Obestatin
There has been much work over the years related to human obesity. The field is crowded with reports and studies that are aimed at finding out just how human beings can be helped with problem of excessive and dangerous weight gain. Finding out more about the hormones that regulate or inhibit weight gain has massive implications for the health f the world’s population as a whole. However, for a number of years, there has been a sense of stagnation in this area.
When the appetite inducing hormone ghrelin was discovered a number of years ago, scientists the world over breathed a sigh of relief. It was important to the world of medicine that weight regulation in the world of hormones was mastered as a subject, and ghrelin seemed to be the final frontier. Here was a hormone that had been proved to play a major part in the regulation of weight in the human body.
However, there is now a new player on the scene. Obestatin is a relatively new hormone, and has been linked to the regulation of appetite in humans. United States health officials believe there to be 65% of the American populace over 20 years old who fall into the obese category for weight. This is obviously unsustainable. The discovery of Obestatin has changed the way scientists look at obesity, and how it might be managed and reduced.
An appetite suppressing hormone called leptin in 1994 brought new hope to the fight against obesity. Basically, developing more resources of such a hormone in the human body should reduce the appetite in people whose weight gain is becoming dangerous, or so the theory goes. The most noble of intentions has not brought results. There is still a long way to go before scientists can conclusively say that they have found a way to use hormones to suppress appetite.
Whether or not obestatin can be used in such a way is still the subject of much debate. The scientists who have been involved in the study of the hormone have so far not brought about any conclusive evidence that obestatin can be used in the fight against obesity. Some scientists have thought about the possibility of combining the hormone with others, in effect creating a ‘super hormone’ that can be used against the human appetite. As of yet, there has been no further progress made on such an initiative.
For those people who find it a difficult thing to manage their appetite, the discovery of hormones such as ghrelin and obestatin brings some hope. But perhaps it will remain just a glimmer of hope. Until scientists and medical officials can conclusively say that the hormones can be safely used as a means of efficiently handling the human appetite, the jury is still well and truly out.