Features

By Ayah Murad

Clinical Dietician

Studies indicate that happy couples tend to gain about two kilos after marriage. Whatever the reason may be (hormonal, habit or priority changes), falling into the fatty pitfalls of marital bliss is not inevitable! Just as you planned your wedding together, it is now time to plan your health together. 

The most critical solutions start with communicating and setting goals together, including those relating to your health. Tell your partner exactly what you are hoping to do, and then explain how you plan to do it. Supporting and motivating one another are important to carrying out your shared mission. Make controlling your triggers a couple’s activity, negotiating together the most suitable ways to avoid each other’s food-related triggers.

When possible, cook together!

Sharing moments while you are cooking together can help you communicate and learn from each other, share laughter and advice, hence appreciate one another. Cooking together has an added health bonus since eating healthier, home cooked, balanced nutritious meals is proven to make couples happier and less stressed which in turn makes you naturally eat nutritious meals. Cooking together also leads couples to experiment more with seasonings, which boost your metabolism and help your body burn more fat (like ginger, cinnamon, cayenne and turmeric). Adding spice to your marriage has many meanings, after all!

Mastering time management together

Most working couples find cooking too time-consuming as they come back from work exhausted. So they buy readymade meals or visit one of their relatives and indulge in whatever is in front of them. Taking shortcuts is not a solution.

Health is linked to your mood, your behaviour and your energy so it has to be one of your first priorities. The main reason that it is your last priority is due to poor time management.

Time saving tips 

for couples

• Pack enough healthy snacks for work so you are not leaving the office famished

• Before leaving the office, eat a cup of yoghurt with fruit on your way back home to help you control your appetite

• Do not rely on your partner to prepare your snacks: get in the kitchen to prepare your work snacks with the understanding that you’re both busy — appreciating your partner’s time is an important ingredient for a happy marriage!

• Prepare together your semi-cooked meal a night before and once you come back home all you have to do is fully cook it which you can even do while setting the table

• Substitute salads with dark green leafy vegetables to cut down on prep time

• Shop on a weekly basis, preparing the week’s menu ahead of time. A great timesaving grocery shopping app for couples is Bring! (Available on Google Play) 

‘Cheating’ on 

your date nights

A weekly “cheat meal” has been proven to boost your metabolism and ward off feelings of deprivation. Save your “cheating” days for your date nights out with your spouse. But eating out with your spouse does not have to mean going overboard with your food intake. Every restaurant has at least one healthy option. Do not be shy to inquire about cooking methods and customising your meal with healthier additions or substitutes. You can even mix and match from different dishes. Since restaurants tend to serve large quantities, make it a regular habit to share with your spouse instead of ordering separate dishes.

Ripple effect

You worked hard to look good on your wedding day but now you spend nights on the sofa snacking. Obesity experts are familiar with what they term “the ripple effect”. That’s when one spouse’s behaviour has a direct impact on the health habits of the other: 

•Men whose wives become obese are 78 per cent more likely to become overweight themselves 

•Women with husbands who gain excessive weight are at an 89 per cent risk of becoming obese 

Similarly, studies show that people are much more likely to meet fitness recommendations if their spouse is physically fit too. So how can you support your spouse? Be a cheerleader, not a judge. Encourage and cheer your partner for trying. Do not have not met. Be an active participant in their healthy behaviours, eating the same healthier dishes, walking with them, making healthy choices a part of the time you spend together.

Find ways to celebrate occasions without focusing the celebration on eating. Do something that reinforces spending time together outside of cinema popcorn and restaurant outings. Amman has plenty of non-food offerings, such as concerts, art exhibitions, film screenings and more. You will find that these activities have the added benefit of injecting life, love and energy back into your relationship. Explore new fitness activities together like yoga, bowling, biking or hiking, or pick something you have never done before (or recently) together like challenging puzzles, cooking classes at Beit Sitti or a pottery session at My Pottery Shop.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

Despite much evidence that getting lots of physical activity bodes well for long-term health, when it is physical labour on the job, the opposite might be true. 

