London, Feb 8 (ANI): A study has found that going on a diet could trigger a lifetime of overeating and even cause changes to the brain.

According to scientists, people who go on a diet and deprive themselves cause brain changes that make it impossible for them to stay off the chocolate, reports the Daily Express.

Rossella Ventura from the Santa Lucia Foundation in Rome, which conducted the research, believes that a key part of the brain that controls our feelings of reward is altered in long-term dieters.

She says that the stress of going on a diet affects the release of a hormone called norepinephrine, which makes dieters hunt for food.

But by switching off this hormone the desperate desire for food could be controlled.

The discovery could lead to the development of new drugs to block these changes that trigger bingeing, claims the study published in the journal BMC Neuroscience. (ANI)