Are women wired to eat heavy?

Women have it rough with regards to weight gain for plenty of psychological and social reasons. They certainly don’t need researchers from UCLA telling them that their brains are “wired” to eat more food, but that’s the conclusion of a new study.

The scientists learned that people whose brains are pre-disposed to produce a more muted response to food will usually compensate by eating more of it. This gooses their risk for obesity. Digging deeper, they discovered that women’s brains favor a more emotional response to the eating experience, while men are built to focus on how food satisfies the senses. This may just be the reason why women struggle more with their weight than do men.

“A woman's brain seems to draw a significant neurological link between food and the part of the brain that processes emotions, said study co-author Arpana Gupta. Contrast that with a man's brain, which seems more inclined to link eating to the region that handles things like temperature, smell or taste.

It’s not such a radical notion. Psychology has a long history of identifying gender-related factors at the root of various cravings and and drug-seeking in substance abuse.

For their part, the UCLA team analyzed brain scans of 86 healthy men and women to "identify the possible role of the brain in the pathophysiology of obesity.” They paid particular attention to activity patterns of the dopamine. That’s the "feel good" neurotransmitter that is crucial to the way the brain responds to both eating and hunger.

The scientists discovered that the less responsive an individual’s dopamine system, the more sensitive he or she is to food and the more prone they are to compensate for this deficit by eating heavy.

The women examined in the study were given to exhibiting a relatively muted response to food in brain regions that regulate emotion. Such a response was not found in obese men. Obese men were discovered to have a relatively amped up response to food in brain regions involved in sensory regulation – a dynamic not seen among obese women.

Why do men and women “process” eating so differently? Science hasn’t figured that one out yet. But one clear hedge against compensating for depression and low dopamine levels by over-eating is engaging in vigorous exercise, which has been proven to have the exact opposite effects on the body.

The research will be presented at the Digestive Disease Week Conference in Washington, D.C.