Most Powerful Natural Appetite Stimulants?

[Peater503]

Hello everyone,

I am new on the forum, so I'll try to keep this explanation as short as possible for you all. I'm a young guy looking to put on a decent amount of weight (at least 22lbs/10kg), but my naturally low appetite, high metabolism, and tendency to easily get nauseous/throw up when overeating make this seemingly impossible. In addition to this, I also believe to be hyperthyroid; I don't have any recent blood tests to prove it, but I have almost every possible symptom, especially heat intolerance/weight loss/muscle wasting/problems sleeping/very low body fat%.

I am trying to solve this whole problem by stimulating my appetite as much as possible to allow me to eat in larger quantities and try to get in a caloric surplus and therefore gain weight. Ideally, I would like to do this using natural stimulants. I have already tried my luck with herbs and so-called "hunger stimulating foods" like ginger, but to no avail as they are simply not potent enough to bring about any meaningful change to my appetite...

I have done research on this on all kinds of sites and talked to all kinds of people about it, most of which just told me to "man up and eat more," with little regard to the details of my situation. I already do meal prepping, liquid calories with shakes, exercise 2-3 per week, limit cardio, regular sleep, etc; all those basics I have already covered, but it's (primarily) my low appetite holding me back.

This post is essentially my last resort before I commit to the non-natural, higher risk path of putting on weight with pharmacological appetite stimulants like Growth Hormone Secretagogues or Ghrelin Analogs; because, to put it bluntly, I would rather take the risks that come with those than remain how I am now.

That is essentially it. If you have any specific questions about my situation, please do not hesitate to ask, and I will try my best to answer as fast and good as I can. And thank you in advance for taking the time to help me out!

 

[LuMonty]

The only natural thing that worked for me is salt, which makes sense when you think about. Need that chloride to make stomach acid. Can't digest food, can't use the calories or nutrients. Dunno if it's the answer to your issues, how much salt do you consume when you can get food into you?

 

[mostlylurking]

I'm a young guy looking to put on a decent amount of weight (at least 22lbs/10kg), but my naturally low appetite, high metabolism, and tendency to easily get nauseous/throw up when overeating make this seemingly impossible. In addition to this, I also believe to be hyperthyroid; I don't have any recent blood tests to prove it, but I have almost every possible symptom, especially heat intolerance/weight loss/muscle wasting/problems sleeping/very low body fat%.

Ray Peat talked about his inability to put on weight until he started taking thyroid supplements. He said he also grew another inch or two after taking thyroid supplements. So something was off with him and he had confusing symptoms similar to what you list and thyroid supplementation corrected the symptoms.

go here: bioenergetic search, search for SKINNY. The story comes up. Click on the paragraph to get the audio to start.

 

[Apple]

Just being on vacation and eating normally (or even less food than usual) always helps me gain weight. All day walking and doing some simple physical activity (hiking).
When I'm back in the office I lose all the weight I gained. I start eating more and lose more weight...paradox.
It could be related to thyroid hormone, go figure. Walking stimulates liver (thus T4 to T3 conversion) and also constant muscle work stimulates local T4 to T3 conversion via DIO2.

As for stimulants: beer is probably most powerfull (non pharmaceutical) stimulant of gastric juice. Also Kava beverage.. but I have never tried it.

 

[Phaedrus]

Cyproheptadine, a first generation antihistamine, is usually only prescribed these days for underweight children with failure to thrive to help them increase appetite and gain weight. US brand name is Periactin, but Haidut’s Idealabs has it available for “R&D” use only .

Whenever I took cypro consistently every day for a period of weeks, I definitely had an increased appetite and gained weight.

 

[GTW]

The only natural thing that worked for me is salt, which makes sense when you think about. Need that chloride to make stomach acid. Can't digest food, can't use the calories or nutrients. Dunno if it's the answer to your issues, how much salt do you consume when you can get food into you?

Salt, yes. But perhaps not for those reasons.
It may be a more specific effect.
The prophet Mhd supposedly said, taste salt before each meal. Loading up with salt might be unnecessary and counterproductive in the overall health scheme.
Of course hypoglycemia is a major appetite stimulant. Eat a moderate amount of high glycemic\rapidly metabolized carbs, beer is a good example, two hours +\- later you'll be ready to eat the bark off a tree.

 

[Logan-]

Movement can help a lot, if you have a sedentary lifestyle. Exercise/weightlifting in moderation.

 

[mostlylurking]

It could be related to thyroid hormone, go figure. Walking stimulates liver (thus T4 to T3 conversion) and also constant muscle work stimulates local T4 to T3 conversion via DIO2.

