Hormonal
Brain glucose-sensing neurons (GR and GS neurons) regulate energy homeostasis by modulating sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activity in response to glucose levels.
Your brain uses glucose levels as a signal to adjust your body's energy expenditure via the nervous system. When glucose rises, specific neurons (GR) and fall, others (GS) change their firing rates to regulate sympathetic and parasympathetic output. This is a key part of how your body maintains energy balance.
Both GR and GS neurons respond to, and participate in, the changes in food intake, sympathoadrenal activity, and energy expenditure produced by extremes of hyper- and hypoglycemia.
Why this rating
Review paper summarizing electrophysiological and anatomical studies.
Source
Brain glucose sensing and body energy homeostasis: role in obesity and diabetes
Barry E. Levin et al. · American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology · 1999
DOI 10.1152/ajpregu.1999.276.5.r1223
More from this paper
- In diet-induced obesity, brain glucose-sensing neurons (specifically in the arcuate nucleus and ventromedial hypothalamus) become hyporesponsive to glucose, leading to defective sympathetic regulation and contributing to metabolic efficiency and obesity development.Moderate
- Insulin-dependent diabetes (IDDM) and repeated hypoglycemia impair brain glucose sensing, leading to defective counterregulatory responses and hypoglycemia unawareness.Moderate
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