Losing weight with brain stimulation?

Deep brain stimulation is a treatment that is often used today to relieve the symptoms of diseases such as Parkinson's, epilepsy and depression. However, psychiatrists discovered that this treatment also significantly helps in weight reduction.

The surprising discovery was detected by Thomas Munte, a neurologist at the University of Lubeck, Germany, who after treating a patient suffering from depression, realized that when subjected to brain stimulation, he lost 2.8 kilograms in a month.

"That my patient has lost weight extremely successfully opens the door on how to tackle what is considered a global epidemic: obesity," said Munte for the BBC.

The cause may be simpler than it seems, by stimulating different areas of the brain, electrical treatment probes activate brain areas that control addictions such as alcohol, drugs and food, significantly reducing impulsive desires and potentiating metabolism.

This combination generates that the body and the brain connect in such a coordinated way that body fat is reduced to twice in a matter of 30 days.

• Neurological obesity

The obesity of a certain neurological profile is due to the altered reward in the brain where some obese people show different brain patterns than thin people when they perceive images of food, according to Munte.

The problem is when the impulsive part of our brain is more invasive than the rational part. "Our reward system coupled with the impulsive hemisphere is the problem because it exceeds our good manners with respect to appetites," neurosurgeon Piotr Zielinski of the University of Gdansk, Poland, told the BBC.

In something that coincide Zielinski and Munte is that medical science does not yet know precisely the total impact of brain stimulation in the body, so it is hasty to think that such treatment could cure obesity and addictions. "Sometimes in medicine you start using treatments without knowing exactly how it works," Munte explained.

However, it is a matter of time for medical science to know in depth brain stimulation and address global public health problems where 650 million adults and 340 million children and adolescents suffer from obesity, according to the World Health Organization .

And citing the same international body, obesity causes the death of 2.8 million people a year worldwide.