We know that body weight depends on various factors, and in our hands is the possibility, at least in part, to control the weight. But we all know people who, even leading the same lifestyle and taking the same diet, have differences in weight and even one may find it hard to gain weight no matter how much they eat and another cannot be exceeded as it immediately increases.
The explanation could be in the baby's brain. An international team of researchers has revealed that the tendency or resistance to obesity is predetermined in neuronal connections since embryonic development.
The scientists studied how this cellular energy management is controlled in two types of rats that respond differently to a hypercaloric diet. Some are prone to develop diet-induced obesity, while others remain in their weight with the same eating pattern.
The researchers looked at a brain center related to these responses and discovered that there is a type of neuron that works very differently in both animal types. These neurons are responsible for firing the feeling of satiety, reporting when he has eaten enough.
The authors of the study, which has been published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (PNAS), point out that in rats prone to obesity these neurons suffered a kind of numbness, being inhibited by other cells nearby with those that maintain connections.
On the contrary, in "thin" rats the neurons of satiety functioned with greater agility. The high-fat diet produces opposite effects in both types of rats; in the DIO it disconnects them from the network, while in the DRs it adds cellular plugs with the brain mesh.
In the words of the director of the study, the researcher and professor at Yale Tamas Horvath University,
The basic wiring of the brain determines one's vulnerability to obesity. This wiring is fixed during embryonic development.
And according to the study, it feeds on the high-fat diet.
There are genetic, environmental and maternal influence factors that produce certain neuronal connections, there is still a long way to go to investigate and know the baby's brain and embryonic development. But according to this study we know a little more about the propensity to obesity and the different brain functioning already from the womb.
