The Hunger Drive is what causes us to eat and in some or many cases, to overeat.

1. Understanding Hunger Mechanism
By: Dr. Terry Shintani

2. I’m going to talk
about suppressing
hunger, without
using medication or
any artificial
substances, becaus
e of course one of
the great issues that
most of America is
dealing with, is
being overweight.

3. One of the keys to keeping the weight
off is suppressing hunger. That’s one of
the reasons why there’s this huge industry
of providing things that suppress hunger
like drugs that work on your nervous
system.

4. Years ago, they had a scandal with the
combination of Phentermine and
Phenformin, these are two appetites
present drugs, and there are many
attempts at appetites suppressing with
pharmaceuticals. The problem with that
approach of course is that all
pharmaceuticals that are artificial at
least have side effects, and most of
these pharmaceuticals have some
potentially very negative side effects.

5. Phentermine and Phenformin
Side effect
Cardiac
Abnormalities

6. So I think it is really important to
understand the hunger mechanism so
that we can suppress our hunger without
using artificial means. Let’s start by
understanding hunger and hunger
suppression. 

7. The Hunger Drive is what causes us to
eat and in some or many cases, to
overeat. We consume too many calories
or we consume more calories that we
burn, and the excess is stored in our
bodies and we start putting on the
pounds.

8. Hunger is one of the main drives to keep us
alive. It’s as old as since animal life began
because you have to have 3 basic things
to survive.
 Air- at least mammals do
 Water- all living things require this
 Foods- Some source of energy and
nutrients to provide the energy for you to
function and building blocks of structural
proteins and enzymes so that all your
systems will function.

9. The interesting thing is
that no one
overbreathes.
Your desire for
breathing air is not over
shot. You breathe and
if you breathe too
much, you slow down
and you get the right
amount of air.

10. Very few people have
problem drinking too
much or too little water.
That’s your thirst
drive, which is again quite
well regulated. Certainly
we have people drinking
too much of soda that is
sugared drinks. But in terms
of real water, you can’t
see people drowning
themselves with water.

11. So why is it that we have a hunger drive
that causes us seemingly to eat too
much food, and basically start to
explode from too much calories and
have all kinds of health problems.

12. Part of the reason is, the air has not
changed appreciably, since mammals
have been created. We still have
Oxygen in the air and be breathe it in,
we exhale CO2 and the change has
been slow enough that the animals on
earth breathe air have adopted, water
hasn’t changed, it still needs H2O to
survive

13. However, when we eat food, we do have
a serious problem of people seemingly
overeating.
OVEREATING may cause MALREGULATION

14. We now consume foods that is much
different today from it was, hundreds of
years ago, when we did not have much
obesity. We are consuming much more
animal fat, and the animals have been
fattened up beyond nutritional
recognition.

15. We eat a lot of
processed foods that
include processed
sugar, processed
flower products, and
also fats and oils, I’m
talking about even
vegetables because
after all corn oil is a
processed food, it is
squeezed from corn
kernels and refined
beyond recognition.

16. So we consume so much of
these, in the old of these we
eat only a little bit of these
foods, but not to the vast
extent that we do today. Why
is that a problem? It’s because
the food has gotten smaller
that it doesn’t stretch out the
stomach like it’s supposed to.

17. Let me go back to the
hunger mechanism because
we are talking about how
hunger is important to drive us
to continue to eat as
necessary.

18. What happens is when we
feel hungry, we are driven to eat
food, and when we start
consuming foods, we start feeling
feel getting satisfied. What are the
things that cause us to feel
satisfied?

19. One of them is
calories. It’s
nutrients, amino
acids, sugar, glucose, fa
ts- all of these play a
role in satisfying hunger.
And a lot of people that
fats suppress hunger
really well, but the truth
is it’s a complete myth.
And a lot of people that
fats suppress hunger
really well, but the truth
is it’s a complete myth.

21. Yes it does suppress hunger
but it’s actually less satisfying than
protein or carbohydrate on a calorie for
calorie basis. On a weight for weight
basis it’s more satisfying because twice
the calories of protein and carbohydrate
but on calorie for calorie basis it’s less
satisfying.

22. These substances
will get into the
bloodstream, they will go
the hypothalamus and
get detected by the
lining of the stomach,

23. and these very sensors that cause
secretion of factors or
microhormones from the stomach
and some of them include
cholecystokinin, somatostatin, somer
omitun, gralan, peptide y y- all of
these are substances secreted by
the stomach or gastro intestinal wall
that help to signal the hypothalamus
that you have enough food on
board and you feel satisfied.

25. The question is, why is it that it doesn’t
work well enough to suppress hunger
before we get too many calories?. I
believe that one of the main reasons is
that we are missing the very important
part of hunger satisfaction- the stretching
of the stomach.

26. When stomach stretches out, that causes a
lot of things. First, it sense a vagal
nerve, a large nerve that you don’t really
feel, it sends signal to the brain that your
stomach is stretched out. It tells you that
you are starting to feel satisfied like when
you say that you are full, that is a vagal
nerve signal to the brain that your
stomach is full and you are satisfied.

28. Another thing is that stretching of the
stomach also stimulate the release of
hormones
cholecystokinin, somatostatin, someromit
un, gastro intestinal peptides like
ghrelin, peptide y y, both of which
suppress hunger.

29. Another hormone that actually
performs a role is that leptin, which is
secreted by fat cells. What’s happening
is that when we eat lots of processed
foods, we are actually eating less foods
but lots of calories.

30. A simple example is
eating an apple, which is
about 80 calories, you
consumed that, your
stomach feels a certain
amount of fullness. You
will notice that if you eat
a couple of apples even
if you’re hungry, it
satisfies your hunger and
that’s like 160
calories, which is not a
huge load in your system.

31. If however you get a muffin, which is of
the same size as the apple, and you
consume that- people can consume 2
muffins. If you looked up to the label of
an apple brand muffin, it turns out to
be 550 calories.

32. Now the stretching of the stomach is
virtually the same because the size of 1 muffin is
like the size of 2 apples. But look at the number
of calories, the 2 apples gave you 160
calories, while 2 muffins gives you 1100 calories –
an enormous calorie load before you feel
satisfied. That is one of the main reasons why
hunger mechanism doesn’t work properly
because it is working but it’s working on food
that is altered and no longer has the ability to fill
up the stomach and allow for the natural hunger
mechanism to work.