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Just finished reading this insightful paper by Sarah Cains et al. that shed some light on the biological mechanisms of alcohol-induced overeating AKA 'why we get the drunchies' https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14014
So we've had a couple too many drinks and we order this midnight pizza. The next morning we wake up feeling bloated and hungover. We know why we're hungover (way too much tequila), but the question is, why did we order so much pizza and why did we keep eating?
This is somewhat of a paradox. We know that appetite-inducing signals in the brain are negatively regulated by nutrients. Since the ethanol in alcoholic beverages is high in calories, drinking should reduce appetite, but previous research shows that the opposite happens.
Sarah set out to explain this paradox by identifying the biological pathways that EtOH acts upon. Specifically, she looked at the relationship between Ethanol and the Agrp neurons of the Hypothalamus, which were previously found to envoke intense hunger in response to starvation.
She did a couple of cool things to study this (discussed in depth later in this thread):
1) Studied the effect of EtOH on food intake in mice
2) Studied the in vitro effect of EtOH on Agrp neurons
3) Studied the in vitro and in vivo effects of silencing Agrp neurons
1) Studied the effect of EtOH on food intake in mice
2) Studied the in vitro effect of EtOH on Agrp neurons
3) Studied the in vitro and in vivo effects of silencing Agrp neurons
