 Hi guys, this is Dr. Ahmed Ergen. I'm an endocrinologist, a dermatologist and a metabolism expert. Today we are talking about why am I always hungry? All right, so I get this question all the time. It may not be you, but it's still better to listen to it to have good knowledge because it may happen to you at some point. And you can also advise family and friends. Remember to share this video. Remember to give a thumbs up and make sure you write some comments. Let's get started. Okay, so guys, you know, some of us are always hungry, right? So we sometimes tell the start of people, sometimes we don't, sometimes we are ashamed of it, etc. So the reason we are always hungry depends on a few factors. Now, when you are growing, when you're a teenager, you're always hungry maybe because you are growing, you know, you are making bone, you are making muscle, etc, etc. So your body really needs that. But after a while, you know, we go through this transition, we become an adult and become more sedentary. We get a job, desk job, etc. And we just continue to eat what we have been eating as a teenager when we were growing. Now, when you are not growing vertically anymore, you're gonna start growing horizontally. Well, that happens. There are a lot of hormonal changes that happens in your body. Let's look into that. So number one is basically for diabetics. If you are having a lot of low blood sugars due to medications, you will be hungry all the time. And that's a common problem. When people come to me and they say they have diabetes, they want to lose weight, but they are on the wrong medications to begin with. They are on insulin or excessive insulin, or they are on a southern luria such as gluposide, glimobarite, glibarite, etc. So if you're on these medications and your blood sugars are frequently dipping down, then you may want to consider an alternative medication. I want you to discuss with your doctor today or tomorrow. All right. Number two, you may be eating very little protein in your diet. Now, if you are eating protein, and I'm going to include that fat as well, more protein and more fat will actually stimulate the hormones that reduces your appetite and will induce hormones that will prolong the satiety. In addition to that, fat in your diet will be absorbed much slowly compared to carbohydrates. As a result, you will keep that food longer in your stomach versus carbohydrates, especially simple carbohydrates, are going to spike in your blood and they're going to be absorbed very quickly. So I always tell my patients, you know, I'm not 100% banning you from carbohydrates, and you're human being occasionally, if you do have a carbohydrate heavy food, do you not just indulge in carbohydrates? You know, you need to make sure there is some fat in there because that fat and protein will not only make you feel full or faster, but also will prevent the blood sugar spikes that are about to happen. Now, that brings us to the third one, which is, you know, if your blood sugar is spiking too fast, too quick from these carbohydrates, it induces insulin, and insulin will try to bring your blood sugar down. The carbohydrates are absorbed quickly. Now you're left with insulin. It's not uncommon. Even in non-diabetic patients, to be called as reactive hypoglycemia or reactive low blood sugars, they end up eating carbs, their blood sugar spike, and then insulin goes up, and then blood sugar goes down, but insulin is still up there. Well, then of course, the glucose keeps going down and that triggers the hunger. So that's number three. Number four, if you're not sleeping enough, that is a problem, and there are multiple reasons for that. So if you're not is sleeping enough, your body will produce a hunger hormone, which is called ghrelin, and that hormone will definitely make you hungrier. So you can realize that if you had a short night, you know, where you had to do things, you went to bed late and woke up early, and you may be very hungry. So people who do that chronically all the time, they typically have bigger appetites. And in addition to that, your body become more insulin resistant when you do not have enough sleep. And again, as we all know, insulin resistance is one of the biggest reasons of feeling hungry all the time, because excessive insulin in your body constantly tries to drag your blood sugar down. And then that definitely causes excessive hunger. Number five is the fiber. If you're not having enough fiber in your diet, especially refined carbs, right, they're ripped off their fiber. We had a video about rice, for example, white rice is so much worse than a brown rice or even black rice is because their fiber is totally ripped off. And, you know, it makes things taste a little better. Same thing for the bread, you know, whole grain bread, if you're just eating white bread all your life, whole grain is not going to taste as good. But definitely is way healthier. And once you are used to the whole grain bread, it's really no difference than a white bread, because you forget about the white bread. But bottom line is fiber will allow things to be absorbed a lot slower. As a result, it will keep your blood sugar level better maintained. And that will lead to less hunger in the long term. And you know what the high fiber foods are. We discussed about that before, there's a lot of vegetables and fruits. You have to be careful with your fruits, because not every fruit is very high in fiber or they're high in fiber, they're also very high in sugar. So you have to be moderate when it comes to eating high carbohydrate foods that are, you know, high in fiber. But the higher the fiber, the better, because you can subtract the fiber from your net carbs from your total carbs. And that definitely helps you in the absorption process and the blood sugar spike process. Number six is you may not be drinking enough water. So a good trick for you guys, if you drink, especially a hot water, it could be a tea or something else, or even just a regular water, it will definitely fill your stomach. And when your stomach is distended, it gives your body the fullness signal, right? So as a result, you know, if you're drinking a good cup of water before meals that will definitely help your satiety. But also, sometimes if you're too busy and you forget to drink water just like me, I keep seeing patients back to back, back to back. And I have no time to drink or go to a restroom. I'm like, Hey, you know, I have to think about it. I'm like, you know, I got to drink water. And it's interesting that people can mistake the hunger and thirst. And when they're thirsty, they may end up eating food, which makes them more thirsty. So as a result, you know, reminding yourself to drink water. I'm not saying to draw on yourself and drink like two gallons of water a day. But there are a lot of people who literally don't drink water at all, they will just drink coffee in the morning, and they will not drink anything entire day, not healthy. So you need to make sure that you're having at least an eight ounce of water or fluids every four to five hours. Number seven, well, this is kind of obvious. But if you are an athletic person, you exercise a lot, of course, you're going to get hungry because that basically what causes the energy expenditure and your body will need to replace that. It happens to me all the time, you know, I'm on my workout days when I train heavily, then I will definitely be way hungrier. On those days, you know, my whey protein helps me a lot because that protein definitely, you know, helps me to stay full or longer. Having said that, it's interesting that, for example, if you are having a whey protein in a solid form, or if you're having actually real meat that tends to keep you full or longer. So when you're drinking in a smoothie or on a liquid form, you don't feel like you're as full or you get hungry or faster because your body will will be able to process liquid way faster. So it's going to go through your intestinal system way faster than as solid food. So whenever you can, try to stick with the solid foods, especially if you're exercising a lot, you get hungry a lot after that, having a real like some chicken or some even dairy will help. For example, yogurt is my to go high fat yogurt is perfectly fine. Because as we said, the fat will definitely help you keep your satiety high and hunger low in the long term in the next few hours. And it's a solid food is satisfying. If you don't like yogurt, you can always find other things that are similar that can help you stay full. Avocado is a great fat, for example, olive oil is a great fat. So if you're eating a turkey sandwich, for example, putting some avocado on it will definitely help you to stay full longer. Now the last thing is alcohol that I'm going to talk about. If you drink a lot of alcohol, unfortunately, alcohol is almost like a stimulator of appetite. So people who drink alcohol tend to eat more. In addition to that, alcohol can suppress glucose production. So after a night of drinking, for example, you may wake up in the morning, you may be like starving. And that's because alcohol blocks your liver to produce the glucose that your body needs to, you know, keep a good glucose level. So instead of waking up with a blood sugar of 90, you may end up waking up blood sugar of 70. And that can trigger a severe hunger reaction. So make sure you stay away from the alcohol. If you are not going to at least keep it to one and maximum two drinks a day. So I hope this helps guys. Remember to give a like, share, comment, and we'll see you in the next video.