Andrew Huberman· PhD
And as we approach food and we feel that anxiety locus coeruleus activates the lateral hypothalamus in a way that inhibits feeding that makes us not want to eat.
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And as we approach food and we feel that anxiety locus coeruleus activates the lateral hypothalamus in a way that inhibits feeding that makes us not want to eat.
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But what most people don't know is that there's an area of the hypothalamus. So deepen the brain kind of in the middle deep portion of the brain called the lateral hypothalamus. And the lateral hypothalamus is really interesting because it controls feeding, but it inhibits feeding. It stops us from feeding. And there's another area in the brain. If you want names, I'll give them to you. If you don't want names, just ignore them, delete them from your memory and awareness, called the locus coeruleus, now the locus coeruleus sits back further in the brainstem and it releases norepinephrine which is essentially adrenaline. It makes us feel alert.
a lot of how we feel while we eat and after we eat is because of this vagus sensing of what's in our gut.
Now, locus coeruleus has a lot of different functions in the brain, but when we are going to eat let's say we walk into a restaurant, we sit down or we're preparing a meal, locus coeruleus is known to release noradrenaline in the brain. It's creating a kind of alertness. This has ancient utility, but it's creating this alertness. And for many people, they experience that as they approach food as stress as anxiety. But what's interesting is that as we approach food locus coeruleus is releasing all these molecules that make us feel more anxious and alert sometimes it's felt as excitement. And that asks probably to do with how we feel about food generally, are we happy with our relationship with food? Are we trying to restrict our relationship to food, are people coming over for dinner, all that will play in of course, but there's a certain stress and anxiety upon approach to food. And as we approach food and we feel that anxiety locus coeruleus activates the lateral hypothalamus in a way that inhibits feeding that makes us not want to eat.
So a lot of people who have kind of pre-meal anxiety or anxiety around food and they can't seem to just calm down and have a good meal to access that later rest and digest. A lot of that is because of this heightened stress upon approach to food.