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13/03/2019

"Stroke Causes, Symptoms, and Recovery

What Is a Stroke?

When the brain’s blood supply is inadequate, a stroke results. Stroke symptoms (for example, loss of arm or leg function or slurred speech) signify a medical emergency because without treatment, blood-deprived brain cells quickly become damaged or die, resulting in brain injury, serious disability, or death. Call 9-1-1 if you notice stroke symptoms developing in someone.

Stroke Symptoms

Initial symptoms of a stroke can occur in someone suddenly. Know these signs of a stroke:

Difficulty speaking
Difficulty understanding or confusion, especially with simple tasks
Difficulty with muscle strength, especially on one side of the body
Difficulty with numbness, especially on one side of the body
Severe headache
Vision changes (in one or both eyes)
Difficulty with swallowing
Facial droop on one side

Signs of a Stroke

The F.A.S.T. test was designed in 1998 to help ambulance staff in the United Kingdom quickly assess stroke. It takes into account the most common symptoms of stroke and is designed to help quickly assess a stroke with very little training.

F.A.S.T. Test
F means face -- If one side of the face droops, it’s a sign of a possible stroke
A means arms -- If the person cannot hold both arms out, it’s another possible stroke sign
S means speech -- Slurring words and poor understanding of simple sentences is another possible stroke sign
T means time -- If any of the FAS signs are positive, it’s Time to call 9-1-1 immediately

Strokes and the Brain

Remember the FAST test for stroke. The “T” in FAST also means the longer the brain is blocked from its blood supply (usually due to a blood clot), the greater the brain damage possible.

For many patients, the time limit to diagnose and treat such a clot is usually within 3 hours (some clinicians suggest a bit longer). In some qualified patients, the use of a clot-busting drug may be used to dissolve the clot and restore blood flow. Not all patients qualify for this treatment. There are also some risks like bleeding associated with this treatment that may cause problems.

Strokes are a leading cause of long-term disability in people.

Diagnosing Types of Strokes

There are two main types of strokes (ischemic and hemorrhagic) and they are treated differently. They are often emergently diagnosed by a head CT scan (or an MRI scan).

Ischemic Stroke

This slide shows a CT scan of an ischemic stroke, which is responsible for about 80% to 90% of all strokes. Ischemic strokes are caused by clots that reduce or stop blood flow to the brain. The clot may develop elsewhere in the body and circulate to become lodged in a blood vessel in the brain, or the clot may originate in the brain.

Ischemic strokes are usually divided into two main subtypes: thrombotic and embolic.

Thrombotic Stroke

Nearly half of all strokes are thrombotic strokes. Thrombotic strokes are caused when blood clots form in the brain due to a diseased or damaged cerebral artery.

Embolic Stroke

Blood clots also cause embolic strokes. However, in the case of embolic strokes, the blood clot forms in an artery outside the brain. Often these blood clots start in the heart and travel until they become lodged in an artery of the brain. The physical and neurological damage embolic strokes cause is nearly immediate.

Hemorrhagic Stroke

A blood vessel in the brain breaks open and blood escapes into the brain under pressure, compressing other blood vessels and brain cells causing damage and death. This bleeding into the brain is difficult to stop and is more likely to be fatal. There are two types of hemorrhagic strokes: intracerebral and subarachnoid.

Intracerebral Stroke

“Intracerebral” means “within the brain,” and it refers to a stroke caused by a diseased blood vessel bursting within the brain. Intracerebral strokes are usually caused by high blood pressure.

Subarachnoid Stroke

A subarachnoid hemorrhage refers to bleeding immediately surrounding the brain in the area of the head called the subarachnoid space. The main symptom of a subarachnoid stroke is a sudden, severe headache, possibly following a popping or snapping feeling. Many factors can cause a subarachnoid stroke, including head injury, blood thinners, bleeding disorders and bleeding from a tangle of blood vessels known as an arteriovenous malformation.

Mini-Stroke (TIA)

"Mini-strokes" (also termed transient ischemic attacks or TIAs) are temporary blockages of blood vessels in the brain. TIAs can produce mild stroke symptoms that resolve. TIAs often occur before a stroke happens, so they serve as warning signs that the person may need stroke preventive therapy.

