have never really given a whole lot of thought to why. Why do we spend seven or eight hours a night immobile and unconscious? What really happens inside our brains and bodies while we're sleeping? We've known the purpose of our other biological drives for hundreds of years: we eat to give our bodies energy, we drink to keep hydrated, we procreate to perpetuate the species - among other things. But what is the biological purpose of sleep?...

Boning up. Mice with high osteocalcin levels (left) made far more insulin (pink) than regular mice.Credit: Hideaki Sowa, Karsenty Research Group, Columbia University Give your skeletal system some credit. Not only do your bones keep you upright, they produce red and white blood cells, store minerals, and help control pH. But that's not all: According to a new study, bones secrete a protein called osteocalcin that regulates sugar and fat absorption. The finding qualifies osteocalcin as a hormone, meaning the skeleton can now add being an endocrine organ to its impressive list of accomplishments. There have already been hints that...

Fat Hormone Tied to Multiple Sclerosis Italian Study: Blocking the Hormone Leptin Curbed Similar Disease in Mice By Miranda Hitti WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD on Thursday, January 12, 2006 Jan. 12, 2006 -- Blocking the hormone leptin may help prevent or slow multiple sclerosis (MS).The report comes from Italian researchers and appears in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.The Italian study didn't include any people. Instead, the scientists studied female mice with an MS-like disease.Leptin is a hormone that's mostly made by fatty tissue of the body. Commonly associated with obesity, leptin plays a role in regulating weight and appetite.Leptin also affects...

The appetite-control hormone leptin staves off symptoms of stress in rats, and might lead to new ways to fight human depression, say researchers in the United States. Leptin is famed for controlling our weight and appetite. But the hormone, which is released by fat cells and gives the brain a reading of our fat stores, is also thought to act in brain areas involved in emotion. To explore this link, Xin-Yun Lu and her colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio stressed rats by, for example, separating them from other animals. The rats' leptin levels...