4 ms·

Irradiating the hypothalamus reduces body fat by 30% in 10 weeks in mice

37 points by joeguilmette 15y ago

joeguilmette 15y ago
Strange the article laments the lack of a silver bullet for weight loss. Surely the idea of a nonitrusive round of radiation (a procedure that has been around for just shy of a century) resulting in rapid body fat loss. The impermanence of the condition seems to make boost its potential effects. Simply go in for a few treatments until you're down to your target weight, and if you happen to gain it back in a few months or years, just go in again... This also gives credence to idea that obesity is a psychological malady, like depression or schizophrenia. It is certainly as difficult to treat.
- DanBC 15y ago
  > This also gives credence to idea that obesity is a psychological malady, like depression or schizophrenia. It is certainly as difficult to treat. I've often thought that extreme obesity (let's say over 180 kg or about 400 lbs) could be an eating disorder. But when I've asked eating disorder experts they say that the research doesn't support that. Certainly there are psychiatric / psychological aspects (depression / low self esteem / etc) to extreme obesity. And I guess people would say that if there's a brain defect to cause it then it's a neurological disease, not psychological.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    > it's a neurological disease, not psychological. The more we learn about the brain, the blurrier that line becomes.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  The article didn't mention any side effects. I take this to mean that we just don't know what they are yet, rather that there are none. I remember reading an article about a doctor irradiating children's thyroids. I think the goal was to shrink the thyroid, believing that it hindered speech acquisition. Turns out, all it did was raise the rates of thyroid cancer to something near 100% in the treated children.
  - klenwell 15y ago
    The version I heard here: http://www.radiolab.org/2008/dec/29/how-to-cure-what-ails-you/ http://www.radiolab.org/2008/dec/29/how-to-cure-what-ails-yo... linked the practice to doctors' misunderstanding of the cause of SIDS (crib death). It's interesting to learn where they came up with that misunderstanding. Edit: In this case, they were actually irradiating the thymus gland.
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      Thanks, internet!
2ck 15y ago
There isn't anything particularly noteworthy in this article. Past experiments with creating lesions in the hypothalamus of mouse brains have shown increases in weight. Alternately, stimulating another region will cause the mouse to eat less.
wgd 15y ago
The paper discussed in the article appears to be http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.3079.html http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.30..., and the radiation treatment used is http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1667/RR2214.1 http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1667/RR2214.1. Assuming the dosing was the same as in the original paper, this means that the radiation beam was 10 Gy of X-Rays over a 9mm^2 area, which is somewhat interesting because according to Wikipedia "A whole-body exposure to 5 or more gray of high-energy radiation at one time usually leads to death within 14 days". So I'm surprised the beam merely "deactivates" neuron production, it seems more like something that should be expected to kill the targeted cells entirely.
- Daniel_Newby 15y ago
  If your stomach lining cells stop dividing for a few weeks, you digest yourself and bleed out through an ulcer. If your bone marrow cells stop dividing for a few weeks, you bleed to death or die of infections. Location matters.
stevejabs 15y ago
Silver bullet = Modifying and controlling your diet and exercising. I understand the thyroid issues for some people, but most would rather take the easy "magic pill" way out. You gain nothing from weight loss plans like that. Losing weight and keeping it off is a lifestyle change. Most people aren't willing to commit to it.
- JoeAltmaier 15y ago
  A lifestyle change - or a body reconditioning. Changing your body chemistry through diet and exercise may in fact change the very areas of the brain the article mentions. The end result may be exactly the same. You may prefer or enjoy exercise; others certainly don't. And if they have different phobias about methods of intervening (be it exercise or brain chemistry), they may legitimately come to a different conclusion.
- peteretep 15y ago
  Your understanding of this issue is simplistic. Consider: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html?pagewanted=all https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope...
- DanBC 15y ago
  > Silver bullet = Modifying and controlling your diet and exercising. It would be a silver bullet if people could do it. The fact that most people cannot do it shows it's not a silver bullet. People know a bunch of stuff[1] is bad for them. They may only know the abstract ('this is bad') and not the concrete ('this will raise my risk of $DISEASE by X% which means I have a 1 in Y chance of dying from $DISEASE before the age of 75') - but more information doesn't seem to make any difference. A method to help people change their behaviour would be a significant advance. [1] smoking; drinking to excess; drinking and driving; certain drug use; etc etc.
SkyMarshal 15y ago
Before you go off giving yourself brain cancer, try changing your diet first. Reduce or eliminate foods that spike your glucose, which reduces your insulin levels, which makes your body burn stored fat instead of food glucose for energy. Good overview here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/01/04/new-evolution-diet-insulin-and-obesity-how-to-eat-like-a-caveman.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/01/04/new-evoluti... Much of what we eat today - grains, legumes, starches, processed foods - our body hasn't genetically adapted to yet. We've had these foods for no more than the past 10,000 years when agriculture was invented, yet Homo Sapiens have existed for the past 200,000 years, and our various Homo X and primate ancestors for several million years before that. Obese people have a worse reaction to these foods, but no one is completely unaffected by them. Obesity 'cures' like in the OP are just the insanity that results from trying to hack solutions to a problem without fully understanding it.
- JoeAltmaier 15y ago
  You're pretty hard on the OP - they didn't mention cure, or obesity, or humans. You read that into it.
  - sukuriant 15y ago
    Actually, I think he's speaking to the people that are reading it like "Hey! I could use this to fix my weight problem!" That's my reading of it.
- CodeMage 15y ago
  our body hasn't genetically adapted to yet And it won't, because natural selection isn't working anymore. I'm not saying that it's good or bad, though, just pointing it out.
- WiseWeasel 15y ago
  Irradiating the hypothalamus is not intended to be a treatment for obesity; that's missing the point. The point of this research is to elucidate the significant role of the hypothalamus in the regulation of body fat, so that other studies can now be done to hone in on the mechanism at work, in the eventual hope of finding a pathway to target in order to induce weight loss in a more specific and less harmful manner. This is a first step towards finding a potential treatment, a clue as to where we might look, not the treatment itself.
RangerGuy 15y ago
That's like saying chopping off your limbs reduces body weight by 50 pounds in 3 minutes. It's a true fact.
manmal 15y ago
Since our environment, mood, etc. play their part in our brain chemistry and "brain genes" activation/deactivation (gene expression), this could mean that there is more to weight loss than sports and nutrition. IIRC the hypothalamus enacts control over our body via hormone production, meaning that a "hypothalamus problem" could hinder thyroid hormones or up cortisol production. It fits well into the big picture - stress or stressful environment cause "bad" gene expressions in hypothalamus -> hormone imbalance -> metabolism lowered -> fat storage. Perhaps the effect of our environment and wellbeing on our bodyweight is greater than one would have thought.
gxs 15y ago
>>Dr McNay compared neuron growth in mice fed either normal food (containing 20% fat) or a high-fat diet (60% fat). It bothers me that they don't state whether or not the calories were the same. While I suspect the high fat diet was higher in calories, it bothers me that people vilify fat like this.

