Overeating? Blame Your Genes
(HealthDay News) -- A gene could help prod people to overeat and gain excess weight, new research shows.
The finding probably won't provide a "magic bullet" for weight loss, but it does reinforce the value of good eating habits and exercise, especially for young people, scientists say.
The study, reported in the Oct. 17 issue of Science, is the latest in a series focusing on the brain's response to food using the neurotransmitter dopamine. Cells in the brain's "reward" centers release dopamine when people eat, causing that feeling of pleasure, researchers explain.
Previous studies have shown that some people have fewer brain cell receptors for dopamine, which leads them to eat more to gain the same pleasurable effect. The new study used scans of the brain pleasure centers of a group of women. They revealed a sluggish dopamine response in the brains of some of the women.
"This is the first imaging study which found less activation of dopamine receptors in [some] humans," said study lead author Eric Stice, a scientist at the Oregon Research Institute in Portland.
Women with one form of the D2 dopamine receptor gene had the lowest pleasure response when drinking a milkshake, the scans showed.
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