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Creators & Guests

Host
Mikki Williden

What is Mikkipedia?

Mikkipedia is an exploration in all things health, well being, fitness, food and nutrition. I sit down with scientists, doctors, professors, practitioners and people who have a wealth of experience and have a conversation that takes a deep dive into their area of expertise. I love translating science into a language that people understand, so while some of the conversations will be pretty in-depth, you will come away with some practical tips that can be instigated into your everyday life. I hope you enjoy the show!

00:00
Bye!

00:12
Hey everyone, it's Miki here. You're listening to Mini Mikkipedia on a Monday, and I wanna chat today about appetite regulation hormones. If you were in a fat loss phase, if you are ramping up your activity by a significant amount, these things are gonna affect your appetite. And I wanna first sort of address, I guess, the difference between physiological hunger and appetite.

00:42
And then I want to talk about the hormones that impact on appetite, because understanding the hormones that are involved in this allows us potentially to make different or better decisions in order to regulate our appetite if this is an issue for you. So first of all, hunger, a physical sensation caused by the body's need for food. So this is physiological. It's natural biological signal indicating that your body needs energy to function.

01:12
Hunger is regulated by a complex interactions between the digestive system, the brain, and various hormones such as ghrelin, which is often called the hunger hormone, which increases when your body needs food. And in addition to that, the feeling of hunger is usually accompanied by physiological signs such as stomach growling, weakness, i.e. you just know that you need food.

01:40
and potentially irritability, but that is much more likely if blood sugar is also playing a role, but it can certainly be a part of it. And this is of course resolved when you eat. I mentioned weakness, and probably a better description of that is just fatigue, right? So low energy, and I see that a lot in people who don't necessarily intend to under eat, but might go significant portions of the day without.

02:10
taking on board sufficient calories, particularly in the morning. You know, if you're an athlete and you train and you might have something before training or not, and then you move straight into work, some meetings, you might have coffee, yet overall your energy isn't great or it isn't there. And sometimes this is just because of those lack of actual calories, because you have this physiological drive to take on board nutrients.

02:39
It's a desire to eat food. It's not a physiological requirement. And that is influenced by a number of external factors rather than just the physical need. So it is more psychological and sensory driven by aspects such as sight, smell, thought or different emotional states. Like you're bored, you're angry, you're sad, you wanna be distracted, things like that.

03:07
Appetite can lead you to crave specific foods or eat even when you are not physically hungry. So you know if anyone has ever walked into the kitchen after having a pretty decent breakfast then you smell someone else cooking toast and you're like oh I could go a couple of slices of toast. I mean that's a really good illustration of appetite. So it is also of course influenced by hormones including leptin which signals satiety and

03:35
but external cues like the time of day, social settings, mood and food availability play a significant role as well. Grelin is probably the most well-known hunger hormone and it does increase in response to both physiological requirement for food, but also the psychological requirement for food. So you know, a perfect example is if you were someone who is used to

04:03
having food quite structured across the day, and many of us are, given that our work requirements have sort of set times with which we can eat, but your body does read these signals and sort of works on that usual sort of rhythm. So if you are used to having morning tea at 11 a.m., then your body is going to anticipate the influx of food and ramp up its...

04:32
ghrelin response. So you do in fact feel hungry even if you weren't necessarily requiring food. This is a time of day response if you like. And what you'll find is that if you don't eat in that morning tea block where you normally would, that whilst you may feel hungry for about say 10 to 20 minutes, your ghrelin level will drop again. So it won't just stay elevated because

05:01
it will drop down to baseline levels again. And that is just because it's anticipated food is coming in because it is used to food coming in at that time. Food hasn't arrived, but it is still gonna drop. So that's a really good illustration of appetite. Of course, I mentioned the toast before, another good one. But also whenever we're feeling stressed or upset or bored, you know, like these are all, as you know,

05:29
vulnerable times with which people are more likely to eat even if they're not particularly hungry. So hunger is the body's physiological need for food, appetite is a psychological sort of driver to eat, and emotions and environmental cues definitely play a role. The brain of course plays an important role in our ability to regulate our appetite because that's where all of these hormonal signals are being read by the brain. So

