Are you hungry? Feeling full?
That’s just a lot of noise.
“Food noise,” as it’s commonly known, is an informal way of summing up the internal chatter between the brain and stomach, a medical doctor who specializes in weight loss told Fox News Digital.
Dr. Steven Batash is founder of Batash Endoscopic Weight Loss Center, with offices in New York and Miami.
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“Essentially, the way our body is wired is as follows,” Batash said. “It is the brain that controls hunger. But the brain relies on the stomach to give it signals for when the brain has to intervene and make a decision: You’re hungry – you have to eat – or you’re not hungry – therefore, stop eating.”
When food fills the stomach, “we’re happy because our stomach is stretched out,” Batash said.
Yet once the food leaves the stomach and enters the small intestine to be digested, “that’s when a person feels hungry again,” Batash said.
Food noise is often amplified among people who are dieting, Batash said.
“When you’re dieting, you think you’re doing something good because you’re going into a calorie deficit and you’re losing weight and you’re happy,” he said.
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“But while you are dieting, essentially your brain sabotages you. Your brain doesn’t understand that you’re trying to lose the weight.”
For some, food noise isn’t problematic. It’s actually necessary, Batash said.
“You do want there to be some noise because otherwise you could go for days without eating and you would die,” he said.
Ideally, “you want just the right amount of noise,” Batash said.
“But there are some people out there who think about food nonstop, and that’s the other extreme,” he said. “And they literally have to eat to suppress this noise. And suppressing this noise somehow gives these people that extra pleasure.”
So, how do those who can’t stop thinking about food silence the noise?
One way to suppress the noise is taking prescription weight-loss medications, which Batash called “game-changing,” but only to the extent that a person continues taking the drugs.
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“But the problem is that as soon as you stop taking these medications, most people will regain the weight,” Batash said.
He also said these drugs are expensive — and, for a certain percentage of people, “medications just don’t work.”
Other alternatives, he said, are undergoing bariatric or endoscopic surgery.
“In order for these procedures to work, you have to be motivated, you have to have discipline, and you have to follow our guidance,” Batash said.
Batash’s patients learn about eating healthily and portion control – two of the most effective ways to drown out the food noise, he said.
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“Discipline is hard,” Batash said.
“And these procedures are meant for people who are motivated, for people who are disciplined — but people who need a push to get them over the hump, that little extra help to allow their discipline and their determination to kick in.”
