In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explain how hormones regulate hunger, appetite and feelings of satiety (fullness), along with strategies to help control appetite. I describe how the body senses nutrient levels and how the brain processes these signals to stimulate hunger or suppress appetite. I also discuss how certain foods can help curb hunger, while processed foods and emulsifiers can interfere with satiety signals, leading to overeating. Additionally, I cover how lifestyle factors such as exercise and meal timing regulate blood glucose levels, which in turn impact hunger and appetite. Read the full episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Huberman Lab Essentials are short episodes focused on essential science and protocol takeaways from past full-length Huberman Lab episodes. Watch or listen to the full-length episode at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman David Protein: https://davidprotein.com/huberman Mateina: https://drinkmateina.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 Huberman Lab Essentials; Hunger & Appetite 00:00:56 Hunger, Hypothalamus, Cortex & Mouth 00:04:46 Sponsor: David Protein 00:06:02 Melanocyte-Stimulating Hormone, AgRP Neurons, Ghrelin, Tool: Regular Meal Timing 00:10:13 Cholecystokinin (CCK), Tool: Omega-3s, Amino Acids & Blunting Appetite 00:13:26 Sponsor: AG1 00:14:30 Highly-Processed Foods, Emulsifiers, Tool: Whole Foods & Satiety Signals 00:19:10 Insulin, Glucose, Type 1 & 2 Diabetes 00:22:16 Sponsor: Mateina 00:23:41 Insulin & Glucagon, Tools: Food Order, Movement & Blood Glucose 00:27:26 Tool: Exercise & Stable Blood Sugar 00:29:38 Metformin, Ketogenic Diet, Blood Glucose 00:31:59 Sponsor: LMNT 00:33:16 Diabetes, Urine & Blood Sugar 00:35:40 Caffeine, Tool: Yerba Mate, Glucagon-Like Peptide -1 (GLP-1), Appetite 00:38:49 Recap & Key Takeaways Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. Today, we're going to talk about how hormones impact feeding and hunger, as well as satiety, the feeling that you don't want to eat or that you've eaten enough. Now it's important to understand that hormones don't work alone in this context.
Today I'm going to describe some hormones that have powerful effects on whether or not you want to eat more or less or stop eating altogether. But they don't do that on their own, they do that in cooperation with the nervous system.
The first thing that you need to know about the nervous system side, the neural control over feeding and hunger, is that there's an area of your brain called the hypothalamus. Now the hypothalamus contains lots of different kinds of neurons doing lots of different kinds of things. There's a particular area of the hypothalamus called the ventromedial hypothalamus.
And it's one that researchers have been interested for a long time now in terms of its relationship to hunger and feeding. And the reason is it creates these paradoxical effects. What do I mean by that? What they found was that sometimes lesioning or disrupting the neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus would make animals or people hyperphagic. They would want to eat like crazy.
And other lesions in other individuals or animals would make them anorexic, would make them not want to eat at all. It would make food aversive. So that means that the ventromedial hypothalamus is definitely an interesting control station for hunger and feeding and satiety, but it doesn't really tell you what's going on at a deeper level. In fact, it's a little bit confusing or paradoxical.
It turns out that there are multiple populations of neurons in there. Some are promoting feeding and some are promoting not feeding or not eating. Now, the other neural component of all this that you need to know about actually has to do with your mouth. So there's an area of your cortex, so that's a little bit further up in your brain called the insular cortex.
And it processes a lot of different kinds of information, mostly information about what's going on inside you, so-called interoception. The insular cortex has neurons that get input from your mouth, from the touch receptors in your mouth.
An insular cortex has powerful control over whether or not you are enjoying what you're eating, whether or not you want to avoid what you're eating, whether or not you've had enough or whether or not you want to continue eating more. And that has to do, believe it or not, with the touch or sensation of eating.
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