Fatty Foods Harm Men More Than Women

Did you know that men and women respond differently to the food consumed? A recent study published in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports explains how male and female brains respond differently to high-fat meals and that men can be more susceptible to the health risks of a high-fat diet."Our findings, for the first time, suggest that males and females respond to high-fat diets differently," said Deborah Clegg of the Cedar-Sinai Diabetes And Obesity Research Institute in Los Angeles.According to experts, the research might help explain the observed differences in
obesity outcomes between women and men and suggests that dietary advice should be made more sex-specific. The data indicates that is probably 'ok' for females to occasionally have a high-fat meal but the same does not apply to men."The way we treat patients and provide dietary and nutritional advice should be altered. We might be less concerned about an occasional hamburger for women, but for men, we might more strongly encourage avoidance, especially if they have pre-existing diseases such as heart disease or type 2 diabetes," says Clegg. Clegg and her team discovered that brain inflammation is linked to overeating, blood sugar imbalances and increased inflammation in other parts of the body, including fat tissue. They experimented with male mice whose brains were inflamed and found that such effects can be triggered - in males in particular - by short-term exposure to a high-fat diet. It was also noted that when male mice brains were inflamed, they experienced reduced cardiac function. Male and female brains differ in their fatty acid composition. Therefore, when male mice brains were manipulated to have the same the fatty acid composition as that of females, they were no more at the same risk. According to the study, such sex-based variation in the brain's response to fat is related to differences between females and males in estrogen and estrogen receptor status.Inputs from PTI