How Can Food Affect Your Brain? – Chromatography Investigates

Ever wondered why it’s so hard to stop eating those fatty foods? Well now we might have the answer thanks to chromatography and animal biotechnologist Asha Abraham. Her investigation into so-called ‘metabolic syndrome’ has revealed some interesting changes in the brain as a result of a changed diet. Read on to find out what food does to your brain.

Metabolic syndrome

Abraham became interested in metabolic syndrome because of its growing prevalence. It’s thought to affect nearly a third of the world’s population — and knows no boundaries. While it used to be associated with older people, it has slowly moved down through the age scale and is now seen even in teens and children.

Weight gain in the abdominal region, cardiovascular issues, high-fat profile, blood sugar and high blood pressure are all related to metabolic syndrome. It’s a group of symptoms that interlink — as they all feed into each other making the overall effect worse than might be anticipated. But it’s only recently that they have been considered this way. Because of the new way of viewing the problem, Abraham’s project looked for a common link between the symptoms — and found one.

Replicating the diet

To investigate the issues surrounding metabolic syndrome, Abraham altered the diet of mice. But instead of the tried and tested high fat method, she used a diet high in simple carbs which more closely reflects the way humans are developing the symptoms. She monitored associated changes like BMI and heart rate — but found the most interesting change was in the brain of the mice. The brains of affected mice were removed and analysed, and using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), she was able to separate the chemicals in the brains. Her findings?

Affected mice had increased levels of norepinephrine and decreased levels of dopamine and serotonin. These chemicals are neurotransmitters that play a key part in how our brain works. Changes to their levels can affect the way our nervous system works. Essentially what this means is that our brains can no longer tell us to stop eating. It’s a vicious circle, because this leads to more binge eating and addiction to fatty foods, in turn causing more of the same effects on the brain — a devastating feedback loop.

Separating chemicals

In this case HPLC has been used to separate the chemicals found in the brain, but it can also be used for drug testing. In the article, Important Considerations for Repeatable HPLC Assays of Chiral Compounds the ability to separate and analyse different enantiomers of the drug thalidomide are discussed.

In some compounds the chiral nature of the compounds is insignificant — but sometimes they can be devastating. It was the enantiomeric impurity in thalidomide that led to the huge increase of birth defects when it was first used to treat morning sickness. Knowing how to analyse for possible chiral compounds is an important part of a chemist’s arsenal.