05:58
It's the hypothalamus where this occurs, and that's at the base of the brain, near the pituitary gland, and it's relatively small, but it plays that central role in regulating a number of different bodily functions, including temperature regulation, thirst, sleep, mood, sex drive, and importantly, of course, hunger and appetite. And its influence on appetite regulation is certainly complex and significant, because it

06:25
involves the integration of various hormonal and neural signals to maintain that energy homeostasis, so the balance between energy intake and expenditure. Leptin, as I mentioned, is a hormone that's responsible for letting us know when we are full and is produced by our adipose or our fat cells and it signals the hypothalamus about the body's long-term energy stores.

06:52
suppresses food intake and stimulates energy expenditure. It's released after we've had food. Now, we also won't go into it in a great amount of detail. There are people who are resistant to leptin the way you can be resistant to insulin, in that your body has high circulating levels of leptin, but your body's not reading or your brain's not getting the signal to decrease food intake.

07:21
been correlated and found in people who have significant excess body fat. Greelin is produced by the stomach and signals hunger to the hypothalamus. Its levels increase before meals and decrease after eating. So it promotes the initiation of meals. And as I said, this can be initiated by time of day and environmental cues as well, depending on

07:50
a structured eating schedule. And then of course you've got insulin. So insulin is secreted by the pancreas. As I'm sure you know, it is a nutrient storage hormone, so it delivers glucose, fatty acids to where they're required, and it informs the hypothalamus about the current energy levels and of course glucose metabolism. And you know, insulin obviously gets a bad rep because of its relationship with

08:20
glucose levels with pre-diabetes and diabetes and inflammation, but like every hormone in the body, you know, it is essential to normal energy metabolism and appetite regulation. So having an insulin response to food is a healthy hormonal response in someone's body, and it helps with appetite regulation. But you know, these hormones, leptin, ghrelin, and insulin,

08:46
Whilst they are key hormones, they are part of a broader network of hormones in signaling molecules that influence hunger, satiety and overall energy balance. So we've also got peptide YY, and this is a hormone that originates from the small intestine in the colon, and it's released after eating and it helps decrease appetite. So it acts on the brain to increase feelings of fullness.

09:11
And levels of PYY are often higher after consuming meals rich in protein and fiber, so it contributes to the associating effect. And I'm sure you're familiar with protein and fiber, you know, being the macronutrients or fiber as part of carbohydrate to help regulate appetite and hunger. And then you've also got coli-cystokinine, CKK, which originates from the small intestine.

09:40
and it's released when food enters the small intestine. So this helps digest fats and proteins and also signals the brain to reduce hunger. So it acts by slowing down the rate of stomach emptying. So it promotes a sense of fullness during and after meals. You've also got glucagon like peptide one, and you may be familiar with that given the number of pharmaceutical drugs on the market now, GLP-1 mimetics, or they mimic the action of GLP-1.

10:10
and they are for the promotion of weight loss. And they actually originated as a diabetes medication actually. So GLP-1 is secreted by the intestine in response to food intake, and it's a small intestine. So it enhances insulin secretion, inhibits glucagon release, and slows gastric emptying. And all of these contribute to a feeling of fullness and reduced appetite.

10:37
GLP-1 also acts directly on the brain to promote satiety. And of course, this is one of the areas of mechanism of those GLP-1 mimetic drugs is that they help people feel full, they suppress appetite, and so you eat less. Therefore, you don't take on board as many calories and you lose body fat and weight. Amalin is produced by the pancreatic beta cells alongside insulin and helps regulate

11:06
glucose metabolism and promotes satiety. It slows gastric emptying and promotes a feeling of fullness, helping to reduce food intake after meals. Cortisol has interesting effects on the appetite. Obviously, you guys will know it as a stress hormone and it increases cortisol levels increase in response to stress. And for some people can definitely increase appetite and food cravings, particularly for the high fat, high sugar foods. However,

11:34
For some people, a high stress environment will suppress their appetite. So clinical observations make me think that it's quite an individual thing and it may be driven by the sort of overall sympathetic state of the person in question. And understanding that for yourself helps you understand better what impact cortisol might have on your appetite. And then you've also got a rexin and this is also known as hypercredin.

