5 Facts About Leptin: The Satiety Hormone

Leptin is the most important satiety hormone. It is responsible for sending out a series of messages to your brain, telling you that you are already “full” and that you are no longer hungry.

However, it is important to explain a small detail. Appetite is not the same as hunger.

Appetite is an emotional desire. Because of this, it is not always controlled by this hormone. Instead, cognitive mechanisms, perceptions and especially emotions are added to the process.

On the other hand, what we define as “hunger” is a physiological need. It is used to fill your nutritional needs, which allows us to feel satisfied.

As a result, it is obvious that you should eat when you are hungry.

Your body needs a variety of healthy nutrients. It uses these to maintain cell structures and functions. They also give you energy. When you ingest these nutrients, starvation hormones such as leptin work as best they can.

As a result, we’ll take a look at a little more information about the most important satiety hormone. In addition, you will also see how you can “take care” of it. This will make it work properly and accurately.

1. Leptin: the satiety hormone that is abundant in obese people

It is possible that this statement caught your attention. If leptin is the satiety hormone, why is there so much of it in overweight people?

Let’s take a look at some data to understand it:

• Leptin is a hormone that is mainly produced by adipocytes (fat cells).
• This is called a “signal hormone”, so in other words it communicates with the hypothalamus, to tell you when to stop eating, after realizing that you have already had enough fat from your food.
• What happens to people who are overweight says a lot: they suffer from leptin resistance.
• Obese people have very high levels of leptin in their blood. In other words, it accumulates without behaving properly.

Because of this, it is normal for them to take longer to feel full.

At the same time, another problem may affect this resistance to leptin. This is true if you have a problem with the hypothalamus. This causes you to lose sensitivity to the hormone.

What can you do to reduce leptin resistance?

• Avoid inflammatory foods
• Eat foods with good fats: olive oil, salmon, avocados…
• Sleep between 7 and 9 hours every night
• Exercise regularly

2. Leptin, the satiety hormone, has many other functions

We already know that one of the uses of this hormone is to send signals to the hypothalamus to tell you that you have had enough energy and that it asks you to stop eating because you are full.

However, this protein also has other functions:

• It inhibits the production of other hormones, as well as other peptides that enhance the desire to eat. This is the case with neuropeptide Y.
• In addition, another interesting piece of information is that leptin increases your caloric and metabolic use. In other words, it accelerates your metabolism, to allow you to lose weight or get rid of excess fat that you have.

Strict diets reduce leptin levels

This is information you need to keep in mind: people who follow very strict diets reduce the activity of the most important satiety hormone.

• Thus, a diet with low calorie values, or what are called “miracle diets”, is really a health risk.
• Your leptin level drops, your metabolism slows down, your hunger pangs become more intense, and your body’s energy level drops.

4. Stress can cause you to lose weight due to leptin

We know that some people lose weight when they go through a very stressful period. However, it is common for the opposite to happen for those going through “chronic stress.”

The reasons for this are explained below:

• A greater amount of stress means a greater amount of cortisol in the blood.
• The more cortisol you have, the more the leptin’s presence is reduced.

As a result, what happens is something many people know: you get even hungrier, like to eat more and use less energy.

5. Is leptin the best way to lose weight?

It is very likely that more than one person is thinking about how to increase the effectiveness of leptin. This would make you feel full earlier and eat much less.

• It is worth mentioning that the satiety hormone works synchronously with your brain.
• For that reason, it will never give a signal to stop eating as long as you need more nutrients and energy.
• As a result, it would work against your health, and it would not be good.

With all this information, we want to make something very clear. It is not good to buy supplements that say they have leptin to reduce your hunger. It is also not good to follow strict diets or “miracle diets”.

If you suffer from overweight or obesity, you should talk to your doctor. This way you can determine if there is a hormonal problem behind it.

In addition, if you really want to take care of your leptin levels and their proper function, do not wait to change your diet. You should also exercise and deal with stress and anxiety properly.