Estrogens and Obesity: Lack of will or hormonal disbalance?

We can not consider obesity as a "drugs deficiency", only "lack of will" or a simple behavioural disorder.
Neurophysiological signals are strongly influencing our current wheight.
Estrogens, for example, play an important role in regulating our food intake and satiety.

Before menopause, women are protected from obesity and associated disorders by estrogens, and the sudden fall in estrogens blood level around age 52 is often associated to wheight gain.

In the hypothalamus there are two estrogen receptors, estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) and estrogen receptor beta (ERβ). Activation of ERα by estrogens reduces food intake and increases body weight.
This new research published in the current number of "Cell Metabolism" focus on estrogens activity on two different cell populations' receptors in the hypothalamus. This activity can cause wheight gain and eventually promote obesity.

Rerearchers focused their work on neurons in the hypothalamus of brain that carry an estrogen receptor alpha – a molecule that takes estrogen signals into the neurons. The hypothalamus links the nervous system to the endocrine system to regulate multiple physiological processes, including those controlling body weight.
Don't forget that estrogen receptors have been found in many peripheral tissues including adipose tissue. Their biological activity has not been completely explained.

Here you can read more on "estrogen receptors and obesity" and about the "Metabolic impact of sex horones in Obesity"

I am sure that this kind of research will help us to better undestand complexity
linked to obesity and chronic diseases and to find remedies for epidemic of obesity that is speading form the rich to the developing countries.