Appetite: Who let the dog out?

My boss has a new dog. She is a bulldog and is a great addition to the place. She spends most of her time prone, except for those times when her nose is to the ground looking for eats. She puts in an awful lot of effort into eating, snorting her way through her meal. (Actually, I think she is inhaling like a vacuum.) She has severe under bite so, she has to work extra hard. When she is done eating she has to lay down for a bit. Sound familiar?

Sedentary bulldogs run the risk of becoming overweight from over feeding. Like bulldogs we can be just as sedentary and this can lead to an increased risk of health issues. Bulldogs eat because it gives them pleasure. Humans have more complex reasons for eating and pleasure is just one of many. Bulldogs have humans who determine what and when they eat (discounting children who drop food). Since a bulldog is so persistent and has that soulful "poor me" look it can be difficult not to give in and feed them a “treat.” We have food guardians only when we are small children (discounting children who manage to control their parents). However, unlike a bulldog, we can get our own food without much difficulty once we are past the age of three.

We can even override our own internal feeding mechanism while bull dogs can’t. We have a hormonal mechanism that turns on and off the desire to eat. My boss’s dog, Misha, can’t do this, she is always willing to eat, and will continue to eat until she throws up and starts all over. (I think that this is a dog’s version of binge and purge.) Humans, through a variety of tactics (binge and purge being one of them), can manipulate the appetite mechanism.

The center for this appetite control axis is in the hypothalamus. (For some this is the true Axis of Evil.) Our hypothalamus has two categories of hormones that it releases that control eating: The orexigenic peptides that stimulate appetite and the anorexigenic peptides that suppress appetite. But wait, there’s more: Our gut also has hormones that it releases to signal the hypothalamus that it is time to stop eating, time to eat, give me more, give me less, I’m still not finished, and excuse me are you going to finish that? Then there are hormones that are released from adipose tissue (fat) cells. The main hormone from fat cells signals the hypothalamus to release anorexigenic hormones, in effect putting the brakes on eating.

When we try to lose weight we declare war on the Axis of Evil. Unfortunately, as in all wars, innocents get hurt. The delicate balance that is held by a properly working chemical feedback loop is destroyed. Dieting, which is all about denial, changes this balance, the appetite mechanism gets confused, the body downsizes the production of un-needed proteins (hormones), the brain gets grouchy, and then we eat like Misha, blow the “diet,” and get the h*ll out of Dodge.

Ah, but since we are humans and not bull dogs, we can change this scenario. We can choose to eat four to five small meals per day. We can choose to eat healthy choices. We can choose to exercise adequately. We can choose to alter our life style to accommodate healthy changes and re-set our out of whack systems. We can choose to change or live a dog’s life (which might not be all bad…).