New Study: Just Smelling Your Food Cat Make You Gain Wieght

dragon_girl26

nutmegoreo wrote: »

I originally read the title as smelling cat food can make you gain weight. I have two cats, I can assure you that smelling their food would be a great appetite suppressant.

I'm with the people who think there's more at play. When calorie consumption is equal, there's something else. Maybe extra cals on healing. Maybe they spend more time running in their wheel pondering their loss of smell. Who knows.

Oh, I agree! I usually can't eat right after I feed the cats. I've never been able to eat tuna because it smells so similar, too.

As a side note, I was always told that if I burned candles that smelled like desserts, it would supposedly satisfy a craving for sweets. I can't say that's ever worked for me personally, though maybe it does for others.

Hoshiko

The study can be found here, for anyone who wants to wade through 10 pages of biology acronyms.

I got as far as "Reduced olfactory input stimulates sympathetic nerve activity, resulting in activation of β-adrenergic receptors on white and brown adipocytes to promote lipolysis" and noped out.

VintageFeline

I lost my sense of smell when I was about 21 after a particularly nasty cold. Lasted a few months and other than it being brilliant because I had a summer job in a children's nursery so I couldn't smell dirty bums I can't say it did anything. I still ate food the same as I had before, perhaps the memory of how good it tasted carried me through?

I also now have phantosmia, have for months, actually can't remember when it started. At first it was really tricky because everything smelled awful and it would take me a few bites to adjust so that it tasted less of what I was smelling. It kind of morphs and is at differing levels every day now, I'm hoping that means it's on its way out! But again, I still eat the same as I did.

On the subject of cat food. I have recently introduced raw food one meal a day to my lot. Now that smells truly horrendous.

rheddmobile

While it seems obvious that smelling food can't make you gain weight, that's not what this study found at all. The study, if you read it, found that NOT smelling food makes you LOSE weight. And that is quite possible. Without an insulin response, food taken in will not be metabolized. My guess would be that smelling food is a necessary part of the body's signals to produce insulin - at least in rats. There's no reason to think human and rat physiology would operate the same way in this case, since rats walk around with their little noses sniffing all the time, and people mostly are barely aware of their surroundings as far as scent goes. People are not rats.

I learned about the relationship between insulin and calorie intake quite dramatically while waiting for an operation before I was diagnosed with diabetes. I was in a high level of constant pain, my blood glucose (according to A1c taken later) was averaging 270, and I was hungry all the time. I literally ate an entire bag of leftover Halloween candy, plus everything not nailed down, and I lost 25 lbs in one month. What was happening to me is that my heightened cortisol levels from the pain were blocking my body's ability to use insulin. So no blood glucose was getting broken down to be used - it all had to be flushed out of my body by my kidneys. Even when I was given insulin in the hospital, my sugar remained high because of the cortisol blocking it. This isn't uncommon for type 2 diabetics during an illness. "Sick day" instructions for diabetics include instructions for what to do if your insulin stops working due to cortisol and you need to flush your system using your kidneys, by drinking tons of water.

And of course, for type 1 diabetics who produce no insulin, if they stop taking insulin (or take not enough) they will lose weight. Doctors have found they can have a compliance problem with many type 1 teenagers in particular. Teenagers learn that they can stop taking the right amount of insulin whenever they want to drop a few pounds. Of course, that causes their blood sugar to get to dangerous levels, but teens aren't necessarily appreciative of the risk.

icemom011

My wife has somewhat diminished sense of smell. It's not completely gone, just less than average, i would estimate. She has been thin and slim her whole life, she eats relatively slow and not overeats, so i have been contributing her physique to those factors, but it could be same effects of reduced ability to smell? Hmmm, interesting. She still enjoys good food though, as it's not a complete lack of sense of smell. It always amazes me how complex our bodies are and how much unknown there is still.

StealthHealth

rheddmobile wrote: »

While it seems obvious that smelling food can't make you gain weight, that's not what this study found at all. The study, if you read it, found that NOT smelling food makes you LOSE weight. And that is quite possible. Without an insulin response, food taken in will not be metabolized. My guess would be that smelling food is a necessary part of the body's signals to produce insulin - at least in rats. There's no reason to think human and rat physiology would operate the same way in this case, since rats walk around with their little noses sniffing all the time, and people mostly are barely aware of their surroundings as far as scent goes. People are not rats.

I learned about the relationship between insulin and calorie intake quite dramatically while waiting for an operation before I was diagnosed with diabetes. I was in a high level of constant pain, my blood glucose (according to A1c taken later) was averaging 270, and I was hungry all the time. I literally ate an entire bag of leftover Halloween candy, plus everything not nailed down, and I lost 25 lbs in one month. What was happening to me is that my heightened cortisol levels from the pain were blocking my body's ability to use insulin. So no blood glucose was getting broken down to be used - it all had to be flushed out of my body by my kidneys. Even when I was given insulin in the hospital, my sugar remained high because of the cortisol blocking it. This isn't uncommon for type 2 diabetics during an illness. "Sick day" instructions for diabetics include instructions for what to do if your insulin stops working due to cortisol and you need to flush your system using your kidneys, by drinking tons of water.

And of course, for type 1 diabetics who produce no insulin, if they stop taking insulin (or take not enough) they will lose weight. Doctors have found they can have a compliance problem with many type 1 teenagers in particular. Teenagers learn that they can stop taking the right amount of insulin whenever they want to drop a few pounds. Of course, that causes their blood sugar to get to dangerous levels, but teens aren't necessarily appreciative of the risk.

Thanks for this. I'd skim read the study and frankly I was stunned by the findings because (I'm not great at this stuff), I couldn't understand the mechanism that they were proposing.

It's a very interesting piece of research and, as always, more research required but all the same. Wow.

lemurcat12

Noel_57 wrote: »

What's all this brouhaha about a Food Cat?

Old_Cat_Lady

rheddmobile wrote: »

study found that NOT smelling food makes you LOSE weight. And that is quite possible. Without an insulin response, food taken in will not be metabolized. My guess would be that smelling food is a necessary part of the body's signals to produce insulin

I just can't imagine this being true. (and your personal experience). If it were there would be centers to kill olfactory nerves in every mall. A lot cheaper than gastric bypass. The future may be very interesting.

My new book coming out soon: The clothespin on your nose diet?

rheddmobile

TheWJordinWJordin wrote: »

rheddmobile wrote: »

study found that NOT smelling food makes you LOSE weight. And that is quite possible. Without an insulin response, food taken in will not be metabolized. My guess would be that smelling food is a necessary part of the body's signals to produce insulin

I just can't imagine this being true. (and your personal experience). If it were there would be centers to kill olfactory nerves in every mall. A lot cheaper than gastric bypass. The future may be very interesting.

My new book coming out soon: The clothespin on your nose diet?

I doubt very much that it's true for humans. The study concerned rats. If you google "anosmia weight loss" you will find multiple studies showing anosmia in humans leads to weight GAIN, not loss.