January 3, 2016.
According to a team of researchers from the National Institutes of Health in the United States, getting involved in sports to lose weight is not so easy for everyone. This could be explained by a deregulation of dopamine.
Physiological mechanisms
A new year is always an opportunity to make good resolutions. Getting into sport is one of them, especially for people looking to lose weight. But according to a study published in the journal Cell Metabolism, we do not all have the same ability to motivate ourselves to resume physical activity, especially if we have gotten into the habit of eating a bit randomly.
Junk food would have a direct impact on dopamine receptors, which would cause a lack of motivation. To reach this conclusion, the researchers put mice on two different diets. Some ate a healthy diet, others a high calorie diet. After four weeks, some of these mice were overweight.
Dopamine receptors disrupted by overweight
The researchers found that the overweight mice became more sedentary than the mice that ate normally. They looked on the side of the brain and they found that certain dopamine receptors, a neurotransmitter that allows information to flow from one neuron to another, were disturbed by being overweight.
” We often invoke willpower as the key to behavior modification », Analyzed Dr Kravitz, who took part in the work, in the columns of the Dailymail British. ” But if we don’t understand the physiological mechanisms, we cannot say that will alone is enough “. Clearly, if you can’t get back to sport, do violence to yourself and eat healthier.
Read also: Special physical activity diet
