Food Cravings Is A Result Of Imbalance In Hormones Called Serotonin
Saturday, October 13th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed
It is a well known fact that there are many women with habits that can best are described as cravings or which means needing a lot of sugar, carbohydrates and even maybe alcohol, and mostly such food cravings need not necessarily point to being a disorder of eating; rather, they could be symptomatic of imbalance in hormones that are a result of poor nutrition. So, the afternoon snack that you can’t do without may be something that is bothering you or it could even mean a chocolate bar, some candy or some other food that is not exactly rich with nutritious content that is a cause for concern.
Confused Signals
According to experts, food cravings occurs when the body begins to get its signals confused which can cause the brain to want more food in situations when a person is feeling blue and when there is low blood sugar or even low serotonin and such signals will cause you to crave for either carbohydrates or sugar. The hormone serotonin is a hormone that makes a person feel good and when its levels are low, there are feelings of sadness an also depression and unfortunately for us, it is sugars and carbohydrates that provide the required release from such feelings, albeit only temporarily and this why a person suffers from food craving.
What can contribute to your food cravings is when you try and lose weight with the help of low carb diets which often results in a person becoming resistant to insulin, at least partially and it is this insulin that helps keep blood sugar normal and is what makes the body absorb glucose from the blood. Thus, insulin resistance means that the body cannot respond to insulin and starts to get hold of as many calories as is possible and converts them into fat, which means that in spite of eating less you can still gain weight. In addition, not being able to absorb glucose makes the brain signal for more sugar or carbohydrates and consequently gives rise to food cravings.
Thus, to overcome food cravings, it has been found that many women are taking to Atkins Diet or even South Beach Diet which though they help, can also contribute to worsened metabolism which is due to the stress caused when a person diets. This means that it is better for a woman to consider improving her metabolism before trying to shed weight.
There is another instance when food cravings gets out of hand and that is a condition known as adrenal fatigue and this means that when a person is under stress, or is insomniac, or has deprived sleep, it would lead to much exhaustion that in turn causes adrenal fatigue that makes the brain signal for help. In response to these signals, one may then take to eating sugar or even taking carbohydrates or even a cup of coffee, which leads to food cravings.
So, if you want to do something about your food cravings, you need to do more than deride yourself and thus not feel low all the time which will only contribute to the problem as there will be a constant need for more serotonin and thus emotional eating may result. So, in order to reduce your food cravings, you need to give your body the proper support that it needs and the best way to do so would be to eat nutritious food and even taking nutritional supplements along with moderate exercising will go a long way in curbing your food cravings.
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