You have eaten a whole sumptuous meal and then a few minutes later someone offers you a slice of pizza loaded with that dripping super delicious cheese. Poor you… how can you say no to something as appealing as this? Well can you? Yes you can. Actually, it all starts from your brain. Everything from appetite and cravings to self-control is funneled through the brain, even if the signals are coming from the brain. Prefrontal cortex is the part of our brain which is responsible for behavioral planning and making decisions. Studies point out that obese people have less activity in a particular region of this prefrontal cortex, as compared to lean people.
According to a recent study published in the journal Obesity doctors may be able to stimulate the brain so that patients can lose weight. The researchers had a belief that if they could stimulate the brains of obese patients, there is a possibility that they could lose weight. As a part of study, nine obese subjects stayed at the facility chosen by these researchers for two eight-day stints. On the first visit, patients were all given sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS )- a method in which low-amplitude current is sent to the brain through electrodes stuck to the scalp.
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This is done by hooking up the patients to the machine without giving out electricity. In the last three days of the second visit, five patients were given active tDCS, and the other four were again given sham tDCS. After these variable stimulation tests, all patients were allowed to go to the vending machine and pick whatever food or drink they wanted. The researchers found that the patients who had received active tDCS consumed an average of 700 fewer calories than they had during their first hospital stay, and lost an average of 0.8 pounds.
These results have pointed a finger in the direction of helping obese people lose weight with the help of tDCS. Undoubtedly, the sample size was really small in this study but every success story may help in finding out a solution to this staggering problem as according to reports, the US is spending billions of dollars per year on treating obese patients. Moving ahead in this direction, researchers now plan to directly compare patients who receive tDCS and those who don’t in order to better understand the safety and effectiveness of this treatment. We, well we just hope something good comes off it!
Author: Technology Blog
