• Question: what is hunger? it's not painful but we don't like it?

    Asked by lizzie99 to Meeks, Pete, Stephen, Steve, Tom on 15 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Tom Hartley

      Tom Hartley answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      This is a very interesting question. I don’t know the answer, but I am going to have a quick guess. We need sensations like pain, hunger, and nausea to help us recognize situations which are dangerous or harmful. But if they all “felt” the same we might not be able to respond differently to the different sensations. The sensation of e.g., burning your hand needs to be very sharp (intense, sudden in time), so that you immediately withdraw your hand from a flame – otherwise a life threatening injury might follow. But hunger does not need to be so intense and sudden, because you have several hours or days to act on your hunger (eat) before the situation becomes life-threatening. If the sensation were too intense, you might prioritise hunger over some other more important long-term goal. So my guess is that the intensity and time course of these sensations is related to the timescale on which they require action and their priority for health. And the different quality of the sensations allows us to distinguish and diagnose different problems with our bodies.

    • Photo: Steve Roser

      Steve Roser answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hunger is to do with lack of nutrients in the blood, which tells the brain..’i’m hungry’. It doesn’t matter if your stomach is empty, its what the body thinks it needs from teh nutrients in teh blood (so you can be in hospital in bed for three days and have an empty stomach, but not feel hungry)

    • Photo: Stephen Curry

      Stephen Curry answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hunger is your body telling your brain to tell your body to go and get some food!

      I think if it was too painful a sensation, you might not be fit enough to go out and hunt something to eat (I’m assuming that this is an ancient impulse that we share with the animals).

    • Photo: Pete Edwards

      Pete Edwards answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      I’m no expert but hunger is the message your body sends to your brain to tell you it’s time to eat!
      It’s all about survival – without food we get weak and wouldn’t be able to run away from a threat or chase a potential mate so it’s important to know if your body needs fuel. This is why we get hunger pangs.

    • Photo: Marieke Navin

      Marieke Navin answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Wow, what a question Lizzie. I don’t really know a definition…but I suppose it’s our bodies way of telling us to eat again. We need to eat regularly to maintain our blood sugar and energy and let our bodies repair and grow. If we didn’t feel hunger we might forget to eat. i’m always hungry, it’s 9.30am and i’m already eating my lunch oops!

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