Why does your appetite go down when you are sick since your metabolism has gone up?
In: 14
Well, for one, digesting food takes a lot of energy. Seeking out food takes even more (well, it would for most of our evolutionary history). Appetite suppression while sick is one way our bodies reallocate resources for the immune response and keep us sedentary and not expending energy.
Digesting food requires a lot of energy that your body doesn’t have when you’re sick. It needs to allocate energy to fighting off the infection.
When your body is in a fasting state, your body triggers faster regeneration of your immune system’s cells (btw there are MANY other reasons fasting is beneficial… outside the scope of this post). The studies that corroborate this define fasting as 16+ hours. Drinking water is still very important and will not break a fast.
ELI5 version: Your body can heal itself quicker if you haven’t eaten for a long time. Since eating is not a priority for a sick body, your brain does not release the hormone that tells you that you’re hungry.
https://immunityageing.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12979-023-00359-3
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2023.1048230/full
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8713419/
https://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(14)00151-9
Is that so? Anecdotally at the slightest hint of stress, including illness, my appetite rises drastically
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