from Section VI - Eating Disorders
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
Abstract
Obesity is a major public health problem affecting increasingly large numbers of people worldwide. Although it reflects an imbalance between energy intake and expenditure, the core pathophysiological mechanisms responsible for maintaining this balance are not well understood. It is of particular relevance that the maintenance of normal weight requires the coordination of peripheral signals of hunger and satiety and brain responses to either procure and consume food or to stop eating after a meal. Brain imaging studies show that obese individuals have significant deficits in regulation of energy homeostasis (i.e. delayed response to peripheral metabolic signals in the hypothalamus) and the brain circuits that regulate normal eating behavior (i.e. hunger, satiety, motivation, reward, emotion, learning, memory and inhibitory control). Because of the complexity and multi-factorial nature of obesity and eating disorders, future progress will be facilitated by a transdisciplinary approach which integrates modern imaging tools with new knowledge on behavior and genetics to guide the development of effective preventive and therapeutic approaches.
Introduction
According to the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, an epidemic of obesity has developed in the United States during the past 30 years. Obesity is defined as an excessively high amount of body fat or adipose tissue in relation to lean body mass (Stunkard and Wadden, 1993).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.