The biggest obstacle to the successful treatment of obesity is the tendency to regain weight lost through diet and exercise, and evidence is increasing that this could be due to physiological causes.
The hypothalamus is a small, pearl-sized area of the brain that controls a large number of body functions, including body weight, which is regulated by a complex set of interactions between hormones and neurons or brain cells. There is a growing belief among scientists that these interactions, in most obese people, "conspire" to prevent permanent weight loss, and the underlying mechanisms are increasingly becoming the object of intense investigation by neuroendocrinologists.