Mini Stroke Symptoms

Confusion
Weakness
Lethargy
Paralysis
Facial droop
Vision loss

Mini Stroke Treatment

Treatment for a mini-stroke may include medication, changes in lifestyle, and possibly surgery to reduce the chances of another stroke occurring.

What Causes a Stroke?

Common causes of stroke come from blood vessels both outside and inside the brain. Atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) can occur when plaque (deposits of cholesterol, calcium, fat, and other substances) builds up and narrows the vessel making it easy for clots to form and further occlude the vessel. The clots can break free only to occlude smaller vessels inside the brain. The blood vessels inside the brain itself can accumulate this plaque. Occasionally, weakened vessels can burst and bleed into the brain.

Stroke Prevention: Managing Medical Conditions

Common conditions that increase a person's risk for strokes include high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, diabetes, and obesity. People can reduce stroke risks by addressing these problems.

Lifestyle Changes

People can also reduce their stroke risk by altering some aspects of their lifestyle. For example, people who stop smoking, begin a consistent exercise program, and limit their alcohol intake (two drinks per day for men, one per day for women) can decrease their risk.

Stroke Prevention: Diet

One of the best ways to reduce stroke risk is to eat a diet that has low fat and low cholesterol to reduce the chance of plaque formation in blood vessels. Foods high in salt may increase blood pressure. Cutting back on calories can help reduce obesity. A diet that contains a lot of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, along with more fish and less meat (especially red meat) is suggested to lower stroke risk.

Uncontrollable Stroke Risk Factors

Unfortunately, there are some risk factors that people cannot control, such as family history of strokes, gender (men are more likely to have a stroke), and race (African Americans, Native Americans, and Alaskan Natives all have increased risk for strokes). In addition, women who get strokes are more likely to die from the stroke than men.

Emergency Stroke Treatment

Emergency stroke treatment depends on the type of stroke and underlying health of the patient. Ischemic strokes are treated by methods designed to remove (dissolve) or bypass a clot in the brain while hemorrhagic strokes are treated by attempts to stop the bleeding in the brain, control high blood pressure, and reduce brain swelling. Hemorrhagic strokes are more difficult to treat.

Aspirin

Aspirin is part of a group of drugs called antiplatelet agents. Antiplatelet agents like aspirin help prevent blood cell fragments from sticking together and forming clots, and are therefore helpful at preventing some forms of stroke. The American Heart Association recommends taking aspirin within two days of an ischemic stroke to reduce the stroke’s severity. For those who have had a mini-stroke, a doctor may recommend daily aspirin treatment.

TPA

TPA can be used to treat ischemic strokes. It is given through the arm as an IV, and helps dissolve blood clots and improve blood flow through areas of the brain blocked by clots. TPA may help if it is used within three hours of a stroke taking place.

Stroke Recovery

Strokes that cause long-term damage are usually severe and/or not treated or treated after large sections of the brain have been damaged or killed. The type of damage depends on where in the brain the stroke occurred (for example, the motor cortex for movement problems or the brain area that controls speech). Although some problems will be permanent, many people that do rehabilitation can regain some or many of the abilities lost in the stroke.

Speech Therapy

If a stroke damages a person’s ability to use language and to speak or swallow, rehabilitation with a speech therapist, can help a person regain some or most of the abilities they lost initially with the stroke. For those who have severe damage, rehabilitation can provide methods and skills that can help a person to adapt and compensate for severe damage.

Physical Therapy

Some people have problems coping with their new disabilities after a stroke. It is common for people to have emotional reactions after a stroke. A psychologist or other mental health professional can help people adjust to their new challenges and situations. These professionals use talk therapy and other methods to help people with reactions such as depression, fear, worries, grief, and anger.

Preventing Another Stroke: Lifestyle

The methods previously discussed that may prevent or decrease a person’s stroke risk are essentially the same for people who have had a stroke (or TIA) and want to prevent or decrease their chances of having another stroke. In summary, quit smoking, exercise, and if obese, lose weight. Limit alcohol, salt, and fat intake and get into the habit of eating more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and more fish and less meat.

Prescribed Medications and Side Effects

Medications are usually prescribed for people with a high risk of stroke. The medicines are designed to lower risk by inhibiting clot formation (aspirin, warfarin and/or other antiplatelet medicines). Also, antihypertensive medications can help by reducing high blood pressure. Medications have side effects so discuss these with you doctor.

