Scientists from the USA and Germany showed that brain cells in mice changed after dieting, which caused the animals to become very hungry and gain weight after losing weight. The results were published in the journal Cell Metabolism.
Most dieters are familiar with the yo-yo effect: weight regains quickly after dieting. Neuroscientists from the Max Planck Institute for Metabolic Research and Harvard Medical School studied how brain connections changed in mice during and after the diet.
They found that AgRP nerve cells that control hunger were more strongly activated after dieting. This led to severe hunger and weight gain in the animals, and the activation of neurons continued for a long time.
The researchers were able to selectively slow down the neural pathways that activate AgRP neurons in mice. This allowed the mice to gain much less weight after the diet.
In the long term, these results could aid the development of drugs to maintain the effect of diet in humans.