The consumption of oil in large amounts leads to health problems is more or less agreed upon. The use of oil has so far been linked to prominently, heart diseases. However, a certain amount of oil is regularly used around the world for frying and can cause deep changes in the human brain, a recent study indicates.
Consuming soybean oil may not only lead to obesity and diabetes, but also “affect neurological conditions like autism, and Alzheimer’s disease,” claims a study in mice by researchers, including one of Indian origin.
Researchers from the University of California - Riverside (UCR) in the US noted that soybean oil is used for fast food frying, added to packaged foods, and fed to livestock in many parts of the world. The study, published in the journal Endocrinology, compared mice which were fed three different diets high in fat: soybean oil, soybean oil modified to be low in linoleic acid, and coconut oil.
In 2015, the same research team found that soybean oil induces obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, and fatty liver in mice. Further on, 2017 study by the group showed that if soybean oil is engineered to be low in linoleic acid, it induces less obesity and insulin resistance.
However, in the latest study, the researchers did not find any difference between the modified and unmodified soybean oil’s effects on the brain. They found pronounced effects of the oil on the hypothalamus, a region of the brain where a number of critical processes take place.
“The hypothalamus regulates body weight via your metabolism, maintains body temperature, and is critical for reproduction and physical growth as well as your response to stress,” said Margarita Curras-Collazo, an associate professor at UCR, and lead author of the study.
The team determined a number of genes in mice fed soybean oil were not functioning correctly.
One such gene produces the “love” hormone, oxytocin. In soybean oil-fed mice, levels of oxytocin in the hypothalamus went down.
The researchers discovered roughly 100 other genes also affected by the soybean oil diet. They believe this discovery could have ramifications not just for energy metabolism, but also for proper brain function and diseases such as autism as well
