How come that we can live without food for days, but get hungry within a few hours?
In: Biology
The hunger response is driven mostly by the hormone insulin.
You eat carbohydrates. This causes your pancreas to release insulin. The insulin helps cells take up the carbs. Now, a couple hours after the meal, the insulin is still up, but the carbs are used up. The insulin tells your body to be hungry.
Meanwhile, if you wait for the insulin to decrease in your blood, it stops telling you to be hungry. Fast forward to day three of starving. No insulin in blood, not hungry!
This is actually the ‘trick’ for why low carb diets help you lose weight. No carbs in diet? No insulin response, no hunger, eat less.
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