John Aaron Wellness

There's no doubt about it; your body and mind are directly linked. What you think about has a clear effect on your health and vice versa. In fact, there’s a fascinating study that suggests that the mind-body connection is quite powerful. Publishing their findings in the online journal Health Psychology, researchers at Yale University focused on ghrelin levels in the body to determine how thoughts affect the body's response to food. Ghrelin is also known as the "hunger" hormone. It sends a signal to your brain that makes you want to eat. If your body's ghrelin levels are high, you'll tend to overeat... even if you are already feeling full. Likewise, low ghrelin levels are associated with feelings of satiety and not needing to eat more. Typically, ghrelin levels increase before meals and decrease after eating. The researchers recruited volunteers and divided them into two groups: Group 1 - received a milkshake that they were told was a 620-calorie ...

Maybe you’ve been working really hard at losing those last 10 pounds. You’ve done everything you can think of from cutting back on the amount of calories you eat, to working out twice a day. You’ve even sworn off desserts! So why do those extra pounds hold such a stubborn grip on you? Well, if you’ve read a couple of my most recent posts, you could be sabotaging your efforts by neglecting your sleep. As I’ve been saying, your ability to maintain a healthy weight can directly correlate your ability to obtain adequate quality. The interesting thing is that the two benefits are symbiotic in that losing weight is a good way to improve the quality and quantity of your sleep. Why? There are a number of reasons. For starters, a significant number of overweight people tend to suffer from sleep apnea. This is a condition which commonly causes snoring. However, the snoring is severe enough to obstruct a persons’ breathing for prolonged periods, as he or she sleeps. However, there are recorded...

That's right: it’s all hormones! If you’ve read any of my articles regarding sleep and weight loss, then you know the medical fact that spending an ample amount of time getting shuteye is essential to helping your body get rid of those unwanted pounds. But have you ever wondering how it works? Read on as I try to make sense of this amazing process. Our bodies are filled with all kinds of hormones that are responsible for doing any number of things. Two hormones; leptin and ghrelin, are predominantly responsible for influences on your appetite. In other words, these two hormones make you feel either hungry or satiated. Ghrelin is responsible for making you to feel hungry and leptin alerts your brain to the sensation that you are “full” and have had enough to eat. Here’s where the problem with sleep deprivation begins. A lack of sleep can result in your leptin levels to plummet and your ghrelin levels to rise. The result being that you feel hungry more often than you ought to and, ...