Male and female brains respond in different ways to high-fat meals, according to a recent study.
Researchers found that those differences in the brain lead to greater inflammation and increased health risks in males that indulge on fatty foods in comparison to females. The findings reported may help to explain observed differences in obesity outcomes between women and men -- premenopausal women carrying extra weight fare better than men do.
"Our findings, for the first time, suggest that males and females respond to high-fat diets differently," researcher Deborah Clegg said in a statement. "The data would suggest that is probably 'ok' for females to occasionally have a high-fat meal, where it is not recommended for males."
For the study, Clegg and her colleagues conducted a mice study. Earlier data from her research team and others had suggested that inflammation in the brain is tied to overeating, blood sugar imbalances, and increased inflammation in other parts of the body, including fat tissue. Those effects can be triggered, in males in particular, by short-term exposure to a high-fat diet.
They found that when males with average male brains entered an inflammatory state after eating diets high in fat, they also suffered from reduced cardiac function in a way that female animals in the study did not. Those sex differences in the brain's response to fat are related to differences between females and males in estrogen and estrogen receptor status.
Clegg and her colleagues are now working out a strategy to confirm whether the findings in mice apply to people too. If they do, there will be some very immediate practical implications for what men and women should put on their plates.
"We have always had 'one size fits all' with respect to our nutritional information and our pharmaceutical approach," Clegg said. "Our data begin to suggest that sex should be factored in, and men should be more closely monitored for fat intake and inflammation than women."
The findings, which were published in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports, also suggest that dietary advice should be made more sex-specific.
"The way we treat patients and provide dietary and nutritional advice should be altered," Clegg said. "We might be less concerned about an occasional hamburger for women, but for men, we might more strongly encourage avoidance, especially if they have pre-existing diseases such as heart disease or type 2 diabetes."
