Learn why exercise lowers your appetite

The first attitude of those who want to lose weight is usually exercise. All that effort and sweat involved makes your body a calorie burner, right? Probably yes, but perhaps other aspects also influence the relationship between exercise and weight loss.

A balanced diet and good sleep habits certainly collaborate, but scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York have now found another factor that can help keep your mouth shut. They studied the relationship between increasing body temperature and decreasing appetite, and believe me: the result will make you want to sweat a little more at the gym.

Feeling hot is the secret

In an attempt to explain the relationship between exercise and decreased appetite, researcher Ph.D. Young-Hwan Jo and five other co-authors published a study on the subject in PLOS Biology. The team assumed that physical exercise suppresses appetite, and the goal was to find the reason.

Exercises that involve a minimum of intensity cause the sweat to start running. This reaction is due to the increase in body temperature, and it was based on this premise that scientists began their studies. They monitored the temperature of the rat hypothalamus while they exercised.

Hypothalamus

The option of analyzing this small region of the human nervous system was not a fluke. Located practically in the center of the skull, it is responsible for extremely important functions in our body, as it has direct connection with the nervous and endocrine systems, being responsible for the secretion of hormones of great importance. It also controls thirst, circadian cycles and the most important points for research: hunger and body temperature.

After the tests, the researchers realized that rising body temperature activates something like a switch in the brain, reducing appetite. Speaking of numbers, by reaching a temperature of 39 ° C, compared to the average of 37.5 ° C at rest, the rats already had a significant reduction in appetite. Small temperature difference, but significant, just as for us.

As a way of proving the results, the researchers artificially stimulated the TRPV1 temperature receptors, eliminating the doubt that other variables were decreasing the rat's appetite. In this case, they got the same reactions, so the conclusion was that it was not exactly the exercise that diminished the appetite, but the heat generated by it.

Now when you are running or walking on the treadmill, know that you need to sweat at least a little so that your hunger is neutralized, at least until your body cools down.