http://polyscience.org/2005/07/hormone-diet/ Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:26:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 http://polyscience.org/2005/07/hormone-diet/#comment-135 polyscience.org » Herbal diet supplements Tue, 30 Aug 2005 21:00:03 +0000 http://polyscience.org/?p=30#comment-135 [...] Back in July, I wrote about a hormone, oxyntomodulin, that had been isolated which tells the brain that the stomach is full. Pharmaceutical companies are now working on turning this knowledge into an oral diet drug. Now, another compound has surfaced which suppresses the desire to eat and drink. This one has its roots in Scottish medieval times: Augustinian monks have chewed the plant to suppress all urges to eat or drink. The plant, lathyrus linfolius, was processed at a hospital there to make a potion. It is thought that this potion was brewed to help villagers lose weight or cope with the effects of a bad harvest. [...] [...] Back in July, I wrote about a hormone, oxyntomodulin, that had been isolated which tells the brain that the stomach is full. Pharmaceutical companies are now working on turning this knowledge into an oral diet drug. Now, another compound has surfaced which suppresses the desire to eat and drink. This one has its roots in Scottish medieval times: Augustinian monks have chewed the plant to suppress all urges to eat or drink. The plant, lathyrus linfolius, was processed at a hospital there to make a potion. It is thought that this potion was brewed to help villagers lose weight or cope with the effects of a bad harvest. [...]

]]> http://polyscience.org/2005/07/hormone-diet/#comment-72 polyscience.org » People don’t eat less to compensate for overeating Tue, 16 Aug 2005 03:06:38 +0000 http://polyscience.org/?p=30#comment-72 [...] I’ve written about obesity in the past, and I couldn’t pass up this particular article I just came across. The basic premise is that if one eats more than usual and gains some weight over the course of, say, a week, one is not inclined to eat less to make up for it. The possible reason cited: “The study suggests that eating behavior does not normally respond to internal cues, such as physiological mechanisms involved in the regulation of body weight, but to external cues,” said David Levitsky, professor of nutritional sciences and of psychology at Cornell. “In other words, when the subjects returned to the same environment — in this case our eating lab — they returned to their same eating patterns, regardless of any biological signals.” [...] [...] I’ve written about obesity in the past, and I couldn’t pass up this particular article I just came across. The basic premise is that if one eats more than usual and gains some weight over the course of, say, a week, one is not inclined to eat less to make up for it. The possible reason cited: “The study suggests that eating behavior does not normally respond to internal cues, such as physiological mechanisms involved in the regulation of body weight, but to external cues,” said David Levitsky, professor of nutritional sciences and of psychology at Cornell. “In other words, when the subjects returned to the same environment — in this case our eating lab — they returned to their same eating patterns, regardless of any biological signals.” [...]

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