Researchers found that men whose jobs involve a lot of physical labour are 18 per cent more likely to die prematurely than workers who sit at desks most of the day. 

The analysis looked at data from 17 previous studies examining the link between longevity and activity levels at work, including a total of 193,696 adults followed for an average of almost 20 years. Overall, 29,639 people, or 19 per cent, died during the study period. 

“We’ve known for a while already that physically demanding work can be bad for you,” said lead study author Pieter Coenen, an occupational health researcher at VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam. 

But the idea that it might drive people to an early grave is relatively new, Coenen said by email. 

While the study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove how activity levels at work might directly affect longevity, the results suggest there is something inherently different about manual labour and leisure-time exercise, Coenen added. 

During leisure time, for example, people might jog for a half hour or so, enough time to increase their heart rate and build stronger bones and muscles. 

But in some jobs, physical activity can be nonstop for eight hours straight with few breaks, and this can take a toll on health over time, leading to chronic issues like back pain and straining the cardiovascular system, Coenen said. 

“We think that physical activity at work and during leisure time are two really different kind of exercises with different physiological responses and health outcomes as a result,” Coenen said. “On top of that, we know that people who are physically active at work, typically aren’t so active during leisure time, so these people are exposed to the negative health consequences of occupational physical activity and also benefit only to a limited extent from the positive health effects of leisure-time physical activity.” 

But the study found different results for women. Women who did manual labour appeared to live longer than women who did not, although the difference was too small to rule out the possibility that it was due to chance. 

One limitation of the analysis is that most of the smaller studies relied on participants to accurately recall the amount and intensity of any physical activity on the job, researchers note in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The study team also lacked data on other forms of exercise like commuting on foot or by bike. 

Certain factors that make people more likely to have physically demanding jobs may also make them more apt to die young, said Silvia Stringhini, a researcher at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine and Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland. 

“I am not sure the authors were able to completely exclude the effect of low socioeconomic status [and their associated risk factors] of manual workers,” Stringhini, who was not involved in the study, said by e-mail. 

It might sound counterintuitive, but the key to longevity for manual laborers might lie in getting lots of exercise outside of work hours, said Dr Trine Moholdt, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. 

“I think that people with physically demanding jobs should exercise outside the workplace to improve their cardiorespiratory fitness and muscular strength,” Moholdt, who was not involved in the study, said by e-mail. “This will reduce the relative exertion they experience during working hours.” 

LOS ANGELES — Most of us need eight hours’ sleep, posh skin cream and a macrobiotic diet to halt the advancing years. Peter Pan — that lucky little imp — gets by on a little faith, trust and pixie dust. 

J.M. Barrie’s creation may never age but this year marks the 65th anniversary of the Disney movie that set imaginations soaring with tales of Lost Boys, swashbuckling pirates and an ominously ticking crocodile.

A paean to the wonder of youth but a poignant reminder that it doesn’t last forever, “Peter Pan” is steeped in “a child’s imagination and where it can take us,” says Disney historian Mindy Johnson.

“We as adults need to return to that sometimes and this is a constant reminder of that — to regain our sense of wonder, magic and imagination,” she told AFP at the Disney lot in Burbank, California.

Barrie, a Scottish writer, created Pan in stories that he told the sons of his friend Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies, naming the character for the youngest of the boys and the Greek god of the woodlands.

His 1904 play and 1911 novel follow the Darling children — Wendy, John and Michael — as the mischievous Peter and his fairy friend Tinker Bell whisk them off to the magical island of Never Land. 

They visit Peter’s secret hideout with the Lost Boys and leap into high-flying battles with the infamous villain Captain Hook, who has his own problems as the quarry of Tick-Tock the Croc.

“Here is a story, it seemed to me, which had never been quite fulfilled, despite its wonderful career on the living stage, a story which deserved the added dimension of animation on the screen,” Walt Disney said.

A million drawings

The impresario deployed his elite animation team — known affectionately as the “Nine Old Men” — and they completed around a million drawings, taking around a week each to come up with five seconds of footage.

