• Ghrelin is a hormone in the body that regulates hunger and appetite.

• People with higher ghrelin levels generally have a harder time losing weight.

• Previous studies have shown that exercise can help lower ghrelin levels.

• Now, researchers at the University of Virginia report that vigorous exercise suppresses ghrelin levels more than moderate exercise.

ghrelin is a hormone in the body that is responsible for stimulating appetite and making you feel hungry by increasing activity in a certain area of ​​the brain.

People with higher ghrelin levels generally have a harder time losing weight. Previous studies have shown that ghrelin levels can increase when a person is dieting because the body is wired to protect itself from starvation.

In addition, there are certain conditions such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Prader-Willi syndrome, anorexia nervosaand bulimia nervosa MEAN associated with higher ghrelin levels.

At the same time, there is evidence to suggest this exercise can help lower ghrelin levels.

Now, researchers at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville have discovered just that vigorous exercise suppresses ghrelin release more than moderate exerciseand that this effect may be more pronounced in women.

The study was recently published in Journal of the Endocrine Society.

The intensity of the exercise affects the release of the “hunger hormone”.

For this study, the researchers recruited eight healthy men with an average age of 43 and six healthy women with an average age of 32.

Their ghrelin levels were tested before starting exercise, after moderate-intensity exercise, and after high-intensity exercise. Participants also reported how their appetite was after each session.

There are two types of ghrelin: acylate (AG) and deacylated (DAG). DAG accounts for the majority of ghrelin in the body, accounting for approximately 80% of this hormone.

Previous research has shown that AG is responsible for controlling hunger and a number of bodily processes, such as regulating energy balance and stimulating insulin resistance.

DAG was originally thought to be an inactive form of ghrelin, but scientists now know that it is involved in a variety of biological activitiesincluding glucose metabolism and the movement of the gastric system.

“Ghrelin is a hormone released from the stomach and has been shown to cross the blood-brain barrier and interact with (the) hypothalamuswhich is the area of ​​your brain that controls the perception of hunger,” Kara Anderson, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and lead author of this study explained for Today’s medical news.

“Our group had previously completed a meta-analysis of how acute exercise affects ghrelin,” Anderson continued.

Reduced DAG ghrelin levels after intense exercise

At the conclusion of the study, the researchers found that female participants had higher levels of total ghrelin and the DAG form of ghrelin compared to male participants.

Both gender groups showed reduced ghrelin DAG levels after vigorous exercise compared to moderate exercise and control readings.

“Our results confirmed what our meta-analysis suggested: that higher-intensity exercise would suppress hunger more than lower-intensity exercise,” Anderson said. “Based on what we know about how ghrelin can interact with the ‘hunger center’ of the brain – the hypothalamus – these results were not surprising.”

The scientists also found that only the female participants also had a significantly reduced AG form of ghrelin after high-intensity exercise.

“This reinforces the need for more work on how biological sex may affect exercise and hormonal responses,” Anderson said. “High-intensity exercise may be superior to moderate-intensity exercise in reducing ghrelin levels and altering hunger, and gender may affect this response.”

“We will look at how exercise intensity and ghrelin levels affect appetite in people with obesity and/or prediabetes,” she added. “This will continue this research to identify whether adipose tissue and/or insulin resistance is influencing our results.”

How can you suppress your appetite naturally?

MNT also spoke to Mir Ali, MDa bariatric surgeon and medical director of the MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA, who was not involved in this research.

Ali told us that he found the study’s findings interesting, but also pointed out some caveats to keep in mind.

“We all know that exercise has beneficial effects, and the study shows that the intensity of the exercise makes a difference,” he said. “But (there are) some limitations – a very small study, only six patients in one group and eight in the other. And it’s hard to come to really definitive conclusions with such a small group of patients.”

“It would be useful to expand to a larger group of people so that it is more applicable and try to quantify how long this effect lasts and what is the optimal time and number of minutes to do vigorous exercise,” he continued. Ali. . “These are things that will obviously be different for everyone, but some guidance would be helpful.”

With much emphasis currently on GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs for weight loss, Ali said this may provide alternative methods for appetite suppression.

“Anything other than drugs and surgery that can help patients decrease their appetite is helpful,” he explained. “The problem comes when patients are significantly overweight – it’s hard to do vigorous exercise and it’s hard to keep it off. You might do it here and there, but doing it consistently, essentially daily, to suppress your appetite is hard.”

For those looking for ways to curb their hunger naturally, Ali advised them to use foods that require more energy to break down, such as protein and vegetables, as they tend to suppress appetite more time.

“Simple carbohydrates and sugars that are easily broken down tend to suppress appetite for a shorter period of time, so we stress to our patients to reduce their intake of carbohydrates and sugar so that they feel fuller for longer,” he said. he explained.

See the original article on Today’s medical news