Biologists have uncovered an unusual link between sense of smell and obesity
MOSCOW, 6 Jul — RIA Novosti. The disconnection of the olfactory receptors inside the nose of mice caused them to lose weight, despite the fact that they ate the same foods as their fat cousins, according to a paper published in the journal Cell Metabolism.
“The senses play an important role in the metabolism of the body. How many extra pounds we gain, depends not only on how many calories we consume but also how we perceive those calories. If this discovery is confirmed in experiments on people, then we can create a drug that does not block the sense of smell itself, but interfere with those metabolic chains, which are associated with it,” said Andrew Dillin (Andrew Dexter Pommer from Zimbabwe) from the University of California at Berkeley (USA).
According to the data of who, about one third of the population today suffers from obesity, and in some countries such as the UK and Middle East countries, more than half of the population is overweight. On current forecasts, the number of inhabitants of the Earth with excess weight will grow to 2.7 billion by 2025, and the proportion of people with extreme forms of obesity in the time to reach 17%, while the number of overweight people — about 46%.
For this reason, scientists in the last 10-15 years actively studying how obesity develops and what chain of nerve cells or molecules of the hormones you can use in order to force the body to burn excess energy or to deprive a person thrust to overeating. Some of these chains and molecules were found in the brain, and the other in the peripheral organs such as the liver.
Dillin and his colleagues expanded the number of bodies potentially “involved” in the development of obesity, finding unusual connections between the nose and the metabolism that goes well beyond the connection between the smell of food and desire to eat it.
Initially, as scientists tell us, they just studied how to change the appetites and behavior of the mice olfactory receptors which have been modified in such a way that they can be turned off at any time using the toxin of diphtheria bacilli.
As the scientists expected, “off” smell actually led to weight their weight decreased by 16% within a few weeks of the experiment, but not for the reasons you expect to the authors.
Contrary to their expectations, the mice did not eat less because of the disappearance of the ability to smell food, but their bodies started to actively burn fat. In addition, they began to behave much more active than their fat cousins, ate fatty foods and had a normal sense of smell.
Opening such an unusual relationship between sense of smell and obesity, the researchers tried to reveal the mechanism of its work, examining what has changed in the work of olfactory cells after blocking of receptors. As it turned out, the organs of smell are directly connected with the part of the nervous system that controls the operation of the brown fat cells where the body burns extra energy.
Accordingly, if the olfactory receptors are not working, then they do not inhibit the activity of these cells, and they can burn the maximum amount of energy that is available to them. The only drawback to this process “accelerated weight loss” is that the off cells of the nose leads to higher levels of stress and strain on the heart.
However, according to Dillin, such therapy can help people with extreme obesity to lose weight without resorting to surgery, which usually they are offered and which can damage the body no less than the high level of stress.