{"id":228567,"date":"2026-01-08T01:20:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T07:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/bright-light-suppresses-eating-and-weight-gain-in-mice"},"modified":"2026-01-08T01:20:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T07:20:18","slug":"bright-light-suppresses-eating-and-weight-gain-in-mice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/bright-light-suppresses-eating-and-weight-gain-in-mice","title":{"rendered":"Bright light suppresses eating and weight gain in mice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/bright-light-suppresses-eating-and-weight-gain-in-mice.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Past research has found that exposure to bright lights and high levels of noise can alter both physiological processes and human behavior. For instance, an elevated or limited exposure to bright lights and noise has been found to influence people\u2019s sleeping patterns, circadian rhythm, mood, metabolism, stress levels and mental performance.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at Jinan University and other institutes in China recently carried out a new study involving mice, exploring the possibility that the exposure to bright lights also influences eating behavior and body weight. Their findings, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41593-025-02156-1\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Nature Neuroscience<\/i>, suggest that bright light exposure suppresses food consumption in mice and can lead to weight loss, while also identifying neural processes that could support these light-induced changes in feeding behavior.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEnvironmental light regulates nonimage-forming functions like feeding, and bright light therapy shows anti-obesity potential, yet its neural basis remains unclear,\u201d wrote Wen Li, Xiaodan Huang and their colleagues in their paper. \u201cWe show that bright light treatment effectively reduces food intake and mitigates weight gain in mice through a visual circuit involving the lateral hypothalamic area (LHA).\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Past research has found that exposure to bright lights and high levels of noise can alter both physiological processes and human behavior. For instance, an elevated or limited exposure to bright lights and noise has been found to influence people\u2019s sleeping patterns, circadian rhythm, mood, metabolism, stress levels and mental performance. Researchers at Jinan University [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1506,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-food","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}