Cortisol hunger: 5 signs you're not hungry but snacking in order to top up your cortisol levels

Why do you keep munching something when you stay awake at night? It is not because you are hungry. After all, if you sleep through the night, you don't wake up in the middle of the night feeling hungry, right? This is caused by cortisol hunger.
There is a hormone called cortisol in your body (hormones are just a type of chemical your body produces).Cortisol is called the stress hormone. When your stress levels go up, the amount of cortisol in your body goes up too.
Cortisol makes you alert. In the morning when your cortisol levels go up you wake up and get out of the bed. If your cortisol level builds up slowly, you may find it difficult to leave the bed in the morning.
Many things can lower your cortisol and make you feel drowsy. The most common reason why your cortisol goes down is eating something that you are intolerant to. When you do that, your body uses up its cortisol to fight the effects of intolerance. And you start feeling terribly sleepy.

This is different from feeling sleepy after binging on comfort food. That happens because of a brain chemical called serotonin. When serotonin goes up you feel peaceful and relaxed. Even sleepy.
If you have more than one of the following symptoms, you are probably running low on cortisol:
- You may be a late riser
- You susceptible to keloids
- You may be too empathetic for your own good
- You may have dark circles around your eyes (which gets worse when you eat some intolerant food)

If this is you, and you are trying to stay awake late at night, you need something to keep spiking your cortisol. Or else, you will doze off.
According to Saravanan Balakrishnan, founder, CEO, Health amura.ai, “You keep eating something every now and then. Why do you do it? Your body produces a small amount of cortisol to help you with digestion. As long as you are not intolerant to what you are munching on, the cortisol will stay in circulation and keep you awake.”
Moral of the story: You are not snacking at night because you are hungry. You are snacking at night because you are hungry for cortisol!
Unfortunately, all the snacking quickly piles up calories and you put on weight. Bad thing, right?
Here is a work around: Instead of munching on something, “sip” a cup of green tea.

A cup of green tea has about one third the amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee has. If you take a cup of green tea and sip it over an hour or so, you will have a constant trickle of caffeine. That is good enough to keep you awake. Plus light on both calories and your purse.
Two words of caution, though
- If you are low on iron, green tea will further depress it. Eating beetroot and pomegranate on a regular basis should top up your iron level.
- Get pure green tea. Most of the junk you get in the supermarket in the name of green tea has nothing to do with tea.