8 thoughts on “Hunger and depression”

  1. Primarily, the main things that strike me are these:

    That it is one more article that runs to evolution and survival of the fittest to try to explain WHY something might be the case. It is almost like the finding has to be justified by an evolutionary explanation to be valid.

    The other is that they seem to be resistant to a relationship between the stomach and the brain. When a person is nervous, where is it felt? In the gut. When the stomach is upset, it effects the person’s entire sense of well-being more than if they have a cold or allergies. Good food or good alcohol leaves a person feeling contented.

    It seems perfectly logical to me that a mechanism with a hormone that is associated with hunger would also be associated with negative mood, and that if this hormone would increase because of lack of satiation for one reason or another, then anxiety and depression would also be higher…or that the mechanism would work in the reverse order. All that my psychological training leads me to say is “Hmm, interesting correlation.” But then again, I’m feeling pretty full right now.

    🙂

  2. Primarily, the main things that strike me are these:

    That it is one more article that runs to evolution and survival of the fittest to try to explain WHY something might be the case. It is almost like the finding has to be justified by an evolutionary explanation to be valid.

    The other is that they seem to be resistant to a relationship between the stomach and the brain. When a person is nervous, where is it felt? In the gut. When the stomach is upset, it effects the person’s entire sense of well-being more than if they have a cold or allergies. Good food or good alcohol leaves a person feeling contented.

    It seems perfectly logical to me that a mechanism with a hormone that is associated with hunger would also be associated with negative mood, and that if this hormone would increase because of lack of satiation for one reason or another, then anxiety and depression would also be higher…or that the mechanism would work in the reverse order. All that my psychological training leads me to say is “Hmm, interesting correlation.” But then again, I’m feeling pretty full right now.

    🙂

  3. I guess it depends what you mean by completely recovered from depression. If you mean completely recovered in the sense of not having been depressed once for, say, 5 years then I think it is unlikely that anyone here is going to say yes – that’s NOT! to say it doesn’t happen (it does) but I would guess that people who do recover completely probably wouldn’t come to a forum like this (I might be wrong and maybe there are some people who have had this kind of recovery here – I’m just basing on this fact that I don’t think I would be here if I had ‘recovered’ like that).

    If you mean ‘recovered’ in the sense of at the moment feeling that I have a reasonable coping strategy in place, that my attacks are wider apart and shorter than they once were, that when I am not ill I have a life with which I am reasonably content – then yes I have ‘recovered’. This doesn’t mean that the attacks when they do come, when I fall into the pit, are any less horrible, scary, disabling etc. etc., nor that I would ever contemplate stopping my medication or not seeing my psychiatrist etc.. – rather the opposite. The older I get and the more I think, read, hear the more I realise the truth that mental health is something which has to be constantly worked at, thought about, monitored. As someone else put it here – with wisdom – maybe ‘discovery’ is more important than ‘recovery’.

    JWP
    ———
    Dual DiagnosisDual Diagnosis

  4. I guess it depends what you mean by completely recovered from depression. If you mean completely recovered in the sense of not having been depressed once for, say, 5 years then I think it is unlikely that anyone here is going to say yes – that’s NOT! to say it doesn’t happen (it does) but I would guess that people who do recover completely probably wouldn’t come to a forum like this (I might be wrong and maybe there are some people who have had this kind of recovery here – I’m just basing on this fact that I don’t think I would be here if I had ‘recovered’ like that).

    If you mean ‘recovered’ in the sense of at the moment feeling that I have a reasonable coping strategy in place, that my attacks are wider apart and shorter than they once were, that when I am not ill I have a life with which I am reasonably content – then yes I have ‘recovered’. This doesn’t mean that the attacks when they do come, when I fall into the pit, are any less horrible, scary, disabling etc. etc., nor that I would ever contemplate stopping my medication or not seeing my psychiatrist etc.. – rather the opposite. The older I get and the more I think, read, hear the more I realise the truth that mental health is something which has to be constantly worked at, thought about, monitored. As someone else put it here – with wisdom – maybe ‘discovery’ is more important than ‘recovery’.

    JWP
    ———
    Dual DiagnosisDual Diagnosis

  5. I have noticed that when I’m extremely hungry (like, shaking or having other symptoms that seem hypoglycemic) I have lower control over the unfortunate learned behaviors of rage and/or curling up inside myself that are the usual manifestations of my condition getting out of hand.

  6. I have noticed that when I’m extremely hungry (like, shaking or having other symptoms that seem hypoglycemic) I have lower control over the unfortunate learned behaviors of rage and/or curling up inside myself that are the usual manifestations of my condition getting out of hand.

  7. Sorry that I’m so far behind on reading. How did I lose my subscription to your blog-feed, anyway?? Here, I thought you just weren’t posting anymore.

    Anyway, I think this article is fascinating when considered in light of what the Bible says about prayer and fasting. Some of my round-collared friends advocate fasting at certain times in the church-year schedule. I however have found fasting to be something that my body almost imposes upon myself, at times which are connected to my mood and my fears and my doubts. And now we’ve got scientists saying that hunger and fasting will have a anti-depressant effect physiologically? Why does this not surprise me?

  8. Sorry that I’m so far behind on reading. How did I lose my subscription to your blog-feed, anyway?? Here, I thought you just weren’t posting anymore.

    Anyway, I think this article is fascinating when considered in light of what the Bible says about prayer and fasting. Some of my round-collared friends advocate fasting at certain times in the church-year schedule. I however have found fasting to be something that my body almost imposes upon myself, at times which are connected to my mood and my fears and my doubts. And now we’ve got scientists saying that hunger and fasting will have a anti-depressant effect physiologically? Why does this not surprise me?

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