(AP) --A hormone thought to boost appetite rises in the bloodstream after dieters lose lots of weight, possibly explaining why it's so hard to keep weight off long term -- and offering a new target for a diet drug, researchers say.

Their small study of severely obese people found much higher levels of a recently discovered hormone made by stomach cells, ghrelin, in the blood after the patients had lost significant weight.

However, very little ghrelin was in the blood of several people who lost weight after gastric bypass surgery, an operation that sews shut 95 percent of the stomach and reroutes the flow of food.

"Not only did (ghrelin levels) not go up, but in people who lost an enormous amount of weight, it went way down," said Dr. David E. Cummings, an endocrinologist who led the researchers at the University of Washington and the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System.

Cummings and Dr. Mitchell S. Roslin, chief of obesity surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, say the abnormally low ghrelin levels after gastric bypass could help explain why it is more successful than dieting or operations that simply reduce stomach size.

Ghrelin is thought to be nature's way of making people fatten up when food is plentiful to increase survival during cycles of famine, a protective mechanism now harmful when plenty of high-calorie food is available.

The researchers and other experts say the findings are circumstantial evidence of ghrelin's effects, and more research is needed.

"This is a first step, and it may be an important hormone, but we don't know that yet," said Dr. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, former chairman of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute's obesity task force and director of the Obesity Research Center at St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York. "It's not like this is a breakthrough."

The body has multiple backup systems for regulating body weight, probably including other hormones not yet discovered, said Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, director of diabetes services at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

"This is probably one of a number of substances which control appetite," and it's unclear how they interact, he said.

The study, reported in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, involved patients who had sharply reduced their weight and kept stable for three months. Five patients who had gastric bypass surgery dropped from an average of 435 pounds to 280 pounds, while 13 people on a supervised low-fat, liquid diet dropped from an average weight of 220 pounds to 182 pounds.

In the diet group, ghrelin levels were consistently about 50 percent higher after weight loss. Levels spiked before meals and plunged after, both before and after weight loss.

The bypass group had barely detectable ghrelin levels and on average had 72 percent less ghrelin than five dieters who ended up at about the same body mass index, a ratio of weight to height. The bypass patients also had 77 percent less ghrelin on average than a comparison group of 10 normal-weight people.

Some 75,000 to 100,000 severely obese Americans are expected to undergo some type of bariatric, or stomach-reducing, surgery this year. Gastric bypass is meant only for people at least 100 pounds overweight.

Ghrelin, discovered about two years ago, has a role in promoting growth, from making children taller to building bone density.

Injecting the hormone in rodents makes them eat right away, but ghrelin has not been proven to stimulate appetite in people. Still, several major pharmaceutical companies are trying to develop drugs to block the hormone, Cummings said.

"A true cure for obesity would be the biggest moneymaker that any drug company's ever seen," he said.

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

I watched with interest this same report on CNN today....interesting...


Bonnie

Interesting indeed...but did they come up with the term "ghrelin" by letting some obese mice scamper across the keyboard? I can't identify the etymological roots of that one at all!

Interesting that pharmaceutical companies are already looking for a way to block the hormone before anyone fully understands what it does and does not do. There could be other functions of ghrelin that are not yet understood that blocking could cause health problems. Still...it could be interesting to watch the developments on this.

No wonder they're hungry and grehlin is more active. They starved themselves to get to the weight they attained. And when they stopped the diet, their bodies went into feast mode by makng more grehlin.

I would like to see the same study on people who aren't starving (i.e. low-carbers) to see how the hormone acts in their bodies.

;-Deb

But; when you read this, didn't I see something about bone density? Why is this idea of a pill to stop a hormone, and an operation that stops one from eating, better than trying Atkins, or sugarbusters or low carbers, or protein power?

When ever I read about nutritionsts or Dr. evaluating diets, they condemmed Atkins, said Sugarbusters was vague and no good; but yet approved Slim fast drinks and Weight watchers point system.

Reading all this about stomack bypasses and clips etc.makes you think okay! they lost the weight, now how does the body go about getting enough nurishment to continue to replace bones, muscle cells, heart cells etc. Or does it take very little food to keep people at a proper weight. Also what about a persons genes that makes them a little heavier in the boobs or the behind or the thighs?
perhaps the answer to hunger in the third world is clips? no need for food?no more hunger? the next thing will be a cookie as in Soilent Green?
remember that movie with Charlton Heston? {scary and is why I remember it}

...I'd like to point out, too that the folks I know who've had gastric bypass - "because of the surgery" the doctors put them on a low carb diet as they lose the weight.

So, why don't they just low carb them to begin with??

-m-

All the more reason to think it's the low-fat diet causing the grehlin to form. Although if it's produced in the stomach and you no longer have one....

;-Deb

It's a very small one - about an ounce or two in size - it's part of their intestines that they are missing.

<gross!>

-m-

I think there is confusion about how and when the stomach releases this so called hormone after someone looses lots of weight , causing the body to regain the weight lost.

When I went on the protein formular, having only one meal a day, I lost fat very well. after reaching the desired weight, I went back to eating food and not very much of it, but as slowly as I lost that is how I gained it back{2 1/2 lbs per week.}

Was that the result of a hormone?

In the Australian operation, I saw a picture dipicting what they did with a laparoscope inserted thru a small incision of the abdomen and sectioned off only the top of a woman's stomach with a small band that could be tightened. The band works by creating a small pouch at the top of the stomach and fills very quickly and makes it impossible to eat large amounts of food. The food passes through the pouch into the lower part of the stomach and intestines, creating a lasting feeling of fullness, even after eating a tiny meal.

So in this operation nothing is removed. It is called gastric banding.

These women were told that they now had to chew very throughly inorder to prevent complictions, one of which is the sliping of the band. {it looked very much like a band around the bottom of a balloon} So evidently everything is still intact but working with small amounts of food.

So if the idea of the gehrlen hormone is true, there would be nothing to prevent it from being released, even if slowly and then what?

What gets me about these operations is, that it is starvation. Starvation means that you are not taking in suffcient nutrition to maintain your weight.
What happens to your bones, muscles?

Why call the Atkins diet dangerous then, when people are feeding themselves real food, real butter, real chicken, real eggs and cheese all wholesome body building food!!!!

Somehwere on these pages, I found a consultant answering questions about diets and everything was pooh poohed, Atkins first , Sugarbusters second, and low carbers last. What was approved by this specialist, was slim fast diet drink, and Weight Watchers was called #1.

I guess everyone has to wait and see what happens to these people after one or two years!
Perhaps after the weight is lost they remove or release the band so they become normal again?

Actually, I am a low-carber for life who is experiencing a problem with hunger after losing 125lbs.

After I attained my goal weight of 140-145 lbs, I was able to keep it there for about 6 months before the hunger began.

For the past year I have battled with constant hunger. It is strongest in the morning, when I first wake up, until about 2-3 in the afternoon, and seems to taper off. Even though I lost all that weight on low-carb eating and continue to eat low-carb, I have acute sugar cravings, which I never or rarely had while I was losing weight. I have gained 10-12 lbs back in the last year because I feel totally controlled by this hunger that will not go away unless I eat abnormally large amounts of food.

I think the reason I have not gained more than that is because I do high intensity work outs 5-6 days a week. I lift weights with a trainer and do aerobics at a bodybuilding gym, as well as jogging, bicycling, swimming, and yoga.

Also, please refer to this post:

http://forum.lowcarber.org/t37322.html

This person also seems to be suffering from something similar.

Thanks for reading! I'm new to this forum