Re:The brain has a ‘low-power mode’ that blunts our senses
by epicureanideal on Sunday June 19, 2022 @02:33PM
(#31802018)
> some sort of homeostatic miscalibration
Possibly leftovers of a highly adaptive mechanism that let some of their ancestors survive times of extreme famine?
Re:The brain has a ‘low-power mode’ that blunts our senses
by Enginerrrd on Monday June 20, 2022 @08:49AM
(#31809716)
That's at least partially true, but there are serious issues with that explanation if you want to explain all of the effect. In particular, there really does appear to be something different going on in the last 2-4 decades or so affecting people's internal set points. When you compare to other recent historical times where there was also an abundance of food, people were self-regulating better than they are now.
There's a lot we don't know. But it definitely does appear that a lot of obese people have some sort of homeostatic miscalibration on where their body's set point is for weight. The mechanisms involved there are numerous and complex. It's quite possible that there's something simple going on that could be adjusted in the future to get a person's weight set point down, and from there it's quite likely that they will be able to autoregulate. Conversely, it's really hard for any intervention to succeed long-term when a person's weight doesn't match this internal set point.