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Ever
wondered why some days all you want to do is snack, yet on other
days you don’t feel the slightest bit hungry?
Under
normal circumstances we feel hungry when we have burnt up the food we
have eaten as energy and our blood sugar and insulin levels begin to
drop. Ghrelin, a hormone connected to appetite, then communicates this
to the brain, which is how we feel the need to eat.
But all sorts of
things can interfere with this process. Earlier this month, researchers
from Aberdeen University revealed that brain cells vital to regulating
appetite slow down as we age, leading to middle-aged spread.
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Researchers revealed that brain cells vital to regulating appetite slow down as we age
This,
they said, is because it takes us longer to feel full, so we eat more
than we should – and our weight creeps up, usually at a rate of about
1lb a year.
So what else has an impact on how hungry we feel?
Here,
with the help of experts, we look at what could be influencing our
appetite without us so much as looking at a slice of cake…
You get peckish when you’re tired
We all know that we feel a bit more hungry when we are tired, but the effects are more profound for women.
According
to a 2011 study by researchers at Columbia University in the U.S.,
those who are sleep-deprived eat almost 300 calories a day more than
those who get enough sleep.
This is because levels of the hormone
ghrelin, which tells the brain we need to eat, increase when we don’t
get enough sleep, so we are more hungry than usual.
However, the
Columbia researchers also noted that the women who didn’t get enough
sleep were hungrier than the men, with their average intake of fat
rising by around 30g on sleep-deprived days – four times as much as the
average increase for men. ‘It’s possible that when we are awake we need
more energy to sustain that state of wakefulness, which is why the body
may want food,’ says Professor Russell Foster, director of the Sleep and
Circadian Neuroscience Institute at Oxford University.
Levels of the hormone ghrelin, which tells us we need to eat, increase when we don’t get enough sleep
‘It seems that the body especially craves carbohydrates and sugars such as bread and cake, which are energy-giving foods.’
The problem with eating on the go
If you tend to bolt down your toast as you run out of the house in the
morning, or have your lunch standing up at the kitchen counter, it could
make you hungrier.
Eating in this way tends to make us eat faster,
so there isn’t enough time for signals that tell us when we are full to
kick in.
‘When we eat we have to give enough time for the messages
and responses from the stomach to reach the appetite centres of the
brain,’ explains consultant cardiovascular epidemiologist Dr David
Ashton, medical director of the Healthier Weight Centres. ‘This usually
takes about 20 minutes from when we finish eating. But eating quickly
overwhelms this mechanism, so the body doesn’t get the chance to feel
full and therefore there is an increase in appetite.’ Â
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