Posted by Food insecurity affects 1 in 7 American households. People may not feel hunger pains due to health issues, emotions, and certain medications. At the same time, an extreme sense of hunger despite eating well could also be due to a health issue.
Having a good appetite is important to many people. However, supplements can react with the human body for potential risks and side effects, too. One such supplement is kratom. To be well-informed, you must read all the information you can about it.
Users enjoy kratom’s ability to encourage feelings of euphoria, relieve pain, decrease anxiety and depression, and increase energy levels. But what’s going on with the stomach? Get ready to read about how kratom affects hunger and possibly changes hunger levels while you take it.
What Changes Your Hunger Levels?
There are so many things that can ramp up or lower your appetite, including exercise, stress, and illness. Mainly, though, there are hormones that control appetite and a feeling of fullness. Two of them are ghrelin and leptin, which are opposites. Fat cells create leptin, which decreases your appetite. Ghrelin increases your appetite and plays a role in your body weight.
What you eat can also affect your hunger levels. Since you ingest kratom whether you take it by capsule, shot, or another form, it counts when considering your diet.
Kratom on the Digestive System
Few people talk about whether it’s best to take kratom with or without food. People who take kratom regularly for pain and other conditions tend to do so in the morning, when many eat breakfast. But that doesn’t mean they take it first and eat afterwards.
Because kratom is an opioid and is therefore sedating, it is best to take it with or immediately followed by food. That way, you will avoid any overwhelming feeling of sleepiness – sleepiness which in turn could cause you to forget about eating and skip meals.
Kratom is also used as a remedy for diarrhea. Since opioids have a slowing-down effect on the body, they may also cause constipation – especially at higher doses and taken regularly, especially every day. When the body hasn’t eliminated digested food in a normal amount of time, it can cause a feeling of nausea as well – and that’s not encouraging for eating.
The Research on Kratom and Hunger
There isn’t much available information about how kratom specifically affects hunger. What we can do is look at how opioids in general affect hunger, though. It turns out that opioid use leads to decreased food intake.
It’s not about appetite (the desire to eat) but about flavor pleasantness, where the food does not taste as good as it normally does. Long-term opioid use makes food taste less appetizing because what opioids first affect is brain chemistry.
Opioids, including kratom, can alter the brain’s reward and pleasure system. Someone who takes opioids long enough may develop an insatiable appetite as they seek out positive reward in the form of food. The kratom acts as an analgesic and attempts to replace the feel-good chemicals in the brain that are normally released through stimulation by food.
Your Hunger and Kratom
Let’s go back to kratom dosages. Taking lower doses means the kratom acts as a stimulant to encourage alertness and energy, similar to caffeine. Like other stimulants, it reduces appetite, but it can do so mildly or extremely depending on the user’s sensitivity to mitragynine. When it wears off, the user may likely temporarily experience a rapid return or even an increase of appetite.
Then there are the results on hunger at higher doses. While relieving pain, anxiety, or nausea, kratom at higher doses can restore or even increase appetite. However, those same doses with frequent use can cause nausea or constipation, as with other opioids. Those conditions can suppress your appetite – your desire to eat. If you are trying to maintain or gain weight, it’s best to stick with lower doses.
Feeling more or less hungry after taking kratom, or after kratom wears off, is a potential side effect. As an opioid, kratom should not be taken with other substances such as other opioids or alcohol, as effects would become unpredictable and dangerous.
Craving Kratom? Consider Real Botanicals
As euphoric as kratom can make you feel, it might also make you more or less hungry. It depends on dosage, your sensitivity to mitragynine, whether or not you take it with food, and other factors such as taking medications. Most importantly, it also depends on the kratom itself. Your source for kratom should be able to provide consistent, pure, effective kratom at precise doses so you can best gauge its effects on you – including your hunger.
There is not much research on how kratom affects hunger. That doesn’t mean you have to settle for a lack of research on the making of your kratom. Real Botanicals offers you trustworthiness as a kratom vendor where the product speaks for itself. Explore their shop to see for yourself.
You might be interested in reading “Kratom for Beginners.“