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Are Obesity Rate Higher Among Women? How would men and women behave when they were faced with favorite foods? According to a report published on January 20, 2009 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there was different brain response between the sexes in controlling food intake. The research was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and by the General Clinical Research Center of Stony Brook University. Such findings could just explain the higher obesity rate for females. In fact, obesity has been increasing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 35.3 percent of American women and 33.3 percent of men were considered obese in 2006. It is not a good idea to get overweight or even obese. This is because people who are overweight or obese are prone to have medical complications such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke and possibly certain kinds of cancer. In trying to find out why some people overeat and gain weight while others do not, the United States researchers from Brookhaven National Laboratory performed brain scans on 13 women and 10 men, who fasted overnight, to determine how their brains responded when they saw their favorite foods.
In the study, all the participants were asked about their favorite foods, ranging from pizza to cinnamon buns and burgers to chocolate cake, and they were then instructed to fast overnight. They underwent brain scans in the next day while presented with their favorite foods. Meanwhile, they were also told to suppress thoughts of hunger and eating using a technique called cognitive inhibition, which was taught earlier. All the participants admitted that the technique did decrease their hunger. The brain scans showed that men’s brain activity actually decreased but part of the women’s brains that responds to food remained active. Even though the women felt less hungry when trying to inhibit their response to the food, their brains were still firing away in the regions that control the drive to eat. The results of the study suggested that women have a higher tendency than men to overeat when presented with tasty food or under emotional distress. This might be due to differences in sex hormones. Nevertheless, further research was planned to see if this is the case. Another reason cited by the researchers was changes in society. People are spoiled with today’s wider choice and more tempting foods than their ancestors. For example, when people go to buffet, they tend to eat the variety of foods presented in front of them. The gender difference was indeed a surprise to some experts, who speculated that this might be due to the different nutritional needs between men and women. According to their explanation, the female brain may be hard-wired to eat when foods are available as the traditional role of women is to provide nutrition to children. Other experts argued that it is very possible that the differences in hunger suppression that may contribute to the gender differences in eating disorders and that they are likely linked to gender differences in estrogen and related hormones. Nevertheless, training in reducing food desires or in reacting to food cues are regarded by many health professionals as effective treatments to combat obesity.
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