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. Huberman Lab Essentials episodes are approximately 30 minutes long and focus on essential science and protocol takeaways from past Huberman Lab episodes. Essentials will be released every Thursday, while our full-length episodes will continue to be released every Monday. This Huberman Lab Essentials is from the full-length Huberman Lab episode, “How Our Hormones Control Our Hunger, Eating & Satiety.” Read the full episode show notes 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 For all Huberman Lab sponsors, visit hubermanlab.com/sponsors. 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
Chapter 1: What does the hypothalamus have to do with hunger and satiety?
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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Chapter 2: How do hormones like MSH and ghrelin regulate appetite?
One of the really exciting things to emerge in the science of feeding and appetite in the last 20 years is the discovery of another brain area, not just the ventromedial hypothalamus, but it's an area of the brain called the arcuate nucleus. And the arcuate nucleus has some really fascinating sets of neurons that release even more incredible molecules and chemicals into the blood.
And these chemicals act as accelerators on feeding an appetite or breaks. So first of all, there are a set of neurons in this arcuate nucleus. It's the pro-opio-melanocortin system. Now, the POMC neurons make something called alpha-MSH. melanocyte stimulating hormone, alpha melanocyte stimulating hormone. MSH reduces appetite and it's a powerful molecule, all right?
So just put that on the shelf, MSH reduces appetite. Now there's another population of neurons in the arcuate nucleus called the AGRP neurons. The AGRP neurons, The activity in these AGRP neurons goes way up when animals or people haven't eaten for a while. And the activity of MSH, the release of MSH goes up when we've eaten. Next, let's talk about a hormone peptide that activates hunger.
And this is a really interesting one because it relates to when you get hungry, in addition to the fact that you get hungry at all. and it's called ghrelin. It's spelled G-H-R-E-L-I-N. Ghrelin is released actually from the GI tract. And its main role is to increase your desire to eat. And it does that through a variety of mechanisms.
Part of that is to stimulate some of the brain areas, the actual neurons that make you want to eat. In addition, it creates food anticipatory signals within your nervous system. So you start thinking about the things that you happen to like to eat at that particular time of day. And this is fascinating. Ghrelin is sort of like a clock
a hormonal clock that makes you want to eat at particular times. Now the signal for ghrelin is reduced glucose levels in the blood. If it drops too low, ghrelin is secreted from your gut. It activates neurons in your brain at various locations. And we all know about the famous Pavlovian
of Pavlov's dogs, you know, they start salivating to the bell after the bell was presented with food, you remove the food and then just the bell can stimulate the salivation. We become Pavlovian at times, but rarely is it ever discussed what the neural pathways for that are.
And it turns out that these hormones that are secreted from the gut can stimulate the neurons to create a sensation and a desire for certain foods at certain times of day. You've done this experiment. If you are somebody who eats breakfast at more or less the same time each day, let's say 8 a.m., your ghrelin secretion will start to match when you typically eat.
And it's able to override the low levels of glucose in your bloodstream because the ghrelin system also gets input from a clock in your liver that is linked to the clock in your hypothalamus in your brain. And what this means is if you eat at regular meal times, you will start to get hungry a few minutes before those meals times.
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Chapter 3: What role do omega-3s and amino acids play in appetite control?
If we eat the proper amino acids at the proper levels, if we ingest omega-3s and CLAs, conjugated linoleic acids at the proper levels, or get them from supplements, there is a blunting of appetite. Appetite is kept clamped and we don't become hyperphagic. We don't overeat. We tend to eat within healthy or normal ranges.
So this is very important because most people don't understand that when we're eating, we are basically fat foraging and amino acid foraging. In other words, even if it's not conscious, we are eating until we trigger the activation of CCK. Now, there are other reasons why we shut down eating too. The volume of food in our gut can be large and we can feel very distended.
That's the physical reason, obviously. But At a subconscious level, the gut is informing the brain via CCK and other mechanisms when we've ingested enough of what we need. So as you can see, feeding is an interplay between brain and body, and it's some of the micronutrients and even the breakdown of particular nutrients that's putting the accelerator or the brake on the feeding process.
You are essentially trying to eat to get these nutrients, and then a signal can be deployed up to your brain that you're not really interested in eating that much more. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens.
As somebody who's been involved in research science for almost three decades and in health and fitness for equally as long, I'm constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, and I've been taking it every day since.
I find that AG1 greatly improves all aspects of my health. I simply feel much better when I take it. AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they're constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost. Whenever I'm asked if I could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? I always say AG1.
If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer. Right now, they're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim that special offer. There's one particular aspect of food that can powerfully impact CCK.
And I think most people, I'm guessing 99.9% of people out there are not aware of this. and it has to do with highly processed foods. There's a lot of reasons why one would want to avoid highly processed foods.
In fact, if you're interested in that topic and the history of whole foods transitioning to highly processed foods in this country, I highly recommend you listen to a YouTube video by Dr. Robert Lustig. He's at University of California, San Francisco.