Kathryn Beaumont was 12 when she was chosen to voice Wendy, and to double as a model that the animators could attach to high-wire rigging whenever they needed reminding of what children look like flying.

She had already voiced the titular character in “Alice In Wonderland” (1951) and is the only actress in the world who can boast of spending time in both Wonderland and Never Land.

Beaumont, who spent most of her working life as a teacher but still lives near the Disney studio lot, remembers Walt inviting her to visit the various departments making the movie, from animation to ink and paint. 

“It was a learning experience but I was so fascinated, and the fact that he allowed me to go freely through these places to learn about all that was just wonderful,” the 79-year-old told AFP.

“So I had a lovely few years working with Walt Disney and getting to know him as a person.”

While 2018 is a significant milestone, it also marks a darker aspect of the production — the 50th anniversary of the death of Bobby Driscoll, the child star who voiced Peter. 

After filming ended, Disney told Driscoll he would be better suited to “young bully” roles and then cancelled his contract altogether, blaming the sudden onset of severe acne.

‘Delightful’

Driscoll, a Hollywood outcast by his late teens, started using heroin and divorce, jail time and unemployment followed. He was found dead, alone and in penury, in an abandoned building a few days after turning 31.

Beaumont shared the stage for the live-action aspect of her role with another actor but remembers her voice work with Driscoll as a “lovely experience.” 

The movie became one of Disney’s biggest hits, contributing to the struggling studio’s economic recovery that had begun a few years earlier with “Cinderella” (1950).

The delightfully impish Tink went on to embody the magic of Disney, hosting a TV series and appearing at theme parks, as well as starring in her own spin-off movies.

More recently, there was the smash-hit spin-off, “Hook” (1991), a moderately successful sequel — “Return to Neverland” (2002) — a 2003 live-action remake and an ill-advised 2015 prequel called “Pan.”

“Tink,” a live-action film with Reese Witherspoon in the title role, is in the works and the 1953 movie gets a new release jam-packed with extras on Blu-ray on Tuesday to mark the anniversary.

The New York Daily News declared on February 12, 1953 that “Peter Pan” was one of Disney’s best productions and closer to Barrie’s conception than any other adaptation.

“So many writers, artists, directors, decorators and colours stylists worked on the film that there isn’t space enough to mention them all,” noted the paper’s reviewer Kate Cameron.

“Between them, however, they have created a delightful, entertaining film that will appeal to the young and the not-so-young alike.”

Older men who exert themselves in the heat for prolonged periods may find they are at higher risk of heat stroke and related injuries the following day, a small experiment suggests. 

On the first morning of a two-day study, researchers had nine men in their 50s and 60s do a series of exercise tests involving semi-recumbent cycling, in rooms heated to 40oC. After the exercise tests, researchers had the men simulate a 7.5-hour workday in the heat. Finally, on the second day, they had the men repeat the same exercises they had done the day before, in the same hot, dry conditions. 

During both series of exercise tests, the researchers measured the men’s whole-body heat loss, or their ability to cool off.

Compared to the first morning’s exercise results, which were obtained before the prolonged day of exertion in the heat, on the second day men retained more body heat during intense exercise, and they had more difficulty sweating.

Overall, men retained 31 per cent more body heat on the second day of tests, the study found.

“Our findings indicate that prolonged work in the heat compromises thermoregulatory function and may elevate the risk of heat-injury on the following day in older workers,” lead study author Sean Notley of the University of Ottawa said by e-mail.

“Although the mechanism explaining this impairment is likely multi-factorial, it is possible that fluid depletion on day one led to reduced sweat secretion on the next day, indicating that participants were not inclined to replace fluid losses occurring on day one,” Notley added. “This outcome reinforces the need for better education on the importance of fluid replacement during work as well as prior to and following work.”

Performing back-to-back days of prolonged, arduous work in the heat is common for workers in many industries including mining, utility work, firefighting and military service, researchers note in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.

In a previous version of the current experiment done with men in their 20s, participants did not suffer any reduced ability to sweat and cool their body temperatures in cycling tests done the day after the long day of exertion in the heat, researchers note.