37 points by joeguilmette 15y ago

Strange the article laments the lack of a silver bullet for weight loss. Surely the idea of a nonitrusive round of radiation (a procedure that has been around for just shy of a century) resulting in rapid body fat loss. The impermanence of the condition seems to make boost its potential effects. Simply go in for a few treatments until you're down to your target weight, and if you happen to gain it back in a few months or years, just go in again... This also gives credence to idea that obesity is a psychological malady, like depression or schizophrenia. It is certainly as difficult to treat.

DanBC 15y ago
> This also gives credence to idea that obesity is a psychological malady, like depression or schizophrenia. It is certainly as difficult to treat. I've often thought that extreme obesity (let's say over 180 kg or about 400 lbs) could be an eating disorder. But when I've asked eating disorder experts they say that the research doesn't support that. Certainly there are psychiatric / psychological aspects (depression / low self esteem / etc) to extreme obesity. And I guess people would say that if there's a brain defect to cause it then it's a neurological disease, not psychological.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  > it's a neurological disease, not psychological. The more we learn about the brain, the blurrier that line becomes.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
The article didn't mention any side effects. I take this to mean that we just don't know what they are yet, rather that there are none. I remember reading an article about a doctor irradiating children's thyroids. I think the goal was to shrink the thyroid, believing that it hindered speech acquisition. Turns out, all it did was raise the rates of thyroid cancer to something near 100% in the treated children.
- klenwell 15y ago
  The version I heard here: http://www.radiolab.org/2008/dec/29/how-to-cure-what-ails-you/ http://www.radiolab.org/2008/dec/29/how-to-cure-what-ails-yo... linked the practice to doctors' misunderstanding of the cause of SIDS (crib death). It's interesting to learn where they came up with that misunderstanding. Edit: In this case, they were actually irradiating the thymus gland.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    Thanks, internet!

2ck 15y ago

There isn't anything particularly noteworthy in this article. Past experiments with creating lesions in the hypothalamus of mouse brains have shown increases in weight. Alternately, stimulating another region will cause the mouse to eat less.

wgd 15y ago

The paper discussed in the article appears to be http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.3079.html http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.30..., and the radiation treatment used is http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1667/RR2214.1 http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1667/RR2214.1. Assuming the dosing was the same as in the original paper, this means that the radiation beam was 10 Gy of X-Rays over a 9mm^2 area, which is somewhat interesting because according to Wikipedia "A whole-body exposure to 5 or more gray of high-energy radiation at one time usually leads to death within 14 days". So I'm surprised the beam merely "deactivates" neuron production, it seems more like something that should be expected to kill the targeted cells entirely.

