Does the gherlin come back?

Okay so I have not been checking in much, life has been crazy, but once again I must turn to you experts to advice :) 

I am 11 months post-op and loving my sleeve! I just reached onderland and I could not be happier. I found my old doctor records and I literally weigh less now then I did when I was 12...12! It is insane! 

Anywhoo, the reason for my post is this, is it normal for the hunger feeling to come back? Pre-surgery I use to get nauseous if I would not eat, it was weird. It went away for a long time, and now it is back. Is it stomach acid? Do I need more of my prevacid? or has my stomach stretched and has began pumping out gherlin again? 

Thank you all!

My hunger sensations did come back.  Someone suggested to me that it could be stomach acid mimicking hunger.  So it may be that an antacid will help.

I wouldn't assume your stomach stretched.  Most people who go off track and come back to plan find that their restriction is still there.  We just need to eat the dense protein first to trigger the restriction.

Are you staying away from carbs?  they can cause wicked food cravings that might feel like hunger, too.

Kudos to you for addressing this now, before it becomes weight gain.

best wishes,

Carol

Oh yeah, I still only eat veggies and protein. The only carbs I get are from veggies :) I am at 1000 calories a day and 20-30 grams of carbs. I do not cheat when it comes to food. People always try to get me to eat "just one bite" of this or that, but its not happening. I am very militant about what I eat, and it works for me. :D 

Glad to see your on here and still doing great! 

Hunger comes back for most people, usually by the one year mark. But it has nothing to do with grehlin. Ghrelin is produced by other parts of your body, so was always there. And there are other hormones responsible for hunger besides ghrelin. 

The ghrelin reduction part of VSG is wildly inflated by most people. What you are experiencing is typical. But it still could be an acid issue, so you should pursue that for sure.

Thanks Grim! I will check with my doctor about my PPI. Happy Thanksgiving!

My information is more than a year old, but the last time I read anything about ghrelin production after bariatric surgery, the ghrelin levels go way down in the first year or so after surgery, but the body slowly finds ways to produce more. I don't know if the levels ever come back to pre-surgery levels, but they do rise. Hence the reason for having good eating and exercise habits in place when hunger comes back.

I'm almost two years post-op. I can get pretty hungry, but I don't have the insatiable cravings or hunger that I had pre-surgery. It's too soon to tell whether that state will be permanent. The long-term vets here generally say that controlling appetite does get harder as time goes by.

psychoticparrot

Oh definitely! At least now I can feed my hunger with protein and healthy vegetables as opposed to sweets and carbs! Thank you!

Sure, it's 100% normal.  Gherlin is produced elsewhere in the body, not just in the part of the stomach that was removed.  

It's more correct to say ghrelin regulates appetite (the drive to eat) rather than hunger (the sensation that is physical indicating your stomach is empty).  

Ghrelin never goes away.  Your pancreas and lungs also make ghrelin.  The stomach also still makes it to some degree. 

It's a misnomer that the sleeve stretches to huge degrees.  Even if it does get bigger, it is never to a significant degree, anywhere near the pre-operative stomach.  The part they remove, called the fundus, is the part that expands.  It is far more likely that your esophagus stretches after overeating, as any food that does not fit in the sleeve (or the RNY pouch for that matter) will back up into the esophagus.

Whether or not we feel hunger is also highly individual.  Some do, some don't.  Even after acid is excluded, it's not necessarily abnormal, though.