THE flick of a switch in your brain may be all it takes to order your body to burn off energy in the food you eat rather than storing it as fat. Experiments on rats have shown that a part of the brain called the hypothalamus helps determine how much food energy is stored, raising the possibility of a new kind of anti-obesity drug.
Matthias Tschöp of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio used drugs that either stimulated or blocked receptors for the hormone melanocortin on hypothalamus cells in the brains of rats. Those given stimulatory drugs burned more…
