According to new research, persons with obesity risk genes tend to feel more hungry and lose control over their eating, while practicing dietary restrictions may help to reverse this.
According to research, individuals with a higher genetic risk of obesity can reduce the effects transmitted through hunger and impulsive eating by up to half by exercising restraint.
The study, which appeared in the International Journal of Epidemiology, is titled “Mediation and moderation of genetic risk to obesity through eating behaviours in two UK cohorts.”
Shahina Begum, a University of Exeter psychology PhD student, is the primary author and stated that it is more crucial than ever to comprehend how genes affect BMI in a time when high-calorie meals are aggressively promoted to us.
We already know that these genes affect traits and behaviours like emotional eating and hunger, but this study differs from previous ones in that we looked at the effects of two different types of dietary restraint, rigid and flexible, on these behaviours. We found for the first time that increasing both types of restraint may reduce BMI in those who are genetically predisposed to it, indicating that therapies based on restraints may be effective in addressing the issue.
BMI increases due to genes associated with obesity, with up to 25% of this effect being accounted for by increases in appetite and disordered (including emotional) eating). Researchers have so far found approximately 900 genes to be connected to BMI, and multiple studies indicate that these risk genes affect sensations of hunger and lack of control over eating.
In this investigation, 3,780 participants from the Genetics of Appetite Study and the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, two UK cohorts, were aged between 22 and 92. Their height, weight, and DNA were collected from their blood in order to create an overall score for their genetic risk of obesity. After that, they responded to surveys measuring 13 various eating behaviours, such as disinhibition (a propensity for bingeing or emotional eating) and overeating out of hunger.
Researchers discovered that, as predicted, a higher genetic risk score was linked to a higher BMI, in part because of an increase in disinhibition and appetite. Results, however, also revealed that those with high levels of dietary constraint reduced those effects by almost half for disinhibition and a third for hunger, indicating that restraint may partially offset the impacts of genetic risk.
Dietary constraint comes in many forms, from flexible tactics like mindful eating and purposefully taking modest portions to rigid strategies like calorie counting. The study examined the effects of both restraints for the first time and discovered that both might enhance BMI in those with genetic risk factors.
