Studies have found that a high-fat diet may affect the body's weight balance and metabolism

Recently, scientists from Yale University found that a high-fat diet may induce dysfunction of the hypothalamic region of the brain, which can regulate the body's weight balance and metabolism The research is published in the international journal Cell me tabolism In this paper, the researchers evaluated the molecular mechanism of hypothalamic inflammation stimulated by high-fat diet (especially the diet with high fat and carbohydrate content), which is a physiological response in obese and malnourished individuals The researchers pointed out that the occurrence of hypothalamic inflammation occurs three days after an individual eats high-fat food, even before the body begins to show signs of obesity They are very interested in that these changes happen so fast, even before the weight changes, so they want to understand the cellular mechanism behind them The researchers observed the hypothalamic inflammation in animal brain under high-fat diet It was found that the physical structure of microglia in animal brain changed significantly Microglia were the first line of defense in the central nervous system
The researchers found that the activation of microglia depends on the change of mitochondria The size of mitochondria in microglia of animals with high-fat diet is very small The size of mitochondria depends on a special protein called uncoupling protein 2 (UCP2), which can regulate the energy utilization of mitochondria, affect the control of energy in hypothalamus and the self-regulation of glucose Heng When receiving the inflammatory signal stimulated by high-fat diet, the animals in the high-fat diet group will be stimulated to eat more food, which will lead to obesity At this time, the activation of microglia mediated by UCP2 in the animal body will affect the function of neurons in the brain, When UCP2 was removed from microglia to block the mechanism, animals exposed to a high-fat diet reduced their food intake and became tolerant to weight gain.