The Diet Logs

Recent studies show that hunger may make you happy.

How is this possible?

Well, when the body is low on calories, the level of the hormone ghrelin increases. Ghrelin is there to stimulate hunger, but it may also be a “stress-buster,” according to Live Science.

For instance, mice with high levels of ghrelin were more energentic, adventurous and social than those with low levels of the hormone.

Researchers believe that this “hunger-induced happiness” may have an evolutionary basis:

Getting food, especially in the wild, requires concentration, clear-headed perception and often cooperation.

If hunger made us walk around in a funk, we’d likely become someone else’s dinner. Instead, ghrelin motivates and focuses us on getting some F-O-O-D! Stat!

But skipping a meal or two won’t give you a ghrelin boost. In fact, you wouldn’t notice the hormone’s ‘happy effect’ until you’d lost about 10-15% of your body weight.

Also, it is thought that the boost could be addictive, and that this may be why anorexics often have a hard time recovering.

Nancy wrote this on July 14th, 2008 and filed it under Dieting, Weight Loss |