This textbook presents for the first time a comprehensive body of the latest knowledge in the
field of neuropeptides and their action on energy balance. It contains a detailed and
comprehensive account of the specific hypothalamic peptides in regards to their roles in energy
balance food intake control and co-morbidities to better understand the patho-physiology of
obesity. The textbook includes an examination the history of the evolution of human society
from a thin to the obese phenotype and within that context how modern society habits and
industrial food production did not respect the evolutionary trait resulting in changes in the
energy balance set point. It provides a novel conceptualization of the problem of obesity when
considering the biochemistry of peptide hormones and entertaining novel ideas on multiple
approaches to the problems of energy balance as well as demonstrates and explains why
alterations in pro-hormone processing are paramount to understand metabolic disease. This text
is excellent material for teaching graduate and medical school courses as well as a valuable
resource for researchers in biochemistry cell and molecular biology neuroscientists
physician endocrinologists and nutritionists.
