Oxytocin: The love hormone may help you lose weight

If the findings of a new study are to be believed, our love lives have an impact on obesity. Don’t believe us? Read on.
Turns out, it isn’t as simplistic as it sounds
The study says oxytocin, the hormone that plays an essential role in social interaction, trust, anxiety, sexual reproduction, childbirth, and mother-infant bonding has an effect on the brain that helps control our eating behavior. The study says that it would further like to explore the possibility of using the hormone as a treatment for obesity.
People sometimes refer to oxytocin as the love hormone. It increases the contraction of the uterus during labor and stimulates milk production.
This hormone weakens the brain's reward signals for food, and it affects our eating behavior and metabolism. The research says that this hormone also alters how obese people process images of high-calorie foods.
Previous research has shown that oxytocin nasal spray, which is yet to be approved in the US, interacts with brain circuits that play a role in eating behavior.
"Knowing how the drug exerts its effects is a critical step toward establishing oxytocin as a drug treatment for overeating and obesity," says Dr. Liya Kerem, the study's lead investigator, who is a pediatric endocrinologist at MassGeneral Hospital for Children and a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, both in Boston.
“This study is exciting because it shows that oxytocin modulates the pathways in the brain specifically during their responses to highly palatable, rewarding foods."
Dr. Kerem explained that individuals with obesity have "abnormally hyperactivated brain reward areas" when they look at images of high-calorie foods, even when they are full. This fact explains why we may be able to use medications such as oxytocin to treat obesity.