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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

This leptin theory has been all the rage since at least the 90s and is one of the big parts of mainstream obesity science right now. Stephan Guyenet's The Hungry Brain is all about this.

I think while most of the stuff they talk about is true, it's also not the major cause of the obesity epidemic in most people. It's only one half of the equation, and they don't have any solutions for it.

E.g. you probably also read that while you can restore "slimness" by injecting mice with leptin, this doesn't work in humans? Leptin therapy was thought to be the cure for obesity in the 90s or so, and has turned out to be completely useless.

I'd call this the "signaling defect" theory of obesity. I'm more of a believer in the "fuel partitioning" part.

Signaling theory says there is enough fat, and you can get to it, but the signal is broken. Most fat people make enough leptin, huge amounts in fact, so maybe the brain's leptin receptors are broken.

Fuel partitioning theory says: there is enough fat physically in your body, but you somehow can't ACTUALLY get to it, so you are, in a sense, literally starving - the signal isn't wrong!

I don't deny all the leptin research, I just wonder if it's that relevant. If leptin/signaling theory was the whole deal, then we would see that people who actually just ate less with willpower lost weight and kept it off. But that's not what we see. We'd see me overeat by thousands of calories, but I don't. I actually undereat (both by expected TEE of 3,300 and measured of 4,600), and still I currently am not losing weight.

So I think leptin is a cute mouse experiment, and might explain the circus man/woman from 1830 or whatever, but not the obesity epidemic. At least it's not the major factor I'd say, although leptin resistance probably doesn't help.

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Bob Beck's avatar

Seems true or at the very least plausible since TPTB feed PUFA to cattle to fatten the cattle for market. We share highly conserved pathways and such with our bovine friends.

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