Why Sweets Are Your Help in Controlling Your Eating Habits

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

When you eat sweets, your brain remembers what you ate. So say researchers from the University of Georgia, the University of Regents in Georgia and the Charlie Norwood Medical Center. Their findings were published in the journal Hippocampus.

It turns out that neurons in the hippocampus - the part of the brain that is responsible for episodic memory - are activated when you eat sweets. And episodic memory contains memories of events that happened at a certain time in a certain place.

In the study, rats were given a solution sweetened with sucrose or saccharin, and this significantly increased the expression of a marker of synaptic plasticity (protein Arc) in rat hippocampal neurons. Synaptic plasticity is a mechanism needed to create memories.

Marise Parent Professor of Neuroscience, Georgia Institute We believe episodic memory can be used to control eating behavior. We make decisions about whether to eat now based on our memories of when and what we ate. For example: I do not want to eat now, because I had a hearty breakfast.

This conclusion is supported by previous work by the researchers. They temporarily inactivated hippocampal neurons immediately after feeding the rats with sugary food. It was at this time that the memories of food were supposed to form. Neuron inactivation brought the next meal closer, and the rats ate more.

Forming memories of food is important for human health. For example, watching a TV show at lunch can disturb the "memory of food" in the body. In the next meal, the person will eat more. People with amnesia will eat again if offered, even if they ate the same food. They just don't remember it.

Maris Parent believes that scientists must finally figure out how the brain controls nutrition and its frequency in order to understand the causes of obesity.

Research suggests that increased snacking leads to obesity. Obese people are more likely to chew something between meals. For the past three decades, children and adults alike have received the majority of their daily calories from snacks, which are mostly desserts and sugary drinks.

In the future, the research team would like to determine whether a balanced diet that contains proteins, fats and carbohydrates can also affect the expression of the Arc protein in hippocampal neurons, and whether the expression of the Arc protein is really necessary to remember the fact of eating sweets.