These results, combined with the results from the new experiment in older men, suggest that middle-aged workers need to take extra precautions to stay hydrated in the heat, Notley said.

NEW YORK — Have you ever been on a diet and wished that spinach excited your tastebuds? Or that chocolate left you cold?

Neuroscientists said on Wednesday they have discovered how to manipulate the brain to make sweet things off-putting, and bitter ones nice.

But only in mice, for now.

Mooting promise for an obesity treatment, researchers in the United States said they have learnt to “switch” parts of the brain’s “amygdala” on and off, turning sweetness into an aversive taste for lab mice, and bitterness into a desirable one.

“The research points to new strategies for understanding and treating eating disorders including obesity and anorexia nervosa,” said a statement from the Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute, whose researchers took part in the study.

The method has yet to be tested in humans, however.

In the study, published in the scientific journal Nature, the researchers focused on the amygdalae.

In humans, these are a pair of almond-sized organs in the temporal lobe known to play a role in emotions like fear and pleasure, as well as motivation, survival instinct and stress processing.

Previous research had shown that the amygdala connects directly to the taste cortex of the brain, the team said.

The new work reveals that the amygdala has separate sweet and bitter regions, just like the taste cortex.

As a result, “we could independently manipulate these brain regions and monitor any resulting changes in behaviour” in lab mice, said study co-author Li Wang.

The team used laser light stimulation to artificially “switch on” neuron connections to sweet or bitter regions of the amygdala.

Have your cake, 

do not eat it

When sweet connections were turned on, the lab mice responded to ordinary water as if it were sugar.

“And by manipulating the same types of connections, the researchers could even change the perceived quality of a taste, turning sweet into an aversive taste, or bitter into an attractive one.”

In another experiment, the research turned the amygdala connections “off”, but left the taste cortex untouched.

The mice ate, but without showing a preference for sugar, or aversion to bitterness.

“It would be like taking a bite of your favourite chocolate cake but not deriving any enjoyment from doing so,” said Wang.

“And after a few bites, you may stop eating, whereas otherwise you would have scarfed it down.”

The team said their findings suggested the brain’s complex taste system was made of discrete units “that can be individually isolated, modified or removed”.

In a separate study, also published in Nature, scientists said they had boosted health and lifespan in mice by genetically tinkering with autophagy: the process by which cells dispose of harmful waste and unwelcome intruders.

A breakdown of the system is believed to spur ageing and disease.

A team in the United States said they engineered mice which produced a very active form of a protein that regulates autophagy.

The rodents lived about 12 per cent longer.

Other researchers not involved in that study said it was a promising step towards understanding autophagy, but that any extrapolation of the findings to humans, or even other mammals, would be speculative.

Every three years or so I upgrade my computers. At least one of my kids is usually in dire need of a PC, so off the PCs go to new homes, where they serve honourably and trouble-free for years to come. I buy Apple and Dell computers. They’ve proved to be reliable, with the latest technology, which gives me bragging rights, as in “My new Dell has an eighth-generation i7 processor” running at speeds unheard of three years ago. Along with my 300-gigabit broadband, I know the new Dell is the fastest machine on the planet.

Buying a Dell can be straightforward: You go to the website, find what you want, put it into your cart and check out. But that’s not the best way to buy a Dell. I found that buying one is akin to shopping in a bazaar. So here goes:

The machine I wanted has the latest processor in a top-of-the-line (non-gaming) XPS model, a separate 4-gigabyte video card, both a 1 terabyte solid-state drive and a 1 TB traditional hard drive and 16 gigabytes of RAM. I wanted one of Dell’s UltraSharp monitors, too.

So, off to dell.com, where I built my dream machine, which totalled $1,700, not counting the monitor. Still, after some haggling on their chat line, I wound up paying $1,330. A few days later, Dell was offering a 12 per cent discount, which wasn’t available when I ordered my computer. That would have brought the price down to $1,496. The important thing is to check the Dell website often. Deals pop up regularly but don’t last long. And haggle. I’m sorry, Dell sales staff, but that’s the only way to get a good deal. The 61 centimetre monitor set me back $259 after a 30 per cent discount.