12:04
It plays a role actually in wakefulness, arousal and appetite regulation. So it promotes eating by increasing the desire for food intake, especially in response to the body's energy needs. It is influenced by the sleep-wake cycle. So if you have disruptions in sleep, this is going to impact on erection and affect appetite and metabolism. There is this big interplay between all of these hormones.

12:33
to maintain energy homeostasis. So it influences both that physiological requirement for food, but also get the psychological desire to eat. And the balance and interplay among these hormones is definitely affected by a variety of factors, including diet, sleep, stress, and overall health, which really just highlights the complexity of appetite regulation and its susceptibility to disruption.

13:02
Things that actually positively influence appetite regulation are exercise. There are studies to show that people who are very sedentary actually lose that satiety signal from food and lose touch with their satiety signals. And when you increase exercise and you actually start being more active,

13:27
This can sensitize your body or your brain to its appetite regulating signals. So although we think that being more active is just going to ramp up our appetite, for someone who is coming from very little physical activity to doing physical activity, the opposite is actually true. You actually get more in touch with your appetite signals. For people at the opposite end of the spectrum, people who do a ton of physical activity,

13:57
In fact, this can also suppress appetite, in part, potentially due to that cortisol response, because the body is under significant stress. So there is, like everything in the body, some sort of complex interaction that occurs with exercise, albeit know that if you are someone who doesn't exercise now and you really struggle with hunger a lot of the time, actually increasing that activity is going to have a favorable effect on your appetite.

14:24
Obviously, diet plays a role in appetite and part of it is due to, of course, the type of macronutrient composition of your diet. Protein takes longer to digest, it keeps you fuller for longer, it impacts on GLP-1 secretion. So it will stimulate more GLP-1 after you have a meal that is high in protein. And the same thing can be said for fiber intake.

14:52
diets high in fiber, particularly soluble fiber, which is found in vegetables, some fruits, oats, psyllium husk, et cetera, can also enhance that GLP-1 secretion, and it will slow down digestion and the absorption of nutrients. So this prolongs the exposure of the intestines to nutrients, which is what potentially increases that GLP-1 release. Larger meals can stimulate more GLP-1 release as well compared to smaller meals.

15:22
So if you're someone who struggles with appetite regulation, yet you are more of a grazer, or you have a lot of small snacks and you don't really like eating large meals, trying to shift that pattern to eat more at any one time is going to potentially help increase that GLP-1 secretion and therefore increase your ability to regulate your appetite. And it's thought actually that that's because the larger meals

15:49
increase the stretch of the intestine and increase that nutrient exposure. And also the gut microbiota. So the composition of the gut microbiome can influence GLP-1 secretion as well. So certain types of gut bacteria can affect the integrity of the gut lining and the interoendocrine cells, and they're the cells that produce the GLP-1. So it potentially alters the GLP-1 release. Prebiotics, which are dietary fibers that feed

16:18
beneficial gut bacteria may also promote GLP-1 secretion by enhancing the health and function of these cells. So getting in any sort of source of resistant starch, which you will find in vegetables, in cold cooked potatoes. Inulin is another example of a prebiotic fiber. You get that from the sort of artichokes where you can sort of just find it in protein bars, you know, like, or you can just purchase it.

16:46
as a fiber itself. I don't think that's the best way to have fiber, but I know that people do that. This may all impact on GLP-1 secretion. And physical activities are really well known GLP-1 mimetic or secretion. So it can improve the function of GLP-1 and the body's response to it. So because it improves the body's sensitivity to it, it enhances the effect on insulin secretion and appetite regulation as well.