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Chapter 4: Why should you avoid highly processed foods and emulsifiers?
We're going to talk about all of that. But for most people that don't have diabetes, the important thing is to manage glucose, to keep it in that euglycemic range. And there are a number of different ways to do that. Some of them are behavioral, some of them are diet-based, and some of them are based on supplements or prescription drugs. So let's talk about those now.
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Matina. Matina makes loose leaf and ready to drink yerba mate. Now, I've often discussed yerba mate's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, the ways it can improve digestion and its possible neuroprotective effects. It's for all those reasons that yerba mate is my preferred source of caffeine.
I also drink yerba mate because I simply love the taste. And while there are a lot of different choices out there of yerba mate drinks, my personal favorite far and away is Matina. It's made of the highest quality ingredients, which gives it a really rich, but also a really clean taste. So none of that tannic aftertaste.
In fact, given how absolutely amazing Matina tastes and their commitment to quality, I decided to become a part owner in the company last year. In particular, I love the taste of Matina's canned zero sugar cold brew yerba mate, which I personally helped develop. I drink at least three cans of those a day now. I also love their loose leaf matina, which I drink every morning from the gourd.
So I add hot water and sip on that thing and I'll have some cold brews throughout the morning and early afternoon. I find it gives me terrific energy all day long and I'm able to fall asleep perfectly well at night, no problems. If you'd like to try Matina, you can go to drinkmatina.com slash Huberman.
Right now, Matina is offering a free one pound bag of loose leaf yerba mate tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their cold brew yerba mate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash Huberman to get a free bag of yerba mate loose leaf tea and free shipping. So if you eat, and in particular, if you eat carbohydrates, blood glucose goes up.
If you eat fats, blood glucose goes up to a far less degree. And if you eat proteins, depending on the protein, it'll eventually be broken down for fuel or assembled into amino acid chains for protein synthesis and repair of other tissues and bodily functions. glucose goes up and then is kept in range. When you are hungry, you secrete a different hormone and that's called glucagon.
And glucagon's main role is to pull stores of energy out of the liver and the muscles. And once those are depleted, you'll eventually tap into body fat. So the two kind of push and pull systems that we're going to think about now to keep this simple is that you have the insulin system managing glucose
and you've got the glucagon system pulling energy out of your liver and muscles for immediate fuel. And eventually you'll pull fuel out of body fat if you've been active for a very long time and all your glycogen stores are depleted or close to depleted. So what does this all mean? Let's say you had a meal and that meal consisted of rice, a carbohydrate,
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Chapter 5: How do lifestyle factors influence hunger and blood glucose?
Basically what you're trying to avoid are steep increases in blood sugar. And the order that you eat foods has an enormous impact on that. The other thing that has an enormous impact on how long and shallow or how steep that curve of glucose is, depends on whether or not you recently were moving, are moving, or start moving after you eat.
So it turns out that your blood glucose levels can be modulated very, very powerfully by movement. If you did any kind of intense exercise or even just walking or jogging or cycling, anything before you eat, your blood glucose levels will be dampened somewhat. And even just moving after a meal, even just a calm, easy walk can really adjust the ways for the better.
The other thing I'd like to address for a moment is this notion of stable blood sugar versus labile blood sugar or unstable blood sugar. Some people just have stable blood sugar. They can go long periods of time without eating and feel fine. Other people get really shaky, really jittery and or when they do eat, they feel really keyed up.
Sometimes they'll even sweat, but whether or not your blood sugar is all over the place or whether or not stable, can be impacted by a number of things. One of those things is exercise.
So these days there's a lot of interest in what they call zone two cardio, which is that kind of steady state cardio where you can just nasal breathe, even at pretty high output, where you could maybe have a conversation. Zone two cardio that last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or sometimes more for you endurance athletes can create positive effects on blood sugar regulation such that
people can sit down and enjoy whatever it is, the hot fudge sundae or whatever the high sugar content food is, and blood glucose management is so good, your insulin sensitivity is so high, which is a good thing, that you can manage that blood glucose to the point where It doesn't really make you shaky. It doesn't disrupt you.
Basically doing zone two cardio for 30 to 60 minutes, three to four times a week makes your blood sugar really stable. And that's an attractive thing for a variety of reasons. On the flip side, high intensity interval training or resistance training, AKA weight training, are very good at stimulating the various molecules that promote repackaging of glycogen.
So sprints, heavy weightlifting, circuit type weightlifting, provided there's some reasonable degree of resistance, those are going to trigger all sorts of mechanisms that are going to to shuttle glucose back into glycogen, convert into glycogen into muscle tissue, restock the liver, et cetera.
And I should mention that one of the advantages of high intensity interval training or weightlifting of various kinds is that it also, it causes long standing increases in basal metabolic rate. Now I'd like to turn to prescription drugs that regulate the hormone systems, controlling feeding and satiety.
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