The computer arrived about a week later. Its all-black finish looks great on my desk. The fan is a bit noisier than my old XPS, the CD/DVD tray is flimsy. When is Dell going to offer a Super Drive, in which the DVD is inserted into the drive, rather than loading it in a tray? And the wired keyboard and mouse are insults to consumers who dish out more than a thousand dollars for a PC — they’re wired throwaways. I ordered a dasKeyboard and a Logitech MX Master S2 mouse, which set me back another $230. Ouch. The mouse has a “flow” option that allows a user to copy and paste data from one PC to another. The keyboard is backlit. The Dell comes with one year of onsite hardware-only support, so I bought a two-year Premium support package that covers onsite and software support. List price $169; haggle price $139.

I wish the story ended there, but it doesn’t. From the get-go I had trouble. Numerous calls to offshore tech support failed to solve a BIOS problem that I probably caused. Note to newbies and oldbies alike: Leave the BIOS alone. The BIOS is an internal group of settings that govern the way the computer operates. It’s set up just fine from the factory. And don’t tinker with Windows. I bungled into installing Windows on both my solid-state drive and the traditional drive. That’s a no-no, a tech told me. Things got so bad that a tech ordered a new hard drive, and then the fun really began. The tech who arrived with the new hard drive had a difficult time installing it. At least one loose screw is floating around in the case. The fun continued.

I had paid for Windows 10 Home Edition, but the new hard drive was formatted with Windows 10 Pro, which meant I couldn’t activate it because the license code is on the motherboard. Calls to Microsoft failed to solve the dilemma, so I reinstalled Windows. Meanwhile, one of several Dell techs I talked to said the only way to solve my problems was to exchange computers. At this point, I agreed. My replacement is due to arrive any day now. Once that happens, I promise not to mess with the BIOS or Windows, and just enjoy the fastest consumer PC on the planet.

TAMPA, Florida — A new study suggests that many first-time mothers might want to consider an alternative to the traditional “watch and wait” approach of allowing a pregnancy to run up to 41 weeks.

For those who are healthy, inducing labour at 39 weeks lowers the risk of serious complications and caesarean delivery, according to a team of researchers led by Dr Charles J. Lockwood, dean of the Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida (USF).

The USF team compared results they recorded from healthy pregnant women induced at 39 weeks to those who were induced at 41 weeks or beyond.

“After 41 weeks, continued pregnancy is associated with higher chances of stillbirth and increased risks to the mother,” Lockwood said. “There are three trends that are very concerning to us in obstetrics in the United States right now. The first is this progressive and disturbing increase in maternal mortality that is gone up over the past several years. The second is a trend that is been rising since 2007, which is an increase in stillbirth rates. And the third is the high C-section rate among US pregnancies over the past decade.”

The US is one of the few nations where maternal death rates are rising. In 2013, for example, it reported 28 maternal deaths for every 100,000 births, which was three times Canada’s rate, according to the research group Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation. And the centres for disease control and prevention reports that the US sees about 24,000 stillbirths every year.

In 2016, Lockwood was asked to debate another physician, Dr Errol Norwitz, the chairman of obstetrics and gynaecology at Tufts University School of Medicine, on this topic at the annual American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists meeting in Washington, DC. The opportunity sparked his interest in learning more and led him to study ways to reduce pregnancy risks.

“Even with the effort to reduce C-section rates, they are more commonly happening because babies can’t fit [through vaginal birth] anymore,” Lockwood said. “Babies are getting bigger and bigger because of the obesity problem in this country.”

Obstetricians commonly recommend artificially stimulating labour and delivery around or after 41 weeks, according to guidelines set by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. But the field has wrestled for years over the best timing for deliveries when the foetus is between 39 and 41 weeks old. The ongoing discussion has led to several studies similar to the USF research.

