HUNGER DRIVE

Understanding Hunger Mechanism

By: Dr. Terry Shintani

I’m going to talk about suppressing hunger, without using medication or any artificial substances, because of course one of the great issues that most of America is dealing with, is being overweight.

One of the keys to keeping the weight off is suppressing hunger. That’s one of the reasons why there’s this huge industry of providing things that suppress hunger like drugs that work on your nervous system.

Years ago, they had a scandal with the combination of Phentermine and Phenformin, these are two appetites present drugs, and there are many attempts at appetites suppressing with pharmaceuticals. The problem with that approach of course is that all pharmaceuticals that are artificial at least have side effects, and most of these pharmaceuticals have some potentially very negative side effects.

Phentermine and Phenformin

Side effect

Cardiac Abnormalities

So I think it is really important to understand the hunger mechanism so that we can suppress our hunger without using artificial means. Let’s start by understanding hunger and hunger suppression.

The Hunger Drive is what causes us to eat and in some or many cases, to overeat. We consume too many calories or we consume more calories that we burn, and the excess is stored in our bodies and we start putting on the pounds.

Hunger as a Natural Phenomenon

Hunger is one of the main drives to keep us alive. It’s as old as since animal life began because you have to have 3 basic things to survive.

Air- at least mammals do Water- all living things require this Foods- Some source of energy and

nutrients to provide the energy for you to function and building blocks of structural proteins and enzymes so that all your systems will function.

The interesting thing is that no one overbreathes. Your desire for breathing air is not over shot. You breathe and if you breathe too much, you slow down and you get the right amount of air.

Very few people have problem drinking too much or too little water. That’s your thirst drive, which is again quite well regulated. Certainly we have people drinking too much of soda that is sugared drinks. But in terms of real water, you can’t see people drowning themselves with water.

So why is it that we have a hunger drive that causes us seemingly to eat too much food, and basically start to explode from too much calories and have all kinds of health problems.

Part of the reason is, the air has not changed appreciably, since mammals have been created. We still have Oxygen in the air and be breathe it in, we exhale CO2 and the change has been slow enough that the animals on earth breathe air have adopted, water hasn’t changed, it still needs H2O to survive

However, when we eat food, we do have a serious problem of people seemingly overeating. OVEREATING may cause MALREGULATION

We now consume foods that is much different today from it was, hundreds of years ago, when we did not have much obesity. We are consuming much more animal fat, and the animals have been fattened up beyond nutritional recognition.

We eat a lot of processed foods that include processed sugar, processed flower products, and also fats and oils, I’m talking about even vegetables because after all corn oil is a processed food, it is squeezed from corn kernels and refined beyond recognition.

So we consume so much of these, in the old of these we eat only a little bit of these foods, but not to the vast extent that we do today. Why is that a problem? It’s because the food has gotten smaller that it doesn’t stretch out the stomach like it’s supposed to.

Let me go back to the hunger mechanism because we are talking about how hunger is important to drive us to continue to eat as necessary.

What happens is when we feel hungry, we are driven to eat food, and when we start consuming foods, we start feeling feel getting satisfied. What are the things that cause us to feel satisfied?

One of them is calories. It’s nutrients, amino acids, sugar, glucose, fats- all of these play a role in satisfying hunger. And a lot of people that fats suppress hunger really well, but the truth is it’s a complete myth. And a lot of people that fats suppress hunger really well, but the truth is it’s a complete myth.

Yes it does suppress hunger but it’s actually less satisfying than protein or carbohydrate on a calorie for calorie basis. On a weight for weight basis it’s more satisfying because twice the calories of protein and carbohydrate but on calorie for calorie basis it’s less satisfying.

These substances will get into the bloodstream, they will go the hypothalamus and get detected by the lining of the stomach,

and these very sensors that cause secretion of factors or microhormones from the stomach and some of them include cholecystokinin, somatostatin, someromitun, gralan, peptide y y- all of these are substances secreted by the stomach or gastro intestinal wall that help to signal the hypothalamus that you have enough food on board and you feel satisfied.

The question is, why is it that it doesn’t work well enough to suppress hunger before we get too many calories?. I believe that one of the main reasons is that we are missing the very important part of hunger satisfaction- the stretching of the stomach.

When stomach stretches out, that causes a lot of things. First, it sense a vagal nerve, a large nerve that you don’t really feel, it sends signal to the brain that your stomach is stretched out. It tells you that you are starting to feel satisfied like when you say that you are full, that is a vagal nerve signal to the brain that your stomach is full and you are satisfied.

Another thing is that stretching of the stomach also stimulate the release of hormones cholecystokinin, somatostatin, someromitun, gastro intestinal peptides like ghrelin, peptide y y, both of which suppress hunger.

Another hormone that actually performs a role is that leptin, which is secreted by fat cells. What’s happening is that when we eat lots of processed foods, we are actually eating less foods but lots of calories.

A simple example is eating an apple, which is about 80 calories, you consumed that, your stomach feels a certain amount of fullness. You will notice that if you eat a couple of apples even if you’re hungry, it satisfies your hunger and that’s like 160 calories, which is not a huge load in your system.

If however you get a muffin, which is of the same size as the apple, and you consume that- people can consume 2 muffins. If you looked up to the label of an apple brand muffin, it turns out to be 550 calories.

Now the stretching of the stomach is virtually the same because the size of 1 muffin is like the size of 2 apples. But look at the number of calories, the 2 apples gave you 160 calories, while 2 muffins gives you 1100 calories – an enormous calorie load before you feel satisfied. That is one of the main reasons why hunger mechanism doesn’t work properly because it is working but it’s working on food that is altered and no longer has the ability to fill up the stomach and allow for the natural hunger mechanism to work.

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