Chris D. Meletis, ND
Chris D. Meletis, ND. Dr. Meletis is executive director of the Institute for Healthy Aging and coauthor of His Change of Life: Male Menopause and Healthy Aging with Testosterone (Praeger). www.DrMeletis.com.
Serotonin, a neurotransmitter, is well known as a mood enhancer, but did you know that serotonin also helps decrease appetite? Scientists have long been aware of this, but they haven’t been able to establish exactly how serotonin curbs hunger — until now. Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, along with other research centers, solved the puzzle when they discovered that serotonin has a two-pronged effect, activating specific neurons that slow appetite… while also blocking others that increase it.
Published reports suggest that this finding will open the door to new anti-obesity drugs, but I wondered how we might increase serotonin levels naturally, in the hope of decreasing appetite without medication. To find out I contacted naturopathic physician Chris D. Meletis, ND, author of numerous books on health and the executive director of the Institute for Healthy Aging in Carson City, Nevada. He had some suggestions for protecting or increasing serotonin levels:
Many of these strategies are, of course, already familiar to readers of Daily Health News. Once again we find that everything connects to everything else — and nutrition, exercise and stress reduction are the best tools you can use to improve your health, whether your goal is to feel better, look better or be healthier overall. Serotonin is one factor that relates to all of that… taking good care of yourself boosts serotonin, which helps regulate both mood and appetite. Feeling good and looking good often turn out to be one and the same thing.