Appetite is the regular sequence of our daily life and thus it is eventually the regulator of weight. Appetite works in a person when he wants to eat because of the good appearance of food, its nice smell and delicious taste where as hunger drives to eat due to rumbling in stomach and feel for need of food. This is the basic difference between appetite and hunger. It is quite an important difference because it is not hunger that makes over – eat but appetite is doing it.
Certainly, a person actually may feel hungry for need of food and meet the requirement of the body. On the other hand, appetite can stop him eating even before body’s needs are satisfied. It happens in a condition of “Anorexia nervosa”. The body’s requirements are known via hunger, when appetite sometimes interferes in letting body not to get the right quantity of nourishment.
When baby is born, its immediate feeling is need for food. This need is satisfied by mother’s milk. The baby cries when it feels hungry and becomes calm and smiles, if it is fed. Later on baby learns about food that it likes. Its appetite gradually develops as it grows.
In most of the people, eating is stopped when appetite is satisfied. A full stomach tells brain to stop. Hormone produced in intestine, signals the brain to stop eating. Other signals come from the concentration of nutrients in the blood, which reach the hypothalamus of brain. There are two separate areas in hypothalamus that are incharge of eating. One of them controls eating and other regulates the satiety. The name given to these two together is “Appestat”. The appestat tells the brain that the body has had enough food, so eating stops. Fat people have high appestat. They eat more than the body needs and it doesn’t signals the brain to stop eating. It is vice versa in thin people. Their level of appestat is low. But this is not taken as reason for over or under weight. Normal weight people eat enough to satisfy their hunger.
Abnormal Appetite
During illness appestat control does not work. It is quite common for people to go off their food. There is subtle change in the working of body that simply reduces both hunger and appetite. Another common type of unusual appetite can happen during pregnancy. Pregnant women eat strange foods. Hormone changes occur in early pregnancy, which develops strange taste in eating. Eating of unusual things like coal, mud etc, is to make up iron and calcium deficiency. Generally speaking fad diet is not a cause of anxiety, during pregnancy. But sick people do not want to eat because of their temptation to taste food that is to be avoided.
Note
Anorexia Nervosa – A psychological illness in which the patient refuses to eat over long period and it is also associated with induced vomiting.
