[HN Gopher] Insatiable: A life without eating
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Insatiable: A life without eating
Author : samclemens
Score : 78 points
Date : 2024-04-18 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (longreads.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (longreads.com)
| marmaduke wrote:
| Well, certainly puts things in perspective, doesn't it?
| ericmcer wrote:
| If I had been born ~90 years earlier I would have died before I
| formed my first memory. That thought comforts me when I feel
| like life is unfair or difficult. The whole thing is a bonus
| for me... I should be dead. Maybe similar feelings provide some
| comfort for people who have to manage their lives with diseases
| like Crohns.
| jessriedel wrote:
| OK, but note that Crohn's (and ulcerative colitis) are nearly
| unknown in the developing world. For reasons we don't
| understand, they are caused by modernity. So 90 years ago
| having Crohn's would be much less likely. (Symptoms from both
| Crohn's and ulcerative colitis don't usually present until
| the teens or early twenties, so this is not a case of infants
| with the disease simply dying early in the developing world.)
| theonlyjesus wrote:
| I'm a fellow Crohnie.
|
| Crohn's disease is a long, exhausting disease. I hope we see a
| cure in our lifetime.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Same and same. It broke my heart a little to read that this
| essayist got diagnosed at age 11... it's bad enough as an
| adult, but I can't even imagine dealing with it as a little kid
| :(
| notshift wrote:
| There's a cure, but the folks using this forum aren't ready to
| hear it.
| reverius42 wrote:
| Is it banning glyphosate?
| drekipus wrote:
| [delayed]
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I've always thought we should have a digestive system bypass in
| the esophagus. Give us the joy of tasting, chewing, and
| swallowing food, but then have it go into an external bag before
| it hits the stomach.
| arghwhat wrote:
| Unfortunately, we also sense the mechanical filling of the
| stomach, and the movement through the bowels.
|
| Unless you stop the hunger altogether I don't think you'll feel
| satisfied without the whole process.
| mateo1 wrote:
| It's not just that. I'm pretty sure your stomach and gut also
| provide information regarding caloric intake, on top of other
| sensors detecting the raise in blood
| sugars/lipids/aminoacids. And even if it didn't, you'll get
| hungry when your body/brain detects you've switched to using
| reserve power. If eating doesn't satiate the hunger by
| providing energy, the response would likely be to make you
| hungrier and hungrier.
| arghwhat wrote:
| Well, "reserve power" is from starvation, intense exercise,
| or weird diets, not hunger.
|
| From brain perspective, "reserve power" would be when it
| ends up relying on ketone bodies, which start to be
| produced in higher numbers when you have been in high
| glucagon, low insulin condition for a longer period of
| time. Long enough that the liver burned through its
| glycogen stores and the liver cells redirect oxaloacetate
| to gluconeogenesis (producing glucose from stuff in the
| blood) to the point where the cells become unable to finish
| its own metabolism of free fatty acids. It then turns the
| intermediate products it can't use itself into ketone
| bodies.
|
| That part can be regulated with nutrition, glucagon and
| insulin, but having plenty of glucose won't replace
| sensations from the digestive system itself.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > Unless you stop the hunger altogether
|
| My understanding is this is how drugs like Ozempic work. They
| make you feel fuller quicker and prevent "food noise" where
| you think about food and eating even when your stomach isn't
| empty
| knodi123 wrote:
| Know what's weird to me? I don't get any pleasure out of
| swallowing food. Tasting, sure. Chewing, sometimes. But
| swallowing? Just a necessary mechanical coda, as emotionally
| laden as the period at the end of a sentence
|
| But if someone suggests that we enjoy an ice cream sundae, but
| spit each bite into a bucket? Suddenly they're a reviled
| heretic!
| arghwhat wrote:
| I think the exact positive sensation differs between people.
| I certainly find joy in swallowing the food - which makes
| sense as it's a pretty important step. Tasting and chewing
| feels like only the precursor to _eating_ , and taking only
| those steps reduce the sensation to that of chewing a
| bubblegum.
|
| ... But if someone has a non-bulemic reason to simulate
| eating, by all means go ahead. Just don't make it a big trend
| as we waste enough food as is.
| arghwhat wrote:
| The post says that the TPN solution is fed slowly and that the
| body barely reacts.
|
| What if it was intentionally fed with periodic bursts, simulating
| strong blood sugar, fat and protein spikes from eating and
| triggering stronger insulin responses with resulting lows? I
| wonder if that would substantially change the experience.
|
| Maybe tuning the nutrition mixture. I vaguely remember the
| journey of the Soylent guy experimenting with the composition and
| hitting various snags along the way before he finally got to a
| point where it made him feel satisfied and not crave any other
| foods. Soylent still has the mechanical feeding sensation
| though...
|
| Sometimes medical developments plateau when it reaches a point of
| _working_ , before it reaches the point of being _good_.
| rincebrain wrote:
| I think the whole framing was that the reason the problem space
| is hard, is that if you deliver too much at once, your body
| notices and treats it much like if it found splinters stuck in
| you - invasion of foreign mass to trigger inflammatory
| response.
| arghwhat wrote:
| I am not sure if the burning was related to inflammation. I
| recall the sensation of marker fluid aburning as it moves
| towards the heart, but it might just be a sensation rather
| than a reaction. Wasn't clear from the post at least.
|
| Maybe one could burst only some convenient nutrition that is
| easier to deliver in higher doses like glucose, while still
| drip-feeding the bulkier macronutrients.
|
| Another crazy idea could be to intentionally introduce
| glucagon and insulin to artificially induce highs and lows.
