What Is Ghrelin Hormone and How are Milkshakes Related?

Ever wonder if how you think affects your weight, your food, and your health?

A recent paper by the American Psychological Association may help researchers make a deeper connection between our psychology and the food we eat.

And that is why today I want to discuss, what is ghrelin hormone, & what is its relation to milkshakes… stay with me.

This paper established that what we think of a food, in terms of whether it is healthy or not, can have an effect on our ghrelin hormone response and appetite.

The paper in question was created to test whether satiation of a meal could be affected by a person’s mindset when entering a meal. In this case, the food in question was a 380 calorie milkshake.

The participants in the study were not aware that the shakes were only 380 calories, but instead, were aware of only a 620 calorie unhealthy shake, and a 140 calorie healthy shake.

Once again, both the healthy and unhealthy shakes were the exact same shakes with the exact same calories and nutrients. The variable here was whether the participant was lead to believe the shake was the healthy one or the unhealthy one.

Satiation (satisfaction from the meal) would be tested by the ghrelin response at three times. The times were at 20 minutes, to measure baseline ghrelin, 60 minutes, t0 measure the hormone in anticipation of the food, and at 90 minutes, post-consumption of the milkshakes. This two interval test was repeated on two different occasions.

I guess it’s important that I also explain what the hormone ghrelin actually is. Ghrelin is a hormone in the human body that increases hunger, and it is affected by other master hormones, food, and meal times, among other things.

Ghrelin hormone is usually high before meals and lowered after meals, but ghrelin can also become entrained to times. What that means is if you eat dinner at 6pm everyday, and then decide to move dinner to 8pm, you will likely still become hungry at 6pm for a period of time because of ghrelin.

The first interval, between 20 and 60 minutes, required the participants to form an opinion on the misleading label of the shake, while the second interval, between 60 and 90 minutes, required the participants to consume the shakes.

The paper concluded that the participants who believed they were consuming a higher calorie shake had lower ghrelin levels (and thus more satisfaction) after.

The participants who believed they were consuming the lower calorie shake had a flatline ghrelin response, meaning that appetite levels didn’t change much at physiological level. This is partly interesting because of the number of conclusions possible here.

The ghrelin hormone drop after the high calorie shake implies that the higher calorie “unhealthy” shake kept the participants more full, and the ghrelin flatline after the lower calorie “healthy” shake implies that the “healthy” shake would eventually lead to hunger sooner.

This is interesting because most would assume that something deemed healthy would lead us to consuming less calories, and something deemed unhealthy, would lead us to consume more calories (not that I believe in these conclusions).

Now, I know I shouldn’t get too excited about this study because it’s just one paper, and it wasn’t done over a large amount of time, but the results are in the least, very interesting.

This paper concluded that our psychology really does have an effect on our physiology, something many people still deny.

I’ve always been fascinated with the effects our thoughts can have on our physiology, especially with more popular subjects such as the placebo effect.

Now, I’m not claiming that it has enough of an effect to where we can eat whatever we want, not exercise at all, get as little sleep as possible, and still lose weight.

Taking action is still the most important part of becoming healthy. But my point here is that how you are thinking about your food most definitely has an effect and how ghrelin hormone is related.

This is one reason I don’t eat in high-stress situations, or situations that require a lot of multi-tasking.

This is of course because the former and the latter are both situations where cortisol and adrenaline levels are increased, which isn’t a favorable hormonal situation when thinking about digestion.

Digestion requires parasympathetic nervous activation, not sympathetic, which cortisol and adrenaline play a major role in.

Now, my point with today’s post is to obviously point out an interesting paper and article, but also point out how much of a role psychology has in our health. Additionally, this is part of my effort to talk more about leptin and ghrelin and other hormones.

Just the same as you dedicate yourself to eating healthier, working out consistently, and sleeping sufficiently, you can dedicate yourself to creating and maintaining a mindset that helps you stay productive and healthy.