Leptin is a protein that's made in the fat cells, circulates in the bloodstream, and goes to the brain. "Leptin is the way your fat cells tell your brain that your energy thermostat is set right," Leptin tells your brain that you have enough energy stored in your fat cells to engage in normal, relatively expensive metabolic processes.

Some older women blame weight gain on a slower metabolism, but the process is more complicated than that. As people age, their amount of muscle declines and their amount of body fat rises, so they burn fewer calories.
In leptin resistance, people's leptin is high, which means they are fat, but their brain can't see it. In other words, their brain is starved, while their body is obese. And that's what obesity is: it's brain starvation

Chinese research showed that electroacupuncture treatment led to a reduction of body weight, decrease in the plasma leptin levels, and an increase in leptin receptor expression in the hypothalamus. Our results suggested that regulating the expression of leptin and the leptin receptor might be one of the molecular mechanisms underlying the reduction of body weight in diet-induced obese rats by electroacupuncture treatment.

Maintaining a healthy body weight may be difficult for many people, but it's reassuring to know that our brains and bodies are wired to work together to do just that -- in essence, to achieve a phenomenon known as energy balance, a tight matching between the number of calories consumed versus those expended. This careful balance results from a complex interchange of neurobiological crosstalk within regions of the brain's hypothalamus, and when this "conversation" goes awry, obesity or anorexia can result.

A lack of sleep can contribute to obesity by increasing the appetite in men and preventing women from feeling full after a meal, a study has found.
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Reference:Gong M, Wang X, Mao Z, Shao Q, Xiang X, Xu B.Am J Chin Med. 2012 2012;40(3):511-520.

Dr Cathy Wyse from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland says busy and often unpredictable lifestyles cause disruption to the crucial routine of sleeping and eating which can make us fat.

People say all the time, "I can't lose weight, I've tried everything." That really isn't true, they just haven't found what works for them yet. Seeing results moves their mindset from one of discipline and dread to motivation and enthusiasm. Discipline will only take you so far, but when you start to see results, you become motivated. When people start to plateau, think of treating the shen because eventually it will surface, and make the patient responsible for his or her behavior. Only when a patient changes will they see change in their life.

Take care! Women who want to lose weight should faithfully keep a food journal, and avoid skipping meals and eating in restaurants -- especially at lunch -- suggests new research from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Another study has found two out of every three severely obese children already have at least one health problem that increases the risk of heart disease.By age 12 they had high blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood glucose, according to the study in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.The study was carried out in the Netherlands with data on 500 children collected between 2005 and 2007 with 307 classed as severely obese.

Just as stimulation of the brain areas responsible for abnormal movement helps "turn off" tremors in patients with Parkinson's disease, stimulation of the areas involved in dysregulated reward circuitry might be able to "turn off" abnormal feeding behaviors in obese patients. The authors outline evidence implicating several different brain areas involved in the brain's reward circuitry -- particularly the "frontostriatal circuitry" -- which could be useful targets for DBS.

Linked research ----Interleukin-6 is a chemical messenger in our immune system that plays an important role in fighting off infection. However, recent research has, surprisingly, shown that it can also trigger weight loss. Researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, have been investigating and managed to identify the specific types of brain cells that are targeted by the interleukin-6 molecule.