Do you like two-for-one deals? You’ve probably seen a lot of them this holiday season. Buy two DVDs for the price of one! Buy one cheeseburger at regular price and get the second one “free”! Well I’ve got a real two-for-one deal for you today. I’m going to tell you what you can do to decrease your hunger and help manage your weight. Heck, I’ll even throw in an improvement in virtually all aspects of your health for free! What a deal!

There was some really good news reported this past week in The American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology. With a name like that, you had better have something important to say. And, they did.

Treadmilling on Thin Ice

Hunger is a complex mechanism that is influenced by hormones, an area of the brain called the hypothalamus and the gastrointestinal tract. We may feel hunger because we haven’t eaten enough food. Or, we may experience hunger because we’re feeling stressed or upset and our bodies want to soothe that pain. Another possibility is that we may be over or under expressing certain hunger controlling messengers.

In this current study, the researchers decided to measure the effects of two different kinds of exercise on two specific hunger regulating substances:

#1: Ghrelin - a hormone that stimulates appetite

#2: Peptide YY - a protein that suppresses appetite.

No Hunger Pangs, No Hunger Gains

The researchers decided to experiment on a group of male university students. The two forms of exercise selected were 60 minutes on a treadmill and a 90 minute weight lifting session.

Each student participated in three different arms of the experiment. In the first, they ran on the treadmill for 60 minutes and then rested for 7 hours. In the second arm, they engaged in 90 minutes of free weight lifting followed by 6 1/2 hours of rest. Finally, in the third portion of the experiment, the students simply rested for 8 hours.

Meals were provided at the 2 hour and 5 hour mark of each session. Hunger surveys and blood tests were administered throughout all three sessions as well. Here’s what the results of the experiment showed:

+ Running on a treadmill for 60 minutes lowered ghrelin and increased peptide YY levels. Both of these reactions are linked to a suppression of appetite.

+ The 90 minute free weight lifting exercise also caused ghrelin levels to diminish, but it didn’t affect peptide YY levels.

So, there you have it. Vigorous aerobic exercise appears to keep hunger at bay better than weight lifting. But, both weight lifting and running offer health benefits. What to do? What to do? Exercise! Most us just need to get moving more than we currently do. By doing so, it’ll improve physical and mental health, and it just may help to keep the hunger monsters in the dark where they belong.

Be well!

JP

Referenced Material

Link - Hunger and Exercise Press Release

Link - Hunger/Exercise Study Abstract

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