Atrial natriuretic peptide and leptin interactions in healthy men.

Introduction: Atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP), a hormone secreted from the heart, controls cardiovascular and renal functions including arterial blood pressure and natriuresis. ANP also exerts metabolic effects in adipose tissue, liver and skeletal muscle, and interacts with the secretion of adipokines. We tested the hypothesis that ANP lowers concentrations of the anorexigenic adipokine leptin in healthy humans .

Competing influences on healthy food choices: Mindsetting versus contextual food cues.

Food choices are influenced by one's current mindset, suggesting that supporting health (vs. a palatability) mindsets could improve daily food choices. The question rises, however, to what extent internal mindsets still guide choices when people are exposed to external food-context stimuli in an obesogenic environment.

Leptin Is Not Essential for Obesity-Associated Hypertension.

Background And Objective: Hyperleptinemia is supposed to play a causal role in the development of obesity-associated hypertension, possibly via increased sympathetic tone. Hence patients with congenital leptin deficiency should be hypotensive and their low blood pressure should increase under leptin substitution.

Subjects And Methods: To test this assumption, we examined ambulatory blood pressure, resting heart rate, Schellong test results, cold pressor test results, heart rate variability, catecholamine metabolites, and aldosterone levels in 6 patients with congenital leptin deficiency before as well as 2-7 days and 7-14 months after the start of leptin substitution.

Functional Connectivity Within the Gustatory Network Is Altered by Fat Content and Oral Fat Sensitivity - A Pilot Study.

The amount of fat in ingested food dictates specific activation patterns in the brain, particularly in homeostatic and reward-related areas. Taste-specific brain activation changes have also been shown and the sensitivity to the oral perception of fat is associated with differential eating behavior and physiological parameters. The association between oral fat sensitivity and neuronal network functions has, however, not yet been defined.

Leptin Replacement Reestablishes Brain Insulin Action in the Hypothalamus in Congenital Leptin Deficiency.

Objective: Human obesity is associated with impaired central insulin signaling, and in very rare cases, severe obesity can be caused by congenital leptin deficiency. In such patients, leptin replacement results in substantial weight loss and improvement in peripheral metabolism.

Research Design And Methods: In a leptin-deficient patient, we investigated the impact of leptin substitution on central insulin action, as quantified by changes in neuronal activity after intranasal insulin application.

Detection thresholds for four different fatty stimuli are associated with increased dietary intake of processed high-caloric food.

BMI-specific differences in food choice and energy intake have been suggested to modulate taste perception. However, associations between body composition and fat taste sensitivity are controversial. The objective of this study was to examine the association between body composition, dietary intake and detection thresholds of four fatty stimuli (oleic acid, paraffin oil, canola oil, and canola oil spiked with oleic acid) that could be perceived via gustatory and/or textural cues.

Oil Perception-Detection Thresholds for Varying Fatty Stimuli and Inter-individual Differences.

Multiple lines of research have demonstrated that humans can perceive fat in the form of free fatty acids (FFAs). However, the dietary concentration of FFAs is generally very low and fat is mainly consumed as triacylglycerol (TAG). The aim of this study was to examine the perception of different fatty stimuli and possible associations between them.