In the USF study, births induced at 39 weeks had reduced rates of caesarean deliveries, fewer maternal complications such as preeclampsia, which is related to high blood pressure, and fewer stillbirths and newborn deaths. The study also found that inducing labour earlier decreased the risk of birth injuries such as respiratory distress and shoulder dystocia, which occurs when an infant’s shoulder lodges behind the mother’s pubic bone.

“It makes sense that there is a lower morbidity rate,” Lockwood explained. “In those last one, two or three weeks of pregnancy, the baby is getting bigger and is less likely to fit. Then the mother is at more risk to develop complications.”

While the vast majority of patients do well after C-sections, they are costly to society, Lockwood said.

“We already spend too much on health care, and this further drives excess health care costs,” he said. “The procedure is a little more dangerous to the mother, too, with higher risks of clot in the lung and other complications. Multiple C-sections, which are more likely after a mother has had the first one, also increase the risk of massive haemorrhage, leading to that higher maternal death rate.”

Lockwood says more research is needed to understand the hospital system logistics and costs associated with elective induction at 39 weeks. Inducing early should not affect a mother’s health coverage because insurers often defer to physicians when it comes to decisions in the delivery room.

“Women have to make their own decision, it has to be their call,” he said. “They should have all the information they need to make an informed decision.”

There are quite a few folks I have come across, who regularly suffer from sporadic bouts of forgetfulness. No, not the ones who put down things in one spot and within moments, cannot recall where they had placed it — that section is too large to be discussed. Here I am referring to those of us who, when faced with a stressful situation in a public place, lose their cool and start shouting: “Do you know who I am?”

The first time I heard this loud exclamation, my heart went out to the shouter. I was quite young at the time and took everything at face value, you see. I could not quite understand why the passengers standing behind this person, who was holding up the line at the check-in counter in the airport, were not sympathetic towards him. I mean, here was a gentleman who had apparently lost his memory and was not even ashamed to admit it. Granted he was bellowing in a shrill voice — in a very shrill and angry voice actually — but that was because of sheer panic, right? Imagine not knowing who you were! Envisage a situation where you got temporary amnesia and could not remember your own self. What can be more terrifying than that? I felt very sorry for the man, I must confess, and wondered at the callousness of my cotravellers, who seemed to be irritated by the scene that he was creating.

It was only when he asked the same question for the third time that a shifty chap travelling with him, revealed the questioner’s identity. But instead of replying to him, the guy informed the check-in clerk that the amnesic was a renowned politician who was also the president and CEO of several companies. This information was followed by an underlying pause, where certain privileges like free upgrades and special treatment, were telepathically implied. 

I was too far down the queue to find out if those benefits were indeed granted. But when I got over my disillusionment I discovered that people from my home country India, frequently used that particular phrase in order to emphasise their importance. In the eyes of others, that is. 

Afterwards I witnessed belligerent men and women in all kinds of places; restaurants, casinos, five star hotels, cricket stadiums, concert halls, religious temples and so on, make the same allegation. But they always operated in pairs and it was almost like a Mutt and Jeff show where one feigned disbelief at not being recognised, and the other consequently supplied the relevant introduction. It was supposed to impress the listener and function like “Open Sesame”, so to speak.

It worked in some instances but when every second person came up with a similar assertion, the service industry got wise. In New Delhi, for example, the staff was trained in such a manner that no amount of presenting yourself with exaggerated designations cut any ice with them. They were frostily polite but stood their ground. 

Outside a nightclub in a posh suburb of the capital recently, we saw some commotion.

“Do you know who I am?” an angry voice yelled. 

“Any doctors here?” asked a burly bouncer.

“Somebody has fainted,” I predicted.

“Go and help,” I nudged my physician brother-in-law.

“I am off duty,” he mumbled. 

“Where is the patient?” he requested reluctantly.

“That lady who is screaming,” said the bouncer. 

“She has forgotten who she is,” he continued sotto voce. 

“Aha! Delhi amnesia,” my brother-in-law diagnosed.

