Re: Ghrelin (sp?)

[Guest guest]

I watched it! It was a repeat. Well, no surprise, to those of us

who could never keep the weight off, or constantly felt our bodies

fight against us each time we tried to diet. The story brought out

the point that each time we tried to diet, our bodies produce more

ghrelin-a kind of fighting back mechanism of the body-to try to stop

us from losing weight. Interesting though how the only folks that

had very little (or was it none?) ghrelin were those who had the

gastric bypass. However, the doc did say that his test group of

gastric bypass was very small. If we do not produce ghrelin anymore,

which is the " I'm hungry, feed me " mechanism/trigger, then what makes

us hungry today? I'd like to see this studied more.

I felt very sorry for that group of people who had a condition (can't

remember the name of it) where they had no control over food at all

and the doc said that their ghrelin was very high. The mom of one of

them said that those with this condition will literally eat

themselves to death if allowed. Scary.

Cindy

> By any chance, did anyone see 60 Minutes last night? I know this

has

> been in the news before, but they had a story on the tests they are

> running on the hormone Ghrelin.

>

> They showed a sampling of typical test patients...first a man who

had

> gastric bypass, and pre-surgery, his Ghrelin levels were through

the

> roof, after surgery, they were non-existant. Then, they showed a

> woman who weighed about 500 pounds, and went on a conventional

diet.

> She lost about 5%-10% of her weight, and then Ghrelin levels

> skyrocketed, causing insatiable hunger, and then a thin woman who

had

> almost no ghrelin. They have been studying mice who ate normally,

> and when injected with Grehlin, can't stop eating.

>

> The doctor said that normal MO or obese dieters can not, typically,

> lose more than 5%-10% of their excess weight before their Ghrelin

> levels rise, making it virtually impossible to lose more without

drug

> intervention, which matches the commonly known fact (by us,

anyway),

> that 95% of people can not generally lose significant amounts of

> weight and keep it off. All the drug companies are scrambling to

> invent the magic pill to fight Ghrelin, but they think it would

take

> at least another 10 years before they come up with something.

>

> They have discovered the antithesis of Ghrelin, something called

PPY

> (I think), but there are possible side effects, such as memory

loss,

> soooo....no magic bullet yet.

>

> in NJ