Preventing Another Stroke: Surgery

There are some surgical options for stroke prevention. Some patients have plaque- narrowed carotid arteries. The plaque can participate in clot formation in the artery and can even shed clots to other areas in the brain’s blood vessels. Carotid endarterectomy is a surgical procedure where the surgeon removes plaque from the inside of the arteries to reduce the chance of strokes in the future.

Preventing Another Stroke: Balloon and Stent

Some clinicians also treat plaque-narrowed carotid (and occasionally other brain arteries) with a balloon on the end of a narrow catheter. Inflating the balloon pushes plaque aside and increases the vessel’s lumen (opens up the vessel). This opened artery then is reinforced (kept open) by an expandable stent that, when expanded, becomes rigid.

Life After a Stroke

About two-thirds of people (over 700,000) that have a stroke each year survive and usually need some level of rehabilitation. Some who get clot-busting drugs may recover completely, others will not. Many people who have disability after a stroke can function independently with therapy and rehabilitation methods. Although the risk of having a second stroke is higher after the first stroke, individuals can take the steps outlined in previous slides to reduce this risk."

For the whole article, click on the following link:

https://www.medicinenet.com/stroke_pictures_slideshow/article.htm?ecd=mnl_spc_021919

What is a stroke? Learn about stroke symptoms like sudden numbness or weakness, confusion, vision problems, or problems with coordination. Discover causes and recovery of a stroke.

12/03/2019

"10 Fun Facts About Your Tongue and Taste Buds

Fun facts you never knew about your tongue and taste buds.

We use our tongues all the time to eat, talk, and swallow. Food just wouldn't be the same without a working tongue, but have you ever thought about how this amazing organ does what it does? We have, and we're going to share some of the most interesting facts about your tongue.

The average tongue is about 3 inches long.

Tongues are measured from the epiglottis (a flap of cartilage in the mouth at the back of the tongue) to the tip. An adult man's average tongue length is 3.3 inches (8.5 cm), and an adult woman's average tongue length is 3.1 inches (7.9 cm).

According to the Guinness World Records, the current title of World's Longest Tongue belongs to an American named Nick Stoeberl, whose tongue measures 3.97 inches (10.1 cm).

Your tongue has between 2,000 and 4,000 taste buds.

A tongue is covered in taste buds.
The average adult has between 2,000 to 4,000 taste buds in total. The sensory cells in the taste buds responsible for how we perceive taste renew themselves every week.

About one-quarter of the population is considered "supertasters," people with a heightened sense of taste, particularly for bitter foods and specifically a bitter compound called 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP). Another quarter is considered "nontasters," who fortunately can taste foods, but are less sensitive and cannot detect the bitter taste of PROP.

You can’t see your taste buds.

You taste buds are too small to see on your tongue.
Taste buds not visible to the human eye. Those little pink and white bumps you do see on your tongue are actually called papillae, hair-like projections that taste buds rest atop. Each has an average of six taste buds buried inside its surface tissue.

Most of your taste buds cannot be seen with the naked eye. What you are seeing that appear to be the taste buds are taste papillae, which are small buds that contain sensory nerve cells responsible for the sense of taste.

There are three types of papillae: fungiform, circumvallate, and foliate. Fungiform papillae are most common and are found mostly at the tip of the tongue and at the edges. These papillae cannot be seen with the naked eye.

The other two types of papillae are less common but can be seen with the naked eye. Circumvallate papillae are large and found arranged in a V-shape at the back of the tongue, near the throat. There are only 7 to 12 circumvallate papillae, which are round and raised. We also have about 20 foliate papillae on the back edges of the tongue, which are also visible to the naked eye.

You have taste buds other places besides your tongue.
Taste buds can be found other places besides your tongue.
It's true most taste buds are on your tongue, but there are also taste cells in the back of your throat, on your epiglottis (that flap of cartilage in the mouth at the back of the tongue), your nose and sinuses, all the way down the throat to the upper part of the esophagus. Infants and young children have even more cells that sense taste in the mucous membranes of their lips and cheeks. All these cells send signals to the brain that are converted into what we perceive as taste.

You don't sense different tastes in different areas of the tongue.

We grew up believing the tongue had four taste zones: one each for sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, but this is not the case. These tastes, along with a fifth taste called umami (savory), can be sensed on all parts of the tongue. The sides of the tongue are more sensitive overall than the middle, and the back of our tongue is more sensitive to bitter tastes.

