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Microblog: Fasting Series – Hunger and Fullness Hormones

Microblog: Fasting Series – Hunger and Fullness Hormones

Remember Ghrelin?

⏰Ghrelin is observed to gradually decrease after 48 hours of fasting. This means that people are less hungry despite not having eaten for over 48 hours. Remember, hunger is a hormonally mediated state of mind.

🚺What’s interesting is that there’s a greater decline in ghrelin secretion in women than in males. This indicates that women can expect to have more benefit from fasting because their hunger can be expected to decrease more than men.

🍽Intermittent and extended fasting, unlike calorie restricted diets, help to fix the main problem of weight gain – hunger. Ghrelin, the main hormonal mediator of hunger decreases with fasting, making hunger manageable.

⬇️Leptin is a hormone secreted from fat cells and decreases hunger, sending a signal to your brain that you’re full and to stop eating. This is why high fat diets are likely to support longer periods of satiety.

⚖️People who are overweight typically have high leptin but are resistant to it while leaner individuals may have lower levels but higher sensitivity. Studies are mixed about leptin and extended fasting. Some say leptin increases during fasting while others say leptin decreases. If leptin does decrease (because it’s made from fat cells), it makes sense as fasts help you burn fat.

💤With leptin, our modern lifestyles greatly contribute to its disruption, with lack of sleep being a major culprit. Try to get restful sleep. If you felt hungrier the day after a poor night’s sleep, this could be due to leptin levels dropping.

😖Cortisol (stress response) goes up during fasting but the pros of fasting will outweigh the cortisol spikes. Cortisol spikes may cause weight gain, but we don’t see that in fasting.

💡Fasting is not useful for lowering cortisol. Fasting is a stress upon the body, just like exercise. Both are good with appropriate use. Decreasing cortisol does not depend upon diet. Yes, excess stress may make you gain weight, but fix the underlying cortisol issues.

🧘🏻‍♀️Meditation, deep breathing, exercise, and sleep are all methods of lowering stress.

😴 In fact, a study shows that even a single day of sleep deprivation can increase cortisol levels by over 100%.

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