A surprising side effect of a therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder may lead to a new approach to treating Type 2 diabetes — and offer new insights into the links between obesity and the metabolic disease that afflicts nearly 10 per cent of adults in the US.

The therapy is deep brain stimulation of the nucleus accumbens, a structure best known for its role in motivation, reward and addiction. It now appears that deep brain stimulation also increases the liver’s and muscles’ ability to take up and use insulin, researchers reported this past week in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

That is important because the ability to use insulin effectively is compromised in most people with obesity and seriously impaired in those with Type 2 diabetes.

This curious side effect of deep brain stimulation became clear after an obese man with diabetes who had the repetitive thoughts and behaviours of OCD was treated for the psychiatric condition with a device that delivers electrical impulses into the brain.

Once the device was implanted and turned on, it prompted the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine throughout the ventral striatum, in which the nucleus accumbens sits. The patient soon noticed that his blood sugar control improved, and his daily need for insulin injections decreased by roughly 80 per cent.

The research is likely to generate renewed interest in understanding the addictive powers of food for some people and whether the brain processes behind that addiction also make people with obesity more vulnerable to diabetes, depression, heart disease and even some cancers.

“The connection between brain and metabolism is only partially understood,” said. Miguel Alonso-Alonso, who directs Harvard University’s Mind Brain Behaviour Interfaculty Initiative. Most research to date has focused on the hormonal influence of the hypothalamus, a structure adjoining the ventral striatum, on basic bodily functions, he added.

“This is a new and exciting direction with the involvement of the striatum, a key reward centre,” Alonso-Alonso said. At the same time, he cautioned that “we first need to establish the nature of this association, understand its magnitude and its clinical relevance” before the findings could be considered the basis for treatment.

That a single patient’s metabolic function improved after he got a pacemaker in the brain might have met with a shrug anywhere else. But to the Dutch authors of the new research, it was a clue that warranted further investigation.

To explore the brain’s role in metabolism more rigorously, the researchers, led by Kasper W. ter Horst of the University of Amsterdam’s Academic Medical Centre, recruited 14 patients who also had had a brain stimulator implanted at the edge of the nucleus accumbens as treatment for OCD.

None of the 14 subjects recruited had Type 2 diabetes. But even healthy people vary daily and hourly in the ability of fat, liver and muscles to take up insulin from the bloodstream and use it to convert food to energy.

This measure of metabolic health is called “insulin sensitivity”, and it is one of many metabolic functions that go awry in people with obesity. In those who develop Type 2 diabetes, sensitivity to insulin becomes so impaired that the body is tricked into believing less insulin is needed, and it pares back its production. The insulin-producing cells in the pancreas will often atrophy and die in response. As a person’s insulin production declines, an external supply of insulin is needed to control blood sugar and deliver fuel to muscles and organs.

As the researchers turned the 12 subjects’ brain stimulators on and off, they could see the subjects’ insulin sensitivity rise and fall. Metabolic function was better when their brain stimulators were turned on than when the devices were silenced.

The Dutch team ruled out that the performance improvement came from changes in other hormones that can affect metabolism, such as cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine. The action of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens appeared to be effecting the changes.

The researchers also gleaned a potentially important insight about how obesity may lead to worsening metabolic function. The effect of the deep brain stimulation appeared to be greater in the seven research subjects who were lean than it was in the seven who were either overweight or obese. Since long-term obesity is linked to changes in the striatal dopamine system, the differing responses of lean and overweight subjects suggest that those changes may start development of Type 2 diabetes.

In a further experimental group of ten healthy people, the researchers found that using drugs to reduce dopamine levels across the body generated the opposite response, decreasing insulin sensitivity.

In mice, too, the researchers explored the role of the dopamine-fuelled neurons of the nucleus accumbens. Using a technique called optogenetics, they bred mice with certain brain cells that could be activated when light of a particular frequency is shined on them.

Light stimulation of the dopamine-expressing neurons in the brains of mice “was sufficient to improve glucose tolerance” and improve insulin sensitivity, the authors reported. That suggests “a key role for striatal neuronal activity in the central regulation of metabolism ,”they added.