Nature: Nervous system is the key to weight loss! Neurons reshape body fat to control its burning!

27,2020 /PRNewswire/ -- There's no doubt you can lose weight by eating less or moving more -- but after decades of research, the biology behind this phenomenon remains a mystery.a new study shows that the nerves in the fat tissue that really trigger the breakdown of fat molecules, the fat-burning neurons, have previously unrecognized abilities.if they receive the right signal, they have amazing growth power.this signal is the leptin hormone released by the fat cells themselves.in a mouse experiment published July 22 in the journal Nature, researchers found that in the absence of leptin, the usually dense network of nerve fibers in adipose tissue contracts, and when leptin is injected as a drug, the nerve fibers grow back.these changes affect the ability of animals to burn the energy stored in fat."Although the structure of the nervous system can change significantly in the development of young animals, we do not expect to see neuroplasticity of this depth in adult animals."", said Jeffrey M. Friedman, a molecular geneticist at Rockefeller University.photo source: Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at The Rockefeller University, if confirmed in humans, the discovery will advance research into obesity and related diseases and could open the door to the development of new treatments for neurons in fat. The team of neuronslocked in fat first looked at what happened to mice that could not produce leptin on their own and how they responded after receiving leptin treatment.1994, Friedman's lab discovered the hormone, which transmits signals between fat deposits and the brain, allowing the nervous system to suppress appetite and increase energy consumption to regulate weight.when mice were genetically engineered to stop producing leptin, they were three times heavier than normal mice.they eat more, move less, and can't survive in previously unbearable cold environments because their bodies can't use fat properly to generate calories.however, the mice were given a dose of leptin, and they soon began to eat less and move more.but the researchers extended the treatment, two weeks later, and a more significant change occurred: the animalbegan to break down the white fat stored in unused calories to reach normal levels, and regained the ability to generate calories using another type of adipose tissue, brown fat.it was this slow-moving change that piqued the interest of the research team, including Putianqi Wang, a graduate student in the lab, and Ken H. Loh, a postdoctoral researcher, who was the first author of the paper in the journal Nature.they suspect that changes in neurons outside the brain that extend to fat may explain why this part of the reaction to leptin takes some time.to the brain and then used imaging techniques developed by Rockefeller's Paul Cohen Lab to visualize nerves in fat, and the researchers tracked the effects of leptin on neurons embedded in fat up to the lower thalamus region of the brain.researchers have found that leptin promotes growth through the spinal cord back to neurons in fat.Cohen added: "This work provides the first example of how leptin regulates the presence of neurons in fat, whether white or brown." Picture Source: Through this, fat seems to tell the brain how much nerve power it needs to function properly. "Fat indirectly controls its own nerve power and function, and it's a delicate feedback loop," saysFriedman." future research will analyze the role of this pathway in human obesity and may offer a new treatment.most obese people produce high levels of leptin and a reduced response to hormone injections, suggesting that their brains are resistant to hormones., therefore, bypassing leptin resistance may be effective in these patients. "In the new study, we saw a decrease in the dominant fat nerve in animals that lack edifying, as do obese, elicutont resistance animals," friedman said.We speculate that directly activating the nerves that control fat and restoring the normal ability to store fat may provide a new way to treat obesity." () References: How neurons syr inside body fat to boost his s-burning a leptin-BDNF pathway infosyn sinner sienn fod adipose tissue, nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2527-y.