Member-only story

Research Hit: Your Fat-Brain Connection for a Longer Life

Andy Hab
4 min readJan 11, 2024

--

How connections between your fat and brain degrade over time and reactivating them seems to lead to a longer life

What there is now a fat-brain connection?!

Yes, that intrigued me also with this piece of research just published by Kyohei Tokizane of Washington University School of Medicine.

But I have long said we should think of the brain and body as one system rather than two separate systems. Most things that happen in the body influence the brain in some way and vice versa. The research over the years has given us new systems not just brain-body, but gut-brain, or microbiome-brain (many of which I have reported on regularly).

But, nevertheless, brain-fat also surprised me!

So is it the more fat, the better?

No, no, of course not. This particular research ended up zooming in on a region in the brain, the hypothalamus, that is a key hub in the brain and directly or indirectly responsible for a lot of hormone release.

Of particular interest is the messaging between hypothalamus and fat because this can “instruct” the fat to release more energy reserves. Particularly during the well-known “flight-or-fight response”.

--

--

Andy Hab
Andy Hab

Written by Andy Hab

Sharing fascinating, fun, and important knowledge on the brain and human behaviour - most days. And masters track athlete - still going strong!

Responses (1)