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Healthy Living

The document discusses two key hormones related to appetite: leptin, which decreases appetite, and ghrelin, which increases it. Leptin levels are higher in obese individuals, but many develop resistance to its effects, while ghrelin levels fluctuate based on eating habits. Understanding these hormones can help in managing appetite and body weight.

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3 views1 page

Healthy Living

The document discusses two key hormones related to appetite: leptin, which decreases appetite, and ghrelin, which increases it. Leptin levels are higher in obese individuals, but many develop resistance to its effects, while ghrelin levels fluctuate based on eating habits. Understanding these hormones can help in managing appetite and body weight.

Uploaded by

boiisosig
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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HEALTHY LIVING

If there was a hormone in your body whose chiefjob was to make you feel hungry, most of us probably wouldn't be too
keen on it. (I don't know about you, but having a healthy appetite has never been a problem for me.)But if there was a
hormone that decreased our appetites, we'd order buckets of it!

Well, let me introduce you to some hormones that do just those things: the "hunger hormones," leptin and ghrelin.

Leptin is a hormone, made by fat cells, that decreases your appetite. Ghreln is a hormone that increases appetite, and
also plays a role in body weight.

Levels of leptin--the appetite suppressor--are lower when you're thin and higher when you're fat. But many obese
people have built up a resistance to the appetite-suppressing effects of leptin, says obesity expert Mary Dallman,PhD
from University of California at San Francisco.

Here's what we know so far about the "hunger hormones" and what we can do to help control our appeties.

What We Know About Ghrelin

Ghrelin, the appetite increaser, is released primarily in the stomach and is thought to signal hunger to the brain. You'd
expect the body to increase ghrelin if a person is undereating and decrease it if they are overeating. Sure enough,ghrelin
levels have been found to increase in children with anorexia nervosa and decrease in children who are obese.

German researchers have suggested that ghrelin levels play a big role in determining how quickly hunger comes back
after we eat. Normally, ghrelin levels go up dramatically before you eat; this signals hunger. They then go down for about
three hours after the meal.

What We Know About Leptin

Of the two hormones, leptin --the appetite suppressor--appears to be the bigger player in our bodies' energy balance
Some researchers think that leptin helps regulate ghrelin.

Leptin helps signal the brain that the body has enough energy stores such as body fat. But many obese people don't
respond to leptin's signals even though they have higher levels of leptin.

In general, the more fat you have, the more leptin is in your blood. But the level varies depending on many
factors,including when you last ate and your sleep patterns.

A study showed that rats that were given doses of leptin ended up eating less, but this effect lasted only about two
weeks. It seems that the rats developed a resistance to leptin's appetite-cutting effects.

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