It seems as if everybody is watching their carbohydrate intake these days. Even people who don’t look like they need to lose weight, do the low carbohydrate diet temporarily when they want to shed 5 or 10 pounds they’ve recently put on. There’s a reason for the popularity of this diet. It really works.

In a study done recently in Boston, it was found that both fasting and a high fat- low carbohyfrate diet increase the levels of a hormone called FGF21. The study was done on laboratory mice. The theory postulated is that the hormone, FGF21, is helping the body switch it’s source of fuel from sugar to fat.

The logical correlation is when you fast, your body uses stored body fat and also when your intake is a high fat, low carbohydrate diet, your body, again, uses stored body fat. It will take more studies and research to switch these principles from laboratory animals to people. The interplay of the hormone, FGF21, and it’s increase with a high fat, low carbohydrate diet, shows a lot of promise in the treatment of obesity.

A new angle of scientific research is opened with the premise of these studies. This hormone and it’s subsequent increase could be the reason that people on low-carb diets don’t have elevated fats in their bloodstream. This hormone, FGF21, could open the gateway for a host of new and effective weight loss drugs of the future. It will be interesting to see further studies, research and results on this subject.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Health and Fitness News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.