Your Diet Can Boost Brain Function: The Link Between Orexin Cells And Food Decoded

Orexin cells or hypocretin are the key modulators of sleep and wakefulness cycle in the brain of the human body. Experts discover the link between food and orexin cells and how that affects human behavior.

When was the last time your racing thoughts kept you from sleeping, or you skipped your exercise routine? While we take pride in being the masters of our own free will, in practice we often fail to achieve even the simple things in life that are important for our wellbeing. Willpower alone is rarely sufficient to flip our brains between active and passive states. Indeed, about one in four people suffer from insomnia for this reason. The brain signals responsible for this operate in our subconscious.

Orexin Cells: What Are Those?

The deepest areas of our brain, the hypothalamus, is responsible for generating orexin or hypocretin, which is known to send the critical wake up signal to our brain. In the past two decades, scientists have learned a lot about how these subconscious signals work. The orexin cells were discovered in 1998. This has transformed the research on brain and brain related problems. It was found that a loss of orexin cells can cause sleep disorders such as narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is a fragmentation of the brain's state, characterized by abnormally frequent transitions between brain states, and an inability to sustain neither sleep nor wakefulness. Conversely, orexin cell stimulation produces wakefulness and increases physical activity.

Scientists are however still not clear about how these orexin cells operate. Some say that it operates like our heart and other organs. A person is not consciously aware of what the orexin cells are doing and, therefore, does not have the power to change them. In this study, scientists have tried to explore the area of how to gain a better control of the orexin cells behavior and thereby also control human consciousness. The state of our brain can be controlled by our conscious, everyday choices and especially through what we choose to eat.

Role Of Diet In Keeping Orexin Cells Active

The intensity of orexin cells signals can be tuned or influenced by diet. Orexin cells are uniquely sensitive to changes in the body's levels of certain dietary macronutrients, such as sugar and some amino acids. The potent inhibitor for orexin cells is glucose. When the level of glucose rises in the body, the cells stop generating their wake-promoting signals. In contrast, dietary non-essential amino acids i.e., those that our bodies can make are potent stimulators of orexin cells. Most foods containing proteins, such as eggs or tofu, are also responsible in keeping these cells alert.

That is how; if our orexin cells are provided enough stimulants to stay awake, our brain will also be awake. Experts also say that people who do not consume enough food might suffer from conditions like narcolepsy.