And this paper entitled an inter organ neural circuit for appetite suppression illustrates a very important principle that I think everyone should know about . And that's the principle of so called parallel pathways , parallel pathways as the name suggests are pathways that could be neural pathways or hormonal pathways or otherwise that operate independently of one another to accomplish a common goal . And what this paper really shows is that there's a set of peptides in the body and the peptide that I'm referring to today is called G LP one glucagon like peptide one and some related peptides .
Glucagon like peptide one as I mentioned earlier can suppress appetite . But what this paper shows is it does that by at least two mechanisms through parallel pathways . What this paper shows is that glucagon like peptide , one acts on receptors in the body in a portion of the nervous system called the enteric nervous system .
And then for everybody , not just those that are interested in appetite suppression . I think it's important to understand that these parallel pathways are fundamental to how we are organized . Another good example of this would be when we are excited by something positive or negative .
So I think these results are really interesting and really important for the sake of weight loss , for sake of appetite suppression . And just generally for the way that they illustrate this very important theme of the way that we are constructed at a biological level , which is parallel pathways .
And it's doing so by at least two mechanisms , one is within the brain and the other is within the gut and communication through the so called gut brain access . Because again , these inter neurons are communicating to the brain , the hypothalamus , by way of this , what's called the sympathy gastro spinal reticular hypothalamic pathway , you absolutely do not need to know all of that . That's a mouthful , that's enough to make your mouth feel distended .