That hunger does to our bodies

• What hunger does to our body

Doctors claim that the person is able to do without food for three months - unless, of course, he's healthy and drink plenty of water. We are well able to cope with hunger, human evolution has made this "autonomous fortress" capable with a state of siege to efficiently use existing resources. Nevertheless better this condition to avoid and why.

Source of Life

The main supplier of energy to our body is glucose. But without food intake, the body is forced to move to the fallback: the splitting of glycogen begins to get the same glucose. Strengthening of the insistence of hunger continues to grow - the body requires you to re-found a renewable energy source.

Getting not have time to

During the day, the body has time to exhaust glycogen stores and switch to production of "fuel" from the fat stores. Overall condition is characterized by a lack of energy, fatigue and irritability. Not even very complex tasks can put the starving to a standstill: the brain takes about 120 grams of glucose per day - but the glucose-then you have more or not.

Perpetual Dictator

Nature has provided everything. Realizing that the wholesale supply of glucose in the near future is not expected, the brain decides to confiscate its remnants. The body stops producing insulin - without glucose simply can not get to the muscles.

Hibernate organism

Week of fasting is enough to ensure that the body is fully turned into save mode. Heart rate is minimized falls pressure and body temperature. The body as it preserves itself, still giving the lion's share of resources the brain.

Go for broke

Only now, after a long period of fasting, the body proceeds to fuel from the fat reserves. Internal "factories" are rearranged under new management requirements and begin to process fatty acids into ketone bodies. Everything is done for the sake of all the same dictator-brain: ketone bodies - the only thing that can serve as a source of energy in his lack of glucose.

immune system

Deficiency of vitamins and minerals leads to yet another problem. The immune system is reduced to a minimum: it is simply not enough resources. Actually, starving may well die, picked up some mild colds.

Cannibalism

Glucose can not get enough. And take her mind nowhere else: have to use the body's own proteins. They begin to break down in the blood to the amino acids, the liver transforms the amino acids into glucose - the brain starts screaming cheers and fireworks. He spit on the fact that, in fact, the activated stage of autophagy. Muscle mass decreases steadily. The first to go to the expense of "unimportant" in terms of the survival of organs and muscles: restore all that after a period of fasting will be very difficult.