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Lack of Hunger

Alright fellow Crohnies.. I've got a question for you. It seems like I am never hungry anymore nor do I really have much of an appetite. I don't experience pain when I eat, it is just that I don't ever feel hungry, even when I have hardly had anything to eat all day. The only time I ever feel "hungry" is when I have exercised a lot, or when I have been really active. When I do eat, it is healthy and it seems that I am only eating one meal a day. Usually it is dinner. Does anyone else have this problem? Is it do to meds? My Crohn's is currently in remission.

Thanks! :)
 
I have the same problem, but mine started a long time before I knew what was wrong or was on any medication. I had no appetite and the only thing that would remind me to eat was I would get a burning in my stomach and headaches. When I do eat it is only dinner, for me the thought of eating would make me nauseas. I also had no problem with pain or sickness from eating, I just wasnt hungry one day.

Now that I am on medication (only for a week now) I am hungry again. You must be very careful with not eating regularly, your body will start storing all the fats from your food and you may gain weight. Your body goes in to survival mood, storing fats unsure of when it will get its next meal.

I spoke with my doctor about this and she just said its from the crohns, she didnt explain how or why.
 
I have the same problem. When my Crohn's is acting up really bad, then I barely eat simply because I don't get hungry. The only thing that really helped was when I was on steroids, but it didn't help with anything else so it wasn't worth it, for me.
 
You must be very careful with not eating regularly, your body will start storing all the fats from your food and you may gain weight. Your body goes in to survival mood, storing fats unsure of when it will get its next meal.
I don't think this is really correct. If you eat too few calories, you will lose weight, if you eat too many you will gain. If you are not eating regularly, the same still applies: if you eat one meal a day, and fast the rest of the time, but that one meal contains more calories than you need in a day, you will gain. But if that one meal contains less calories than you need in a day, you will lose. There are good reasons for eating regularly - it may be better at keep up your energy levels - but weight gain is not really the problem you should be worrying about from skipping meals. If you have a poor appetite, you'll probably be more concerned about losing too much weight than with gaining it.

I don't even remember what hunger feels like anymore. For me it has nothing to do with meds, though there certainly are meds that can reduce your appetite or cause nausea (but then there are also meds that can make you feel more hungry - like prednisone can). I have to make myself eat even though I'm not hungry - otherwise I'd never eat.
 
UnXmas, I could see how you would think that, I myself thought the same way before I did some research on it. It has been proven that this happens very often and it can go either way, you may loss weight from this but more times then less people gain weight.

I was just watching a doctor Oz episode with my mother, and this guy was on there explaining that same problem. He began to practice with a monks and because of all the fasting they do he blew up in weight. He specifically explains what many proffessionals already know, how your body goes in to survival mode when your not eating regularly.

I have experienced this my self, although I was not eating well, only one meal a day if I even remembered to eat, I was staying at the same weight. Even though I had vomitting and diarrhea all the time I never lost weight nor gained.

either way lossing too much weight or gaining too much is not healthy, and it is always important to eat healthy foods regularly.
 
Thanks all. I am glad I am not the only one that deals with this. It seems like the past two days I have been hungry, so I guess it just comes and goes too. Crazy.. :ywow:
 
UnXmas, I could see how you would think that, I myself thought the same way before I did some research on it. It has been proven that this happens very often and it can go either way, you may loss weight from this but more times then less people gain weight.

I was just watching a doctor Oz episode with my mother, and this guy was on there explaining that same problem. He began to practice with a monks and because of all the fasting they do he blew up in weight. He specifically explains what many proffessionals already know, how your body goes in to survival mode when your not eating regularly.

I have experienced this my self, although I was not eating well, only one meal a day if I even remembered to eat, I was staying at the same weight. Even though I had vomitting and diarrhea all the time I never lost weight nor gained.

either way lossing too much weight or gaining too much is not healthy, and it is always important to eat healthy foods regularly.
I've heard that metabolism slows if you're not eating, so I do think you're right that your body may burn off less calories if you're fasting or if you're losing weight, but I think the difference would be minimal. I you ate only once a day, but that meal contained only 1000 calories, you'd lose.

My experience has been the opposite - I seem to lose weight whatever I do. If fasting made it easier to gain weight, I'd try fasting! Which in a way I did recently - I just had surgery and couldn't eat at all afterwards because my digestive system was paralysed as a post-surgical complication. So I was on bed rest, eating literally nothing solid, drinking high-calories supplements and being given TPN (nutrients and calories directly into the blood stream). They gave me 800 calories in TPN over 24hours (I have no idea why they gave me so little :confused2: ). They weighed me at the hospital and I lost 8kg (18lb) over the two weeks I was there.

But we can both agree that regular eating of healthy food is definitely best. :)
 
When Johnny had this issue I read a lot on Cytokines and loss of appetite. I won't pretend to understand everything I read but the connection seemed to make sense for him.

It didn't improve until Johnny had a normal fecal cal. That took about a year and a half after he was declared in remission. I don't know if the healing took that long or what happened but we just kept plugging along and things slowly were improving.
 
for unxmas and belovednokie...I think that starving your body does cause excess fat storage, but excess fat storage does not mean weight gain. So muscle is far more dense than fat and therefore weighs more. If you starve yourself, your body stores fat and it also stops feeding muscles. So while your body stores fat and gives up on keeping your muscles fed you actually lose weight while simultaneously becoming "fatter"....
 
hands down the best thing for hunger stimulation is medical marijuana...I pretty much never had an appetite, but when I started using medical cannabis everyday I was able to start gaining weight back (I had lost ab 55lbs and I was most likely under 10% bodyfat as well)
 
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