|
| I'm sure it's a very hard problem space, but it might be one
| looking for a creative patient willing to put effort into
| further research...
| rincebrain wrote:
| The explicit quote from the article was "believing it
| required so much liquid, and such a high concentration of
| chemical nutrients, that it would cause inflammation and
| burning when administered.", and I am assuming that the
| former was not just redundant with the latter.
|
| Directly mucking with glucagon and insulin for anything
| short of directly demonstrable life and death is going to
| be a fraught proposal in almost any circumstance, I would
| speculate, given that the risk is not just wasting away
| from malnutrition but much more direct tissue damage and
| death. (Much like I suspect something with a risk profile
| like Accutane's would not get approved again _now_ with the
| body of evidence we have for what happens if you introduce
| something that's "almost, but not quite, vitamin A" into
| rapidly growing bodies...)
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Very dark, but also very insightful.
|
| We take a lot of simple pleasures in our lives for granted. The
| feeling of stretching, scratching an itch, relaxing our muscles,
| sleep, the taste of food, the smells around us, feeling warmth or
| cold on our skin, etc.
|
| I've wondered a lot about what a life would be like without these
| things - even if you were otherwise completely healthy.
| rincebrain wrote:
| It can be a strange experience, to try and describe to people,
| something missing from your shared vocabulary.
|
| I had a number of rounds of an IV drug treatment 4 or 5 years
| ago, and on one and only one of them, shortly after being
| treated, I found myself feeling a strange sensation, one that I
| couldn't place, but that I definitely remembered having
| experienced before.
|
| After 5 minutes or so of wondering and racking my brain, I
| placed it.
|
| It was hunger.
|
| At some point in my early teenage years, that particular piece
| of wiring stopped working, and I didn't really pay much
| attention at the time, so I can't place precisely when, but I
| had no severe injuries or medical maladies crop up. The two
| likely causes of that are apparently a brain tumor or hormone
| problems, but my bloodwork and brain scans turned up nothing
| exciting then or since, so ...who knows. (I did, many years
| after this started, start drinking caffeine sometimes, but it
| doesn't stop happening if I stop drinking caffeine for months,
| so I don't think it's related. I'm not on anything stimulant-
| like or adjacent either.)
|
| But it's a difficult thing to explain, the absence of that -
| and the knock-on effects, the absence of motivation to avoid it
| that results, the absence of satisfaction from eating causing
| it to vanish.
|
| How you can sincerely ask "why am I having a pounding headache
| - oh I forgot to eat for 2 days", and not have had any sign
| unless you set deliberate calendar events and phone alarms to
| serve as a reminder that this basic feedback system is broken.
| (I usually don't need them, these days, because habit is a
| powerful thing, but I keep them around so that I don't become
| sufficiently sick or taxed by life that something breaks down
| and I forget...again.)
|
| I can't exactly offer an A-B comparison of the difference, my
| memories of my childhood are not clear enough for that at this
| point, but while I will be sad if I end up not eating something
| especially tasty or unusual, there's not a visceral absence of
| satiation in it, it's an intellectual lament.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Hey this happened to me too.
|
| I never feel hunger just the effects of not eating.
|
| My thirst mechanism is messed up too.
|
| If it wasn't for my wife I'd be a real mess.
|
| I at least eat one good meal a day because she does!
|
| If I get really, really stoned I'm talking 500 mg of thc
| level stoned, I can feel hunger.
|
| But that isn't conducive to a good routine!
| PunchTornado wrote:
| One of those reads that changes your perspective on life in a
| way.
| smeej wrote:
| This really puts the two years my UC and I could only eat one
| meal for every meal in perspective. I eventually got used to
| being the weirdo who brought my own food, or just declined
| everything if we made spontaneous plans while we were already
| out.
|
| _But at least I could eat._
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _Everything was vigorously wiped with alcohol because any
| bacteria would be injected straight into my heart._
|
| Anyone with a serious medical condition that requires home care
| on par with hospital care deals with this -- often, while at
| their very worst. It's probably one of the scarier aspects of
| living with a serious chronic condition.
| gwern wrote:
| I wonder how much appetite suppressants like GLP-1s could help
| here? They seem to hit appetite at a high level and curiously
| reduce other cravings or addictions, so they might be able to
| deal with the hunger here.
| TheCapeGreek wrote:
| The bit about the 1944 study and how they rebounded eating way
| more food after their starvation really struck an emotional chord
| with me.
|
| I had a few years of financial struggle as a high schooler and
| student, to the point where I was constantly hungry and very
| skinny. It was a bit of a traumatic time for me for other
| reasons, and this article gave me more insight into another
| dimension of it.
|
| Since I hit a career stride and haven't been walking nearly as
| much, I've been at my largest ever. A kind of eternal
| overcompensation. My father also sometimes excused wasteful
| grocery expenditure saying "I've gone without before; I refuse to
| do it again".
| mlinhares wrote:
| Been there as well. Took me a while to recognize I did not have
| to finish every plate of food, that i could either save it for
| later when i was hungry again or just throw it away.
| rikthevik wrote:
| I don't want to waste food, but I need to regularly remind
| myself that overeating is also wasting food.
| madacol wrote:
| As a descendant of italian immigrants, I am still struggling
| with that
| koolba wrote:
| I always felt the real lesson to be learned from finishing
| your plate was to not overfill it in the first place.
| 3abiton wrote:
| I think the literature is clear enough on the difference
| between calory restrictions and intermittent fasting. The
| latter being much effective because it also reduces the
| production of hunger hormone, not the case with the former
| approach.
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