The tongue is not the strongest muscle in your body.

The tongue is not a single muscle, but a group of muscles.
The tongue is all muscle, but not just one muscle – it's made up of 8 different muscles that intertwine with each other creating a flexible matrix, much like an elephant's trunk. It's called a muscular hydrostat, and the tongue muscles are the only muscles in the human body that work independently of the skeleton. Your tongue muscles do have amazing stamina and are used constantly for eating, talking, and swallowing. The tongue just never seems to get tired!

Taste buds are designed to keep us alive.

Taste buds have helped us evolve as humans. In the beginning, the sense of taste helped us test the foods we ate: bitter and sour tastes might indicate poisonous plants or rotting foods. The back of our tongue is sensitive to bitter tastes so we can spit out poisonous or spoiled foods before we swallow them. Sweet and salty tastes let us know foods were rich in nutrients.

Your tongue can get fat.

If you get fat, so does your tongue! The human tongue has a high percentage of fat, and there is a correlation between tongue fat volume and obesity. A study in the journal Sleep showed that having a larger tongue with higher levels of fat might be a risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea (a serious sleep disorder in which a person repeatedly stops and starts breathing while sleeping) in obese adults.

Your tongue print is as unique as a fingerprint.

The tongue has a pattern that is as unique as a finger print.
Every person's tongue is unique, and similar to fingerprints some see the potential for the tongue to act as an identify verification tool. The tongue is protected in the mouth and would be difficult to forge, and a person can stick it out for examination. Researchers are working on ways to use the tongue as a biometric authentication – a reliable way to positively identify a person.

Your tongue can say a lot about your health.

The tongue and taste buds play an important role in overall health.
Your tongue can actually provide clues about your overall health.

A bright red tongue may be a sign of folic acid or B12 deficiency, scarlet fever, or Kawasaki disease (a serious condition seen in children)
White spots or a white coating on the tongue could indicate oral thrush (a type of yeast infection), or leukoplakia (which can be a precursor to cancer)
A black, hairy tongue can be a sign of bacterial overgrowth, and can also occur in people with diabetes or those on antibiotics or chemotherapy
Painful bumps on the tongue may be canker sores (mouth ulcers), or oral cancer
If you have any symptoms or concerns about the appearance of your tongue, see your doctor.

11/03/2019

"Why am I always hungry?

Think it’s your empty stomach that causes hunger? That’s not the whole story. Hunger is a complicated process that all animals experience in order to maintain the energy necessary to stay alive. And it involves more than just the stomach.

Back in 1912, a researcher named A.L. Washburn swallowed a balloon after fasting. The balloon was then inflated using an air tube to simulate a full stomach. Did he stop getting hungry? For a few hours, yes. But after some time had passed, Washburn’s hunger returned, proving hunger isn’t just caused by an empty stomach. So what else is going on?

Some hunger triggers do start in the stomach. Nerves react to a full stomach, and can signal the brain to slow or stop eating. But much of the process we think of as hunger and fullness comes from a tiny region at the center of the brain known as the hypothalamus. This part of the brain receives chemical signals for fullness and hunger, and sends chemical responses to regulate those feelings.

Hunger can be triggered by many things. It may be a billboard featuring steaming croissants that makes your mouth water. It may be the time of day—many people get hungry around noon if that’s when they take their lunch. It may also be a matter of habit; if you eat in front of the TV frequently, turning on the tube could trigger hunger for you. Or your body may simply need calories.

Explore the causes of hunger. Learn what makes you want to eat, and how to control those triggers to avoid the harmful effects of overeating, which include obesity and related diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.

You May Eat When You’re Stressed

Stress can lead to eating binges. When stress first hits, it shuts down appetite as your hypothalamus preserves your resources for “fight or flight.” But ongoing stress can lead to binge eating. That’s when cortisol comes into the picture. Cortisol is a hormone that increases hunger, and it rises with chronic stress.

Cortisol can influence the kinds of foods that you hunger for, too. Studies show that cortisol inspires craving for high-fat, high-sugar foods. These foods have been shown to reduce stress, so that may explain why staying in a state of stress can lead to unwanted weight gain.

How to Avoid Stress Eating

There are two approaches that seem to be helpful to avoid stress eating. One is to keep high-fat, high-sugar foods out of your kitchen. By avoiding these foods at the grocery store, you can anticipate a moment of weakness and force yourself to snack on something healthier such as fresh fruits and vegetables.