17:15
It's thought that bariatric surgery may well do the same thing. We've got the diet, we've got macronutrients, we've got meal size and frequency, we've got your gut microbiota, we've got physical activity, all of these things impact on GLP-1 secretion. There are, of course, other dietary factors which influence appetite regulation too. I just really want to briefly mention

17:45
couple of these. So it's not just the macronutrients which impact, but it's other micronutrients as well. So the vitamins and minerals, which are micronutrients, they play critical roles in metabolic processes, neurotransmitter synthesis, and hormone regulation. And all of these can impact hunger and fullness cues. So we've got magnesium, which can affect your sleep quality and better sleep is associated with improved appetite control.

18:13
It also plays a role in glucose and insulin metabolism, which will influence hunger and satiety. Low levels of vitamin D have been linked to an increased risk of weight gain, although the exact mechanism isn't fully understood, but there is some research to suggest that vitamin D may affect the function of leptin, which as we've discussed is the hormone responsible for signaling that you are

18:43
is essential for creating hemoglobin and iron deficiency can lead to anemia which may cause fatigue and increased appetite. So that's sort of an indirect way that it influences appetite control but I would say that that's not really a strong micronutrient but of course it's always important to ensure your iron status is adequate. Zinc is definitely one that's been involved with

19:12
So zinc deficiency can also alter taste preferences and potentially lead to increased cravings for sweet or salty foods. And I mean, it's a little bit indirect, but omega-3 fatty acids, you know, they're not a mineral, but they are essential nutrients, which are important for inflammation. And they may help regulate neurotransmitters that are linked to appetite by reducing that inflammation. So if...

19:40
you've got rampant levels of inflammation, your body might not respond as readily to cues of satiety. Thereby, reducing inflammation does sensitize your body much more to those hormones and to the signals of the hormones. So that's definitely something which is worth being mindful of. B vitamins indirectly affect appetite.

20:04
For example, B6 and B12 are involved in the synthesis of serotonin and dopamine, and these are neurotransmitters that influence mood and appetite. So we need adequate levels of these B vitamins to help manage cravings and mood-related eating habits. And calcium, you know, there is some suggestion that there's a relationship between calcium intake and reduced body weight or less weight gain over time. So that's something to also be mindful of.

20:33
One other one is potassium. So its direct impact on appetite control is not as extensively studied as some other nutrients, but it may influence appetite and food intake indirectly through its effects on overall health and bodily functions. Potassium is involved in a bunch of physiological processes including fluid balance and satiety, muscle and nerve function, and of course,

21:03
which really isn't as related to appetite regulation. It's just another fun fact about potassium. So a range of things to think about with appetite regulation. And in summary, I would say if you are someone that feels hungrier more often than you should, then absolutely looking at your diet quality and the macronutrient makeup of that diet, protein, fiber, and the micronutrients, which of course are involved in diet quality.

21:32
these are things to be mindful of. And although I didn't mention it more than just once, I think, but sleep in that sleep-wake cycle plays a huge role in appetite with regards to the impact that sleep deprivation has on insulin and orexin and potentially GLP-1. So you do wanna be mindful of your sleep and physical activity plays a huge role as well.

21:59
So if you're someone who is very sedentary, being more active is really important to help you regulate that appetite signalling. And then hopefully you got some sort of insight into GLP1 and the role that that hormone plays in helping regulate appetite, but potentially ways that you can in your own sort of diet and health behaviors improve GLP1 action in your body so it's not

22:27
that you necessarily have to take a GLP-1 mimetic to get those benefits. So just some things to think about, appetite regulation. These are things that go on in my head quite a bit, so I thought I'd share them with you. Hope you enjoyed it. So before you go, I have a webinar, the hierarchy of hormone support, it's a masterclass really, on how to figure out which hormone strategies are gonna work best for you at your stage of life.

22:57
That's coming up on the 7th of April. We'll put links in the show notes to how to save your seat there. And send me a DM. You can catch me over at threads, Instagram and Twitter @mikkiwilliden, Facebook @mikkiwillidenNutrition. Head to my website, mikkiwilliden.com. Sign up for that masterclass, only $37, or book a one-on-one call with me. All right, team. Have the best week. See you later.