Eating fat fast food can trigger pain even if in good health

Scientists have long agreed that nerve damage and pain observed in people with diabetes or obesity is related to their metabolic state. Researchers from the University of Texas-Dallas are now challenging this notion. Could chowing down on fattening food alone be the driving factor behind pain in some people?

The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports.

It's all the more reason to avoid a high-fat diet, no matter how healthy you are in general. Eating fattening food may even exacerbate preexisting conditions or hinder injury recovery. For their study, Burton and his team compared the effects of different diets on two sets of mice over eight weeks. One received normal food, while the other was fed a high-fat diet that would not induce diabetes or obesity since both can result from disease state-related pain such as diabetic neuropathy. They compared obese, diabetic mice with these mice as well.

The researchers looked for saturated fats in the blood of the mice consuming a high fat diet, and found that palmitic acid, the most common form of saturated fat, binds to a certain nerve cell receptor that leads to inflammation and mimics nerve damage.

The researchers hence encourage health care professionals to consider the dangerous effects from eating fattening foods not only in patients with obesity or at higher risk for diabetes, but in anyone who might be experiencing pain.

Reference:

Tierney, J.A., Uong, C.D., Lenert, M.E. et al. High-fat diet causes mechanical allodynia in the absence of injury or diabetic pathology. Sci Rep 12, 14840 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18281-x