Another tried-and-true strategy is to find ways to reduce your stress. Friends and family can help by providing emotional support. Getting low-intensity exercise helps reduce cortisol, and with it, stress. And meditation has been frequently shown in studies to reduce stress.

The nice thing about these two approaches is that you don’t have to choose. You can keep unhealthy foods out of your kitchen and still focus on lowering your stress. And if you recognize yourself as someone who copes with stress by indulging in unhealthy food, why not try both?

Dehydration Can Cause Hunger

Not getting enough water can leave you hungry.
The water you consume doesn’t just come from the faucet. Believe it or not, a slice of brown bread is almost 40% water. An apple is nearly 70% water. And roast turkey is made of about 65% water. It’s no wonder, then, that when you think you’re hungry, you may actually be thirsty.

Since your body knows it can get moisture from food as well as water, it can be easy to mistake thirst for hunger. So the next time you feel hungry outside of mealtime, try pouring a glass of water. If you’ve recently eaten a large amount of fiber, this can even help if what you’re feeling is actually hunger. Water and fiber work together to slow the body’s digestion and leave you feeling fuller, longer.

Insulin Spikes Can Bring On Hunger

High sugar meals can lead to hunger pangs.
Your body loves sugar. And that’s a very good thing when food is scarce. But sugar is cheap and widely available in the developed world, meaning our natural hankering for sweets can lead to dangerous obesity.

Most food gets turned into glucose, a sugar that can be converted into fat for use later. Insulin plays a big part in this. With some foods, your body has to work hard to get the sugar it needs. If you eat a carrot, it takes your body time to break the sugar down into a usable form, and your insulin responds relatively slowly. But if you feed yourself a high-sugar meal without much fiber, your insulin levels spike. The result is that you feel satisfied quickly at first. But sugar sends such a powerful signal to increase insulin that you’re likely to end up with more insulin than you need. And that’s why you tend to get hungry much sooner after a high-sugar meal.

Glycemic Index

Nutrition scientists have studied this and come up with a measurement that tells you how much insulin is likely to spike if you eat a given food. The glycemic index (GI) measures foods on a scale from 0 to 100. Foods lower on the GI encourage less insulin production, and help encourage weight loss.

Here are a few common foods, along with their GI measurements:

Cheerios: GI 74
Whole milk: GI 34
Hamburger: GI 66
Ground beef: GI 33
Peanuts: GI 14
Baked Potato: GI 85

Diabetes Causes Hunger

Uncontrolled diabetes can make you ravenous.
Diabetes makes it more difficult for your body to turn food into energy. People with diabetes either have a harder time producing insulin or their bodies don’t respond to insulin as well as healthy people. The result can be polyphagia, the word used by doctors to describe extreme hunger.

If you have uncontrolled diabetes, the answer to your ravenous appetite may well be medical treatment. Talk to your doctor about treatment options. You may be referred to a hormone specialist known as an endocrinologist. Diabetes is a serious—and potentially life-threatening—health problem. So if you suspect diabetes may be harming your quality of life, don’t wait—see a doctor right away.

Low Blood Sugar Makes You Hungry

Hypoglycemia can make you hungry.
If you don’t have enough glucose in your blood, you have low blood sugar, also called hypoglycemia. When you go without food for a few hours, your body normally responds by getting more energy from the liver, which releases glucose. This doesn’t work very well for people with hypoglycemia, though. Hypoglycemia makes people feel weak or dizzy after several hours without food.

Hypoglycemia can often be an unwanted side effect of diabetes medication. This a reason people with diabetes are encouraged to monitor their blood sugar from home. But some people without diabetes may also have this condition. Tumors can cause it, as well as deficiencies of enzymes and hormones and some medicines and diseases. If you suspect you may be vulnerable to this condition, talk to your doctor. Laboratory tests can get to the bottom of this problem, and solving it could curb your uncontrolled appetite.

Hunger From Pregnancy

Pregnant women are hungry in different ways.
Pregnancy affects different women in different ways. Some can barely get any food down, especially in the first few weeks as they experience morning sickness. Others find that they can’t seem to eat enough to feel full.