Daniel_Newby 15y ago
If your stomach lining cells stop dividing for a few weeks, you digest yourself and bleed out through an ulcer. If your bone marrow cells stop dividing for a few weeks, you bleed to death or die of infections. Location matters.

stevejabs 15y ago

Silver bullet = Modifying and controlling your diet and exercising. I understand the thyroid issues for some people, but most would rather take the easy "magic pill" way out. You gain nothing from weight loss plans like that. Losing weight and keeping it off is a lifestyle change. Most people aren't willing to commit to it.

JoeAltmaier 15y ago
A lifestyle change - or a body reconditioning. Changing your body chemistry through diet and exercise may in fact change the very areas of the brain the article mentions. The end result may be exactly the same. You may prefer or enjoy exercise; others certainly don't. And if they have different phobias about methods of intervening (be it exercise or brain chemistry), they may legitimately come to a different conclusion.
peteretep 15y ago
Your understanding of this issue is simplistic. Consider: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html?pagewanted=all https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope...
DanBC 15y ago
> Silver bullet = Modifying and controlling your diet and exercising. It would be a silver bullet if people could do it. The fact that most people cannot do it shows it's not a silver bullet. People know a bunch of stuff[1] is bad for them. They may only know the abstract ('this is bad') and not the concrete ('this will raise my risk of $DISEASE by X% which means I have a 1 in Y chance of dying from $DISEASE before the age of 75') - but more information doesn't seem to make any difference. A method to help people change their behaviour would be a significant advance. [1] smoking; drinking to excess; drinking and driving; certain drug use; etc etc.

SkyMarshal 15y ago

Before you go off giving yourself brain cancer, try changing your diet first. Reduce or eliminate foods that spike your glucose, which reduces your insulin levels, which makes your body burn stored fat instead of food glucose for energy. Good overview here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/01/04/new-evolution-diet-insulin-and-obesity-how-to-eat-like-a-caveman.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/01/04/new-evoluti... Much of what we eat today - grains, legumes, starches, processed foods - our body hasn't genetically adapted to yet. We've had these foods for no more than the past 10,000 years when agriculture was invented, yet Homo Sapiens have existed for the past 200,000 years, and our various Homo X and primate ancestors for several million years before that. Obese people have a worse reaction to these foods, but no one is completely unaffected by them. Obesity 'cures' like in the OP are just the insanity that results from trying to hack solutions to a problem without fully understanding it.

JoeAltmaier 15y ago
You're pretty hard on the OP - they didn't mention cure, or obesity, or humans. You read that into it.
- sukuriant 15y ago
  Actually, I think he's speaking to the people that are reading it like "Hey! I could use this to fix my weight problem!" That's my reading of it.
CodeMage 15y ago
our body hasn't genetically adapted to yet And it won't, because natural selection isn't working anymore. I'm not saying that it's good or bad, though, just pointing it out.
WiseWeasel 15y ago
Irradiating the hypothalamus is not intended to be a treatment for obesity; that's missing the point. The point of this research is to elucidate the significant role of the hypothalamus in the regulation of body fat, so that other studies can now be done to hone in on the mechanism at work, in the eventual hope of finding a pathway to target in order to induce weight loss in a more specific and less harmful manner. This is a first step towards finding a potential treatment, a clue as to where we might look, not the treatment itself.

RangerGuy 15y ago

That's like saying chopping off your limbs reduces body weight by 50 pounds in 3 minutes. It's a true fact.

manmal 15y ago

Since our environment, mood, etc. play their part in our brain chemistry and "brain genes" activation/deactivation (gene expression), this could mean that there is more to weight loss than sports and nutrition. IIRC the hypothalamus enacts control over our body via hormone production, meaning that a "hypothalamus problem" could hinder thyroid hormones or up cortisol production. It fits well into the big picture - stress or stressful environment cause "bad" gene expressions in hypothalamus -> hormone imbalance -> metabolism lowered -> fat storage. Perhaps the effect of our environment and wellbeing on our bodyweight is greater than one would have thought.

gxs 15y ago

>>Dr McNay compared neuron growth in mice fed either normal food (containing 20% fat) or a high-fat diet (60% fat). It bothers me that they don't state whether or not the calories were the same. While I suspect the high fat diet was higher in calories, it bothers me that people vilify fat like this.