Hunger Expert's Tips for Better Eating Habits | Dr. Zachary Knight & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | So, without any pressure for it to be prescriptive, how do you approach eating given the knowledge
00:00:10.080 | that you have about food?
00:00:11.780 | I like to assume that you can sit down to a meal and not think about your AGRP neurons
00:00:16.680 | too much or any of that, but given that you have deep knowledge in this, has it shaped
00:00:21.880 | kind of how you think about food cravings your own?
00:00:25.360 | You don't have to reveal what those are even if they exist.
00:00:28.200 | How you observe the eating behavior of others and yeah, how has knowledge shaped your feeding
00:00:38.680 | behavior?
00:00:39.680 | Well, I try not to think too much about my AGRP neurons when I'm eating.
00:00:42.800 | I would hope.
00:00:43.800 | I would hope.
00:00:44.800 | I think it gets, I think, you know, the circuitry is so complex and we're just beginning to
00:00:49.520 | see what's happening.
00:00:50.520 | So, I wouldn't use that kind of information at this stage, where we're just beginning
00:00:54.880 | to prescriptively.
00:00:55.880 | But I think there is a set of basic recommendations from physiology and neuroscience, very simple
00:01:04.200 | things.
00:01:05.200 | You've probably talked about with people on your podcast before, for sort of shaping your
00:01:09.280 | diet to be healthier, to limit food intake.
00:01:11.720 | So, one we've already talked about is limiting consumption of ultra-processed food, eating
00:01:15.960 | more whole foods for lots of different reasons.
00:01:19.280 | Because they're more satiating, because they don't have this sort of engineered palatability
00:01:23.280 | that causes you to overeat.
00:01:25.640 | Another big one, which I'm sure you've talked about with some of your guests, is protein
00:01:29.080 | consumption.
00:01:30.080 | Making sure you get adequate protein consumption, both because there's this concept of protein
00:01:34.000 | leveraging.
00:01:35.000 | So, if you don't eat a minimum amount of protein, that's going to cause you to eat more calories
00:01:37.920 | just to try to achieve that minimum amount of protein.
00:01:40.720 | Also just because protein is more satiating and also because there's this idea of thermic
00:01:44.240 | effect of food.
00:01:45.240 | And so, you basically burn more calories metabolizing protein than sugar or fat.
00:01:49.080 | How about consumption of fluids during meals?
00:01:52.520 | I've heard it said before that we're not supposed to consume too many fluids because it's going
00:01:57.560 | to dilute the enzymes that allow us to digest our food.
00:02:00.760 | I've heard other people say that's a complete myth.
00:02:04.640 | That's a myth, I think.
00:02:10.440 | Humans don't have a perfect capacity to determine whether they're hungry or thirsty, and so
00:02:13.040 | drinking water will ensure you're not eating because you're thirsty.
00:02:19.480 | And there's no idea of diluting it, I don't think that meant.
00:02:22.280 | Distention itself, even though water provides a very limited distention signal, the expansion
00:02:26.520 | of your stomach and intestines is one important way that you terminate feeding.
00:02:32.440 | And so, there is some component of that where you can get distention just from drinking
00:02:36.400 | water.
00:02:37.400 | I'm sorry I blurted it out.
00:02:38.400 | Interesting, because I didn't realize that fluid consumption only provides a limited
00:02:43.040 | signal for distention.
00:02:44.600 | It's not fluids, it's water.
00:02:46.160 | And so, the idea is that you can fill your stomach up with fluids, but the rate at which
00:02:51.400 | fluids empty out of your stomach depends on their calorie content.
00:02:55.240 | So basically, if you drink water, it empties very rapidly into your intestine, and then
00:02:58.960 | goes through your intestine and is gradually absorbed.
00:03:01.600 | If you drink something like a glass of orange juice, it will empty much more slowly.
00:03:04.920 | And if you drink something that's really high in fat, really high in calories, it will empty
00:03:07.800 | extremely slowly over hours.
00:03:10.200 | And that's because there's a negative feedback loop from the intestine that controls gastric
00:03:13.520 | emptying.
00:03:14.520 | So as those first nutrients leave your stomach and enter your intestine, that produces hormones
00:03:21.560 | that go back and then slow down the rate of gastric emptying.
00:03:24.040 | And the purpose for this is that you don't want nutrients entering the intestine too
00:03:28.040 | fast.
00:03:29.040 | That's really unsafe.
00:03:30.040 | It feels very unpleasant, and it's just that your intestine can only metabolize nutrients
00:03:34.280 | so fast.
00:03:35.280 | And so, if there's calories, then it slows down gastric emptying a lot, but water just
00:03:39.120 | kind of goes through.
00:03:40.120 | What a beautiful system.
00:03:43.200 | There's regulation at every point, hypothalamus, brainstem, gut, the rate of emptying based
00:03:51.080 | on the difference between water and orange juice.
00:03:55.240 | It's just awesome.
00:03:56.240 | Yeah.
00:03:57.240 | And that's part of the reason I think it's so hard to outsmart the system, right?
00:04:00.280 | Because these neurons are making predictions based on the sight and smell of food, but
00:04:05.160 | then the gut is doing its own thing.
00:04:06.960 | It's calculating it separately and relaying that information.
00:04:09.320 | So at every step, there are these checks, basically, that are just confirming that what
00:04:12.560 | you thought happened the first time actually was really going on.
00:04:15.400 | And so, which makes sense, because it's so important for survival, these homeostatic
00:04:19.400 | systems.
00:04:20.400 | They're the product of so much natural selection.
00:04:22.120 | Thank you for tuning in to the Huberman Lab Clips channel.
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