Research
Hormonal
Fasting plasma ghrelin concentrations are negatively correlated with body mass index (BMI), with lower levels in obesity and higher levels in anorexia nervosa, indicating that chronic positive energy balance suppresses ghrelin secretion.
Your body's hunger hormone (ghrelin) levels are biologically tuned to your long-term weight status. In obesity, baseline ghrelin is suppressed, which may contribute to the difficulty in losing weight or maintaining loss, as the hormonal drive to eat is chronically altered. This is a physiological adaptation, not a failure of willpower.
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Fasting plasma ghrelin concentration was negatively correlated with body mass index in both nondiabetic and diabetic patients... Plasma ghrelin concentrations in patients with simple obesity and anorexia nervosa were lower and higher, respectively, than those of healthy subjects with normal body weight.
Source
Plasma Ghrelin Levels in Lean and Obese Humans and the Effect of Glucose on Ghrelin Secretion
Tomomi Shiiya et al. · The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism · 2002
DOI 10.1210/jcem.87.1.8129
cross_sectional · n=98Cited 1,265×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Acute administration of glucose (oral or intravenous) and food intake causes a significant decrease in plasma ghrelin concentrations, reaching a nadir of approximately 66-69% of basal levels, indicating ghrelin reflects acute feeding state.Good
- Plasma ghrelin exhibits a diurnal pattern with preprandial increases and postprandial decreases, peaking at 0200 h, suggesting ghrelin acts as a meal-initiation signal entrained to sleep and meal timing.Moderate
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