Falling levels leptin, a hormone that helps the brain resist tempting foods, may explain why people who lose weight often have a hard time keeping it off, researchers said recently.
Restoring leptin to pre-diet levels may reverse this problem, they said, offering a way for weary dieters to finally win the weight battle.
“When you lose weight, you've created about the perfect storm for regaining weight,” said Michael Rosenbaum of Columbia University Medical Center in New York, whose research appears in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
After weight loss, Rosenbaum said, not only does the metabolism become more efficient, so the body needs fewer calories, but also the brain becomes more vulnerable to tasty-looking treats.
“Areas of your brain involved in telling you not to eat seem to be less active. You are more responsive to food and you are less in control of it,” he said.
Leptin is a natural appetite suppressant secreted by fat cells in the body. Its discovery created a stir in the 1990s when researchers found leptin caused mice to eat less and lose weight. This rarely happens in humans. Since then, researchers have been looking for the best way to use the hormone to help treat obesity.
THE QUESTION: Does drinking coffee or tea affect the likelihood that a woman will develop breast cancer?
THIS STUDY: Data were taken from 85,987 cancer-free women who, on average, were in their mid-40s at the start of the study. In a 22-year span, 5,272 of them were diagnosed with breast cancer. Women who reported drinking the most tea or coffee (four or more cups a day, caffeinated or decaffeinated) had no greater or lesser risk of developing breast cancer than those who drank virtually no coffee or tea. Also, no association was found between consumption of caffeinated sodas or chocolate (which contains caffeine) and the risk for breast cancer.
WHO MAY BE AFFECTED? Women. U.S. women face a 1-in-8 chance of developing breast cancer.
CAVEATS: The authors wrote that further study was needed on the possibility that caffeine “may modestly reduce risk of post-menopausal breast cancer.”
THIS STUDY WAS PUBLISHED: in the May issue of the International Journal of Cancer.
LEARN MORE ABOUT: breast cancer at cancer.gov and cancer.org.
- REUTERS QUICK STUDY: BREAST CANCER RESEARCH