Along with appetite changes, pregnancy often changes the foods you crave as well. Foods you once loved may seem disgusting, while other foods may suddenly become irresistible. You may experience these appetite changes as one of your first signs of pregnancy, so to be sure, buy a pregnancy test from the local pharmacy. If it shows up positive, check with your doctor to confirm.

Eating Too Quickly Causes Greater Hunger

Slowing down while you eat can make your meal more satisfying.
When you’re especially hungry, you may tend to wolf food down. That may feel good in the moment, but it can leave you feeling painfully full too. That’s because when you eat fast, your body doesn’t have enough time to register a feeling of fullness.

Eating your food slowly and enjoying it can make your mealtime more satisfying with less food. But if you’re already in the habit of eating quickly, making a change can be tough. Try this: when you begin to eat, remind yourself to slow down and focus on each bite. Chew slowly, take smaller bites, and take the time to enjoy what you eat. Savor the flavors and appreciate your food. Once you’ve eaten a healthy amount, wait 20 minutes before deciding whether to have another bite. You may find that you are satisfied with less.

Your Food Simply Isn’t Satisfying

Choosing satisfying calories can stave off hunger.
What makes food satisfying? Different foods satisfy hunger to different extents. It makes sense when you think about it. If you ate the same caloric amount of french fries as baked potatoes, the fries would leave you hungry again sooner. But why?

Calories and Volume

For starters, eating the same amount of calories can lead to huge differences in the volume of food you eat; 500 calories of strawberries takes up a lot more space than 500 calories of milk chocolate. So even if they’re the same number of calories, boiled potatoes will take up a lot more real estate inside your stomach than french fries.

Fat, Protein, and Fiber

How much room your food takes up in your stomach doesn’t tell the whole story. What your food is made of also makes a big difference in how full it will leave you. Fatty foods empty slowly from the stomach, for example, but they are less satisfying than low-fat foods. Proteins satisfy much longer than fats, and high-fiber foods are perhaps the most satisfying of all when it comes to sating hunger.

Seeing and Smelling Tasty Things

The sight and smell of delicious food can make you drool.
You may not have food on your mind at all, but walking past a popcorn vendor can change that quickly. Maybe it’s the smell of buttery popcorn. Maybe it’s the sight of those freshly-popped kernels, or the sound of their popping. But for some reason you can’t stop thinking about it as your hunger begins to build.

Eating involves all of our five senses. And advertisers know this. This is something many researchers have tracked in response to childhood obesity. That research has led to some astonishing findings. One study found that kids ages 2-11 see an average of 11.5 minutes of food advertising every day in America. And the vast majority of the foods advertised to children are high-fat, high-sugar, low-nutrition foods.

Late-night television is also loaded with fast food commercials. If you find yourself snacking late at night after watching TV, you may want to think about turning the commercials off or switching up your habits if you want to lose weight.

Do Your Emotions Lead to Overeating?

Emotional eating can often pack on unwanted pounds.
Do you think people eat more during a sad movie or a happy movie? Researchers have put this question to the test. They found that moviegoers polish off nearly 30% more popcorn on average watching a tearjerker than a movie with a happy ending. This seems to show the power of emotional eating. There are many other studies like this, but some psychologists are beginning to doubt their validity.

Emotional eating is traditionally described as a coping mechanism for negative emotions like fear, sadness, and anger. But more recent studies suggest positive feelings can lead to overeating as well. If you find yourself eating more at weddings and funerals, you’re someone who gives in to emotional eating. This seems to be something nearly everyone does from time to time.

More recent skepticism has turned a closer eye to the many studies published on emotional eating. One major study found significant flaws in prior research, and suggested that people who describe themselves as emotional eaters may simply be trying to explain their irrational eating behavior in a way that makes sense to them. High scores on emotional eating didn’t make any difference in several studies looking for correlations between mood and eating, leading to this conclusion.

Responding to Emotional Eating

All this doesn’t mean emotional eating doesn’t exist—it just means we’re bad at labeling ourselves as emotional eaters. If you have a difficult emotional experience and find yourself coping with it through food, here are a few tips:

Find a replacement. Food isn’t the only way to take your mind off of problems. Try a healthy activity you enjoy doing instead, such as playing a musical instrument, exercising, or writing a story.

Call on friends and family. A strong support system can help you cope when life gets tough.

Know when you’re really hungry. If you’re truly hungry, your stomach will growl, you’ll become more irritable, and you may find it hard to concentrate. If you don’t experience this type of thing at the moment, you probably shouldn’t be eating either.

