Protein Provides Satiety Through PYY

In our strange world, we have researchers now promoting the idea that a pharmaceutical version of the gut hormone PYY may offer a solution to help individuals lose weight.

In the MSN article, Natural Gut Hormones May Provide a Treatment for Obesity, we learn that researchers are seeking to develop a pill to provide the satiety hormone PYY.

"The advantage of developing weight loss medications based on gut-derived satiety hormones is that they enhance a process that occurs naturally. It is expected, therefore, that side effects will be minimal," says Dr Sainsbury-Salis.

Folks, we're not PYY deficient; in fact, I'd argue we're not eating the foods that stimulate PYY to effectively sate appetite naturally.

As I noted in a previous blog post about research investigating PYY, "A high protein diet led to spontaneous calorie reduction as PYY increased. The phenomenon was consistent with both the animal model using mice and in human studies used to validate the mice model. Over a longer term, the higher protein diet stimulated weight loss and enhanced PYY synthesis and secretion in mice."

As I noted in that post, the study I wrote about included quite specific detail about how diet influences the release of PYY in humans - "The ready availability of carbohydrate-rich grains and cereals has been a recent development in human nutrition with the onset of organized agriculture. Many of the physiological systems that regulate food intake were probably established and may function better under lower-carbohydrate and higher-protein dietary conditions."

Those were not my words, but the words of the researchers!

And now we have researchers looking to design a pill to provide what we already have naturally - if we eat adequate protein and fat. But, let's not go there and discuss diet, let's just pop a pill and continue along with the supposed "healthy diet" that obviously is not sating out appetite!