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Do Blood Glucose Levels Comport On Hunger In Addition To Satiety?

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You've heard the story before: when you lot swallow carbohydrate-rich foods that digest quickly, it sends your blood refined saccharify together with insulin levels soaring, so your blood refined saccharify grade comes crashing dorsum downward together with you lot experience hungry together with cranky.  You attain for to a greater extent than carbohydrate, perpetuating the wheel of crashes, overeating, together with fatty gain.

It sounds pretty reasonable-- inwards fact, so reasonable that it's commonly stated every bit fact inwards pop media together with inwards casual conversation.  This stance is so deeply ingrained inwards the pop brain that people often tell "I convey depression blood sugar" instead of "I'm hungry" or "I'm tired".  But this hypothesis has a big problem: despite extensive research, it hasn't been clearly supported.  I've written virtually this number earlier (1).

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 novel study offers a straightforward exam of the hypothesis, together with 1 time over again finds it lacking.

The study

Bernd Schultes together with colleagues used a clever blueprint to isolate the number of blood glucose on appetite (2).  They recruited fifteen salubrious immature men, together with on 2 occasions fed them an identical low-cal breakfast.

On 1 occasion, they waited 1 lx minutes after the repast together with infused saline containing fifty grams of glucose into the volunteers' bloodstream over a one-hour period.  On the other occasion, they did the same affair except using saline without glucose.  Throughout the infusion, together with 1 lx minutes afterward, the researchers monitored levels of blood glucose, blood insulin, together with markers of appetite.

The results

As expected, the glucose infusion markedly increased blood glucose together with insulin levels inwards the lx minutes next the meal.  After the researchers stopped the glucose infusion, the volunteers' blood glucose levels declined, eventually reaching a grade significantly lower than the command status (54 mg/dL vs seventy mg/dL).  This is the post-meal "crash" that is supposed to trigger appetite.

Yet levels of hunger, appetite, satiety, together with fullness didn't differ betwixt groups at whatever time-- either during the infusion or afterward.

Discussion

We convey extensive bear witness that the encephalon pays attending to blood glucose levels, together with triggers appetite when it goes every bit good depression every bit purpose of a suite of protective responses to hold blood glucose grade (this is called the "counterregulatory response").  However, the bear witness overall suggests that you lot convey to convey pretty serious hypoglycemia for this to happen-- something that rarely occurs inwards people who aren't using insulin to process diabetes.  When researchers genuinely mensurate the blood glucose grade of non-diabetic people who study feeling "hypoglycemic", a pocket-size pct of them genuinely are hypoglycemic, but the vast bulk convey perfectly normal blood glucose levels (3, 4, 5, 6).  Hypoglycemia is non something that occurs oft inwards the full general non-diabetic population, together with it doesn't offering a compelling explanation for why nosotros experience hungry or tired betwixt meals.

The encephalon listens to a multifariousness of signals that betoken the body's unloose energy status, together with it integrates these signals to decide your sensation of hunger or satiety (7).  Glucose is 1 of the signals the encephalon listens to, but in that place are many others, together with the encephalon doesn't appear to pay rattling much attending to the glucose signal when it's inside the hit that occurs inwards the daily life of most people.  In contrast, the encephalon pays attending to levels of leptin, CCK, GLP-1, glucagon, amylin, ghrelin, together with signals ascending from the gut via the vagus nervus (7).

I similar this study because it manipulated blood glucose levels inwards a manner that's non probable to locomote confounded past times variables that bedevil other study designs.  They pulled this off past times straight manipulating blood glucose, mimicking the glucose profile of a high-glycemic repast to come across if post-meal fluctuations at the extreme destination of the normal hit touching on appetite.

And, consistent amongst most previous research, it looks similar they don't.  How create nosotros reconcile this amongst the fact that some single-meal studies convey constitute that lower-glycemic meals are to a greater extent than sating than higher-glycemic meals (8)?  Here's what I think.  The sating number of low-glycemic meals belike doesn't convey much to create amongst blood glucose at all, but rather: 1) the fact that these studies are normally non properly controlled for other variables known to touching on satiety, such every bit calorie density, fiber, protein, together with palatability; together with 2) the fact that lower-glycemic foods digest to a greater extent than tardily together with hence tend to locomote out saccharide hanging some inwards the gut interacting amongst intestinal satiety receptors for longer.

The authors conclude:
These findings clearly beak against the notion that fluctuations inwards glycemia together with also insulinemia stand upward for major signals inwards the short-term rule of hunger together with satiety.
Bariatric Dr. Arya Sharma also had some expert thoughts on this study (9):
The lesson here, I approximate is that, but because in that place is a seemingly compelling narrative to back upward an idea, it does non hateful that that’s how biological scientific discipline inwards existent life genuinely works.
I agree!
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