Thyroid Problems Can Cause Hunger

People with thyroid disorders may be abnormally hungry.
Thyroid disorders can lead to overeating. These disorders can make you hungry all the time, even when your body has had enough food.

The thyroid is a small gland that sits inside your neck, just in front of your throat. This butterfly-shaped gland controls the hormones that regulate how quickly you metabolize food into energy. Some people with an overactive thyroid are always hungry. Even so, because your thyroid is working on overdrive you may find yourself losing weight—usually five to 10 pounds. Overactive thyroid is more common in women than in men.

Cases like this need a doctor’s care. You can have your thyroid tested, and if you do have an overactive thyroid (also called hyperthyroidism), there are treatments available. The sooner the better—unchecked overactive thyroids are linked with other health concerns such as heart problems and osteoporosis.

Medicine Can Make You Hungry

Some prescription medications leave you wanting to eat.
About 70% of Americans take one or more prescription drugs. Some of these can make you excessively hungry. Some of the most commonly prescribed drugs have this unwanted side effect. Tricyclic antidepressants, for example, tend to cause hunger. So do corticosteroids and the antihistamine cyroheptadine. Some antipsychotic drugs also have this affect.

If your medications are causing excess hunger, you may be tempted to discontinue them—especially if you’re concerned about your weight. That’s a bad decision to make on your own, though. It’s better to bring this problem to your doctor, who may suggest an alternative therapy to treat your health condition, or a lower dose depending on your circumstances.

Poor Sleep Can Make You Hungry

Getting enough sleep can keep your hunger in check.
At the start of this article, you learned that the hypothalamus controls a lot of our hunger signals. It does that primarily through two important hormones: leptin, which makes you hungry in low levels, and ghrelin, which makes you hungry in high levels.

One study found that leptin drops and ghrelin rises in your body if you consistently get five hours of sleep a night or less. But further studies have found similar results after just two nights spent sleeping four hours or less. This can raise ghrelin by 28% and lower leptin by 18%. And you won’t wake up hungry for a nutritional meal, either. The research shows that people with poor sleep habits become hungrier for high-carb foods loaded with calories, as well as high-fat foods. The solution is obvious—get enough sleep to avoid hunger.

Drink Too Much, Wake Up Hungry

Alcohol can leave your body hungry for unhealthy foods.
If you drink, it’s probably happened to you. A night of drunkenness can leave your stomach growling in the morning. This is puzzling, because alcohol has plenty of calories; it’s the second-most calorie-dense nutrient (fat is the most calorie-dense nutrient). So if your body doesn’t need more energy, what makes us feel hungry after drinking?

There have been many theories to explain this. Some suggest that because alcohol lowers inhibitions, we tend to eat more. Others say other social factors are at play when we drink in the company of others. But recent research has shown that alcohol affects hunger inside our brains, with or without drinking buddies.

Scientists showed this using mice as subjects. They kept the mice separate to eliminate any social explanations and studied their brains (specifically the hypothalamus) after they were injected with alcohol for three days. The researchers found that alcohol stimulates neurons in the hypothalamus that usually light up when you experience starvation. As you might expect, stimulating these neurons can make you very hungry.

The first thing to consider is to avoid drinking excessively. Drinking too much brings more health problems than just hunger. If you do plan to drink more than usual, here’s another solution: eat a big, healthy meal before you drink. That leaves less room for your alcoholic drinks, and it will leave you less hungry later on.

Lack of Protein Leaves You Hungry

An absence of protein in your diet can make you hungry faster.
It may sound strange, but sometimes it’s what you’re not eating that makes you overeat. Protein seems to be more satisfying and leaves us feeling fuller longer than other nutrients. A study performed on men of varying ages looked into this. The subjects were fed meals with plenty of protein, but the protein content decreased as the study went on. Researchers found that as protein decreased, the men became hungrier sooner after eating. That was true whether these men were younger or older.

This is something to consider if you’re trying to lose weight. Although you may be cutting certain items from your diet, it may actually help you lose weight if you remember your protein. How much protein should adults be eating? The CDC recommends 46 grams of protein for women each day and 56 grams a day for men."

For the full article, click on the following link:

https://www.medicinenet.com/diet_weight_loss_hunger_causes/article.htm?ecd=mnl_spc_022219