It’s time to take a stand in order to lose weight. According to researchers at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, standing upright could trigger your body’s “internal bathroom scale.”
Says John-Olov Jansson, Professor at Sahlgrenska Academy:
The weight of the body is registered in the lower extremities. If the body weight tends to increase, a signal is sent to the brain to decrease food intake and keep the body weight constant.
By standing, you increase your weight, thus, sending a message to your brain to stop eating.
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According to the University, the discovery of this internal regulatory system is the first new one since the discovery of the hormone leptin, 23 years ago by American scientists.
“The mechanism that we have now identified regulates body fat mass independently of leptin,” says Professor Claes Ohlsson at Sahlgrenska Academy, Gothenburg University, “and it’s possible that leptin combined with activation of the internal body scales can become an effective treatment for obesity.”
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The discovery was made by implanting mice with weights that made them artificially heavier than a control group, by as much as 15-percent of their body mass. By the time the experiment ended, both sets of mice had similar body weights, with the experimental group shedding pounds to compensate for the added weight.
It’s already been proven that “sitting is the new smoking” and that those who sit for more than 12.5 hours a day have the highest death rate, according to a sobering study from the Annals of Internal Medicine.
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In regards to these newest findings, says Jansson, “We hope this discovery will lead to a new direction in obesity research. The findings may also provide new knowledge about the cause of obesity and, in the long run, new treatments of obesity.”
