The aroma of food is a key factor in triggering appetite. According to foreign media reports, a study now found that under the condition of ingesting the same food, mice temporarily losing their sense of smell weighed much less than control mice with normal sense of smell. The research was conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and was led by Professor Andrew Dillin and Professor Céline Riera. It involves the use of gene therapy to destroy olfactory neurons in the nose of adult mice-which causes the mice to lose their sense of smell for about three weeks.
During this period, they and the control group were fed high-fat food. Although both groups ate the same amount of food, the weight of the mice that temporarily lost their sense of smell only increased by 10%, while the weight of the mice in the normal control group exceeded their normal weight by about 100%.
Then, the researchers made the mice that had gained weight "temporarily lose their sense of smell." They found that even in the case of a high-fat diet, they can fall back to normal weight. On the other hand, when the researchers genetically engineered the mice to have a "super smell", they found that their weight also exceeded the control mice.
Although scientists are still trying to clearly understand what happened, they believe that animals (including humans) are more sensitive to smell when they are hungry. "The sensory system plays a role in metabolism," Dillin said. "Weight gain is not only a reflection of calories consumed, but also how these calories are perceived. If we can verify this in humans, maybe we actually It would be amazing to be able to create a drug that does not interfere with the smell but still hinders the metabolic'circuit'."
Unfortunately, the loss of the sense of smell in mice does cause the level of norepinephrine, a stress hormone related to the sympathetic nervous system, to rise significantly. In humans, a constant rise may cause a heart attack. Nonetheless, the researchers believe that for people who are, for example, obese, it may be worthwhile-especially if the treatment lasts only about six months.