Hunger

Hunger is a perception of necessity, of encouragement to get something the organism is requesting, with or without justification.

We associate hunger with food but there is also hunger for air, hunger for salt, hunger for sweets. Actually, thirst is hunger for water.

Through hunger, the brain pressures the individual to look for whatever is requested. The objects of hunger, in natural conditions, are scarce or highly demanded and fought over by other species or individuals. There are neural circuits that promote hunger, exploration and supply.

The natural, biological, evolutionary tendency is to activate hunger when food, water, salt, sweet... are handy. The brain has evolved in an environment of disputed scarcity or abundance, and promotes the consumption when the object is within reach. Homo sapiens (ma non troppo) has hated hunger and has managed to grow food, water channeling, collecting salt, sweetening with no limits ...

Abundance with no rivals and no risk should produce appeasement of the circuits of hunger, but it doesn’t. Hunger is unleashed.

Hunger causes discomfort, restlessness, dissatisfaction, need, desire. If we obey the cerebral order of hunger, the system rewards us with the withdrawal of urgency. It takes away the hunger for food, for water, for salt or for fresh air. We interpret the relief as pleasurable, but really the pleasure consists on the suppression of urgency. It's like taking a small shoe off.

Hunger expresses the brain’s desire. The individual can give in and enjoy getting rid of the pressure (eating, drinking ...) or rebel and refuse to meet the requirements because of lack of need in the present and confidence in the future.

Pain has the essence of hunger. It's an extreme hunger. The reward system forces the individual to behave defensively. Pain expresses hunger for fear of injury, the need to stay still or run away, to move your legs when you want to keep them still ("restless legs syndrome") or to keep them still when you want to move. The brain requires nociceptive calmness. To achieve it, the brain activates the hunger for remedies, various spells: sedatives, massages, punctures, homeopathic products...

Hunger for air makes sense when we need as much oxygen as possible to escape danger or play sports, but the brain can see danger always and everywhere and activate the hunger for air at all times. The individual feels the uneasiness of hunger and needs to breathe deeply. If you disobey the hunger for air, it increases until a sigh momentarily relieves anxiety.

Dizziness is hunger for sitting still. Loneliness, hunger for relationships...

It is not easy to manage hunger, the pressure of the reward system. We succumb easily when it tightens the nuts. Snacks, soft drinks, sweets, salt, rest, painkillers, twitches, sighs...

Hunger must be obeyed when justified by real, current necessity states, and must be faced when there is no reason for it, just for fear of uncertainty.

In order to sooth hunger, own or others’ motor behaviors are required: eating, drinking, moving, being still, sighing ...

There is also hunger for smoking and the ritual requires a complex engine (taking out the cigarette, lighting it, putting it in the mouth, sucking and expelling the smoke, flicking the ash, putting it out ...)

- You haven’t smoked for some time. Why don’t you light another cigarette?

- No thanks, don’t turn on my hunger. I will ignore what you said. Smoking is toxic, addictive, misleading ... and increases hunger for smoking.

................

- You haven’t taken painkillers for some time...

Pain, at the bottom, consists on that: just one of the many hungers the brain gives us to calm down its probabilistic burdens, its fears, not always well based.

- Don’t insist on making me feel hungry... Leave me alone!