You may not have known, but your gut ‘tastes’ what you eat. Through the use of similar signalling mechanisms that your tongue uses, your gut can discern bitter, sweet, fat and savoury flavours, which has led researchers, who reported in Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism, to targeting these taste sensors in the gut in order to tackle obesity and diabetes.
When your gut tastes certain foods, it releases hormones to control satiety and blood sugar levels. Then, sensors or receptors in your stomach respond to the excess intake of food. The team of researchers, led by Dr Sara Janssen and Dr Inge Depoortere, of the Translational Research Center for Gastrointestinal Disorders at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, say that when this process malfunctions, it could lead to the development of obesity, diabetes, and related metabolic conditions.
Dr Depoortere explains, ‘The effectiveness of bariatric surgery to cause profound weight loss and a decrease in the prevalence of diabetes and other obesity-related conditions is not completely understood, but it may involve changes in the release of gut hormones’. According to the team, there is growing evidence which suggests that it might be possible to treat or prevent obesity and related conditions by selectively targeting the taste receptors on your cells. This may cause your gut to release hormones that signal a feeling of fullness, which will trick your body into thinking that it has eaten.
Therefore, Dr Depoortere and her colleague hope that ‘Targeting extra-oral taste receptors that affect the release of hormones that control food intake may offer a new road to mimic these effects in a non-surgical manner.’ However, before this can be achieved, there needs to be further research done into the gut taste receptors, especially with regard to which ones might be effective drug targets for the prevention and treatment of obesity and diabetes.
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