Controlling your appetite is complicated by many things, such as neurotransmitters, hormonal messages, and the brain.
Many hormones affect hunger, but serotonin and norepinephrine play important roles. Figuring out how these hormones affect hunger can help you lose weight and change how you eat.
Let’s examine how these two key neurotransmitters contribute to appetite suppression.
Are you looking for neurotransmitter and hormone testing?
Frost Mental Health offers accurate salivary hormone testing through LabCorp, measuring active levels of estrogen, progesterone, DHEA, testosterone, melatonin, and cortisol with a convenient take-home kit.
The Neurotransmitters Basics
Neurotransmitters are chemicals in your brain that help send messages between nerve cells. There are two significant kinds: excitatory and inhibitory. Excitatory neurotransmitters activate your brain, while inhibitory ones say, “Calm down.” Both types are crucial for how you feel, sleep, remember stuff, stay pumped up, and how much get-up and go you get.
An imbalance in neurotransmitters can lead to issues such as weight gain. Even if we rarely consider our brain’s role in weight and diet, it dramatically impacts body weight. Both neurotransmitters and hormones control your hunger signals and how your body controls weight.
What are Appetite Suppressants?
People who are overweight (BMI over 30) can take appetite suppressants, which are sometimes called “diet pills,” to help them lose weight. They change how your brain and body feel about hunger and desire. Apetite suppressants can either make you feel less hungry or full faster after eating less. This could make you eat less and help you lose weight.
Which Two Neurotransmitters are Associated with Appetite Suppression?
Serotonin and Appetite Suppression
Serotonin, often considered the “happy” neurotransmitte, serotonin helps control mood, emotions, and appetite. It’s critical in managing hunger, making you feel satisfied (full), and cutting the desire for specific food groups, especially carbs.
How Serotonin Affects Appetite
- Regulation of Satiety: Raised serotonin levels make people feel full quicker and longer after a meal. This cuts the appetite to eat more, helping in lowering total calorie consumption.
- Influence on Cravings: Serotonin affects our hunger for certain foods. When serotonin levels are up, the desire for sweets or carbs goes down. But if serotonin levels drop, we might find ourselves wanting carbs a lot more.
- Connection to Emotions: Serotonin impacts our mood. If it’s low, we might feel stressed, anxious, and sad, which can lead to stress eating. But when serotonin is controlled, our feelings are more regular too. This can help us manage our eating better.
Mechanism of Action:
Serotonin makes you feel less hungry by turning on certain brain receptors, mainly the 5-HT2C receptors in the hypothalamus. These receptors send messages that make you feel less hungry when they are activated.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which raise serotonin levels, are sometimes used to help people lose weight by making them feel less hungry.
Conditions Affecting Serotonin and Appetite
- Low Serotonin: When stress or emotional distress hits, people with less serotonin might eat more than usual. Over time, this could result in putting on some weight.
- Serotonin-Enhancing Drugs: Increasing serotonin levels, medications can help in shedding pounds by lessening hunger and desire for food. But a health professional needs to give and watch over them due to possible unwanted effects.
Norepinephrine and Appetite Suppression
When you are excited or stressed, your body releases norepinephrine. This release makes you less hungry because your body thinks it needs to deal with the threat instead of eating.
How Norepinephrine Affects Appetite
- Stress Response: When you are stressed or excited, your body releases norepinephrine. As a result of this release, the body’s main focus is on fighting the perceived danger instead of eating.
- Energy Utilization: Norepinephrine changes how much energy the body uses. It speeds up the metabolism and encourages the breakdown of stored fat, which can help you lose weight and lose your hunger.
- Sympathetic Nervous System Activation: The sympathetic nervous system, which controls the body’s “fight or flight” reaction, is activated by norepinephrine. When this system is active, it slows down the digestive system, which makes signals of hunger weaker.
Mechanism of Action
Norepinephrine makes you feel less hungry by activating receptors in the hypothalamus, a brain area that controls hunger.
When these receptors, like the α2-adrenergic receptors, are turned on, they can make you feel less hungry and fuller, which can make you eat less.
Conditions Affecting Norepinephrine and Appetit
- Stress and Norepinephrine: Continual stress might cause an ongoing release of norepinephrine. This could result in some people having a long-term decrease in appetite. But, this same ongoing stress could make others eat more. This happens because stress hormones and hunger cues are tangled up together in complex ways.
- Medications: Medications that raise the amount of norepinephrine, like some weight-loss drugs or stimulants used to treat ADHD, can make you feel less hungry.
Wrapping Up
Which two neurotransmitters have roles in appetite?
Appetite control comes down to two important brain chemicals: serotonin and norepinephrine. Serotonin manages how full we feel and our food desires.
Norepinephrine, on the other hand, curbs appetite when we’re stressed and increases calorie burn. Keeping these neurotransmitters in check can help control appetite and improve weight loss efforts.
However, your results may differ due to personal circumstances and outside influences.
FAQs
Can imbalances in these neurotransmitters affect weight?
An imbalance in neurotransmitters like serotonin and norepinephrine could result in appetite irregularities. Lower serotonin levels might heighten food cravings and overeating, while high levels of norepinephrine brought on by prolonged stress may affect appetite unpredictably or decrease it.
Are there medications that affect neurotransmitter levels?
Medications such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can boost serotonin levels, aiding appetite regulation. Some diet aids and stimulants could manipulate norepinephrine levels, reducing hunger.
How can I test my neurotransmitter levels?
Neurotransmitter and hormone levels can be detected through specialised tests, like the accurate salivary hormone testing provided by Frost Mental Health via LabCorp. This take-home kit makes measuring active hormone levels straightforward.
Are neurotransmitter tests reliable for managing appetite?
Current studies offer valuable insights into your hormone balance that can guide dietary or therapy plans. A healthcare professional’s interpretation ensures accurate advice and effective management.