Although we weren’t expecting to see stroke-like changes in the hypothalami of people with obesity, we thought it was worth looking for a subtler version of the same scarring—similar to what we found in rats and mice. And that’s exactly what we saw. Schur’s analysis showed that the more signs of damage we found in a person’s hypothalamus, the more likely he was to have obesity. What’s more, this effect was once again located in the part of the hypothalamus that harbors NPY and POMC neurons. “The scariest implication,” explains Schur, “is that the food we eat may cause damage in areas of the
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