Obesity and Metabolic Health Lab

Overview

Although obesity or diabetes appear deceptively simple to treat, they are serious chronic diseases. Decades of research has demonstrated that simple recommendations such as "just eat less" or "just exercise" are not effective in real life for addressing these diseases, even if demonstrated to be effective in research settings. Hence, our mission is to contribute to developing more effective prevention or treatment strategies for people suffering from obesity, diabetes or closely related conditions. While nutrition plays a big role in these diseases, there are other factors that interact with nutrition to influence metabolism. We investigate the interplay of many such non-nutritional influences with nutritional factors to advance our mission. We employ various techniques and assays such as molecular biology studies, body composition determination, regulation of satiety and hunger, and fMRI studies, to cell, tissue, animal or human models, in pursuit of our mission.