What does the brain have to do with hunger pangs?

Ever wonder how come you get hungry at the precise time everyday? Or how you end up gorging on the wrong food aka Fat Diet or Sugar Diet when you are ravenously hungry and can't seem to decide what is right food from the wrong one. When you lengthen your hunger signal do you end up eating more than you would have if you hadn't ? The answer to your curiosity is very simple and precisely the fact that if you wish to lose weight by fooling your body into starvation better watch out for the backfire in the strategy because your body is much more smarter than you think. Today I will unleash the truth of your vicious cycle from curbing food or wrong food and ending up more fat than you were.

Impulse Diet - The brain controls hunger because it has the control center for it which is in the hypothalamus situation below the mid-brain and above the brain stem. It basically controls hormonal secretions of the body but also is a center for pleasure, pressure, thirst, hunger. Now what exactly does it do to make us hungry and to stop us from eating. Neurologically speaking the nuclei for stimulating hunger sends the impulse to the Gastrointestinal system to send the body hunger stimulus and in extreme cases hunger pangs. The head feels lighter and geedy because it is the decrease in brain glucose level that instigates the nuclei in the hypothalamus. The blood glucose being less for the brain to utilize it any further leads it to send out hunger signals to the body to start eating and increase the glucose level in the blood. Thereby if you miss out on the hunger signals initially the body becomes impatient to increase glucose levels and tends you to go for anything that is available at that moment. Whenever you starve or delay your meal time for any reason you will either eat high sugar or high fat food due to the desperation of your body to fill it with fuel or you will tend to over eat the right food which is also not recommended for fat loss program or weight management.

Traffic Signal for hunger - Now that we know how we get hungry we need to know how does the brain stop us from eating any more. When you are ingesting food there is a hormone called CCK or cholecystokinin  which literally means 'bringing the bile from the gall bladder', now what CCK does is it slows down the passage of the food from stomach into the duodenum for proper digestion of fat and protein in the small intestine. Once it slows the gastric emptying it slowly gauges the amount of food entering the intestine and sends signals to the hypothalamus to send out an impulse of satiety or fullness. When you experience satiety you tend to stop eating and the body makes you realize the physical load in your stomach and intestine so as to stop you from eating anymore. Also the fat cells in the body release the hormone leptin to indicate the brain to stop eating and start burning the fat for fuel. CCK also inhibits ghrelin the hormone that stimulates hunger in the stomach. Now of course you'd want to know if this mechanism of stop signal exists in our body how come we overeat and don't feel fullness once adequate food has been ingested. When you et fast due to extreme hunger or starvation you will eat large portions of food in lesser time. The faster and greasier you eat the faster the passage of the food from stomach to small intestine and the later it takes CCK to slow down emptying of the stomach into the intestine. If CCK acts upon late due to the speed and quantity of food ingested in lesser time then you miss out on the satiety que as they come later when you have over done eating already. During weight loss you are always advised not to skip meals and eat slowly this is your reason - Satiety Que. People who have high fat food have faster gastric emptying than those who have good amount of fiber and who chew their food well, because the fiber slows the emptying as well as chewing properly helps in giving out proper signals from the gastric system to the brain inorder to stop eating.

So now you know how and why you must listen intently to your hunger and satiety que to lose weight or maintain it through life. For fat loss program contact at Wellness & I.

Wish you wellness.

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