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Pill to stop yo-yo dieting may be on the horizon

Dieting causes us to burn more fat to boost energy - putting the brain in "famine mode."

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(Andres Ayrton via SWNS)

By Mark Waghorn via SWNS

A pill that stops yo-yo dieting may be on the horizon.

Harvard scientists have identified a switch in the brain that causes people to regain the pounds they've shed.

Turning it off would prevent piling weight back on, according to the research.

Weight fluctuations can be harmful - more than doubling the risk of an early grave.

Lead author Dr. Henning Fenselau, of the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research, Cologne, said: "This could give us the opportunity to diminish the yo-yo effect."

Dieting causes us to burn more fat to boost energy - putting the brain in 'famine mode.'

Afterward, the body goes back to storing fat as normal - making up for the lost calories.

Now the German and US team from Harvard have discovered a chemical pathway behind the phenomenon.

Blocking it in slimmed down mice led to them keeping their leaner physiques.

(Andres Ayrton via Pexels)

Dr. Fenselau said: "People have looked mainly at the short-term effects after dieting. We wanted to see what changes in the brain in the long term."

It opens the door to developing a drug that achieves the same results in humans.

The study found dieting profoundly changes the way some brain cells communicate.

They control feelings of hunger and lie in an area called the hypothalamus - and are known as AgRP neurons.

Lab rodents ate significantly more afterward and gained weight rapidly because the neurons were receiving stronger signals.

It started when the mice were on a diet and could be detected for a long time subsequently.

But when the researchers selectively inhibited the AgRP neurons it led to much less weight gain.

Dr. Fenselau said: "In the long term, our goal is to find therapies for humans that could help maintaining body weight loss after dieting.

"To achieve this, we continue to explore how we could block the mechanisms that mediate the strengthening of the neural pathways in humans as well."

A study of almost seven million people in South Korea found those who went though yo-yo dieting were over twice as prone to premature death.

A host of celebrities have struggled with yo-yo dieting including Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey, Jessica Simpson and Christina Aguilera.

Co-author Professor Bradford Lowell, of Harvard Medical School, Boston: "This work increases understanding of how neural wiring diagrams control hunger.

"We had previously uncovered a key set of upstream neurons that physically synapse onto and excite AgRP hunger neurons.

"In our present study, we find the physical neurotransmitter connection between these two neurons, in a process called synaptic plasticity, greatly increases with dieting and weight loss, and this leads to long-lasting excessive hunger."

The study is published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

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