Thank you for introducing me to DIO2; I didn't know about it. One of the mysteries that I experienced while I was slowly increasing my dose of thiamine hcl fall of 2020 was what happened to my thyroid hormones. I'm hypothyroid and had worked with a good endocrinologist several years earlier to optimize my thyroid supplementation which for 5 years had been 180mg of NP Thyroid by Acella. My list of symptoms fall of 2020 included low body temperature, brain fog, lethargy; I thought I had gotten hold of some bad prescription desiccated thyroid so I got my blood work done 2 months early to see if that was the case. I was surprised to learn that my free T3 had become dangerously high. My endo told me that hyperthyroidism (too much T3) blocks thiamine function and he lowered my dose to 135mg/day of the same med and I'm still on that lower dose and it works very well with my high dose thiamine hcl.

I suspected that the high dose thiamine hcl had done something to change my thyroid hormones but I had no clue what that might have been. I just did a search for DIO2 and Thiamine and found this article:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955286323001183

"3.6. Thiamine potentiates thermogenic gene induction in adipocytes​

As we observed the elevation of proton leak respiration following a gradually increasing concentrations of thiamine, we presumed that expression of thermogenic marker genes was also regulated by thiamine availability. Using thiamine free culture fluid, we could observe that cAMP-stimulated upregulation of UCP1 and PGC1a was potentiated by applying increasing concentrations of thiamine (Fig. 5A–C). Regarding UCP1, this effect of thiamine was observed at its 40 nM and 1 µM levels in SC and DN ADIPs, respectively, while PGC1a expression was potentiated at 40 nM in both. We also investigated the effect of thiamine on the mRNA expression of DIO2, CITED1, CIDEA, and TBX1 and found that thiamine potentiated the cAMP-induced thermogenic effect in both SC and DN derived ADIPs already at its low concentrations (Fig. 5D–G). These results clearly showed that thiamine could potentiate cAMP-induced expression of thermogenic genes."

 

[LuMonty]

Salt, yes. But perhaps not for those reasons.
It may be a more specific effect.
The prophet Mhd supposedly said, taste salt before each meal. Loading up with salt might be unnecessary and counterproductive in the overall health scheme.
Of course hypoglycemia is a major appetite stimulant. Eat a moderate amount of high glycemic\rapidly metabolized carbs, beer is a good example, two hours +\- later you'll be ready to eat the bark off a tree.

I have no idea what you're getting at. The issue with being chronically low in salt is not having the sense for what's needed. Before my recent diet change (10g+ of salt a day) I was eating salt to taste and yet nearly had to got to emergency care for it. Speaking of, I now only need small amounts of thyroid and have no side effects with this two-pronged approach. Back to the issue at hand, with metabolism getting low (especially serotonin going up), it deranges your usual senses and they thus become unreliable.

Didn't you semi-recently post in the Chris Masterjohn thread about making an educated guess? My educated guess is chloride for stomach acid to remedy several digestive causes and the sodium lowers serotonin amongst other things.

 

[Dapose]

I mean everyone in high school always talked about getting the munchies when smoking pot.

Get it? High school.

 

[GTW]

I have no idea what you're getting at. The issue with being chronically low in salt is not having the sense for what's needed. Before my recent diet change (10g+ of salt a day) I was eating salt to taste and yet nearly had to got to emergency care for it. Speaking of, I now only need small amounts of thyroid and have no side effects with this two-pronged approach. Back to the issue at hand, with metabolism getting low (especially serotonin going up), it deranges your usual senses and they thus become unreliable.

Didn't you semi-recently post in the Chris Masterjohn thread about making an educated guess? My educated guess is chloride for stomach acid to remedy several digestive causes and the sodium lowers serotonin amongst other things.

"Don't believe everything you think."
If it's chlorine maybe potassium chloride or a mix like Lite: half K, half Na. Would reduce sodium liabilities.
As for taste salt before each meal, traditional sayings shouldn't be dismissed nor accepted without due diligence. They are all clues. In human athletes swishing sugar water in the mouth then spitting it out was found to improve performance. Maybe a taste of salt improves digestion without swallowing it.
I read many Chris Masterjohn articles but didn't know that I commented recently. In the latest substack platform was mostly SNAFU.
An educated guess should be changed according to new info. Like Bayesian statistics.

 

[Beatrix_]

Biotin
Glutamine

 

[LuMonty]

"Don't believe everything you think."
If it's chlorine maybe potassium chloride or a mix like Lite: half K, half Na. Would reduce sodium liabilities.
As for taste salt before each meal, traditional sayings shouldn't be dismissed nor accepted without due diligence. They are all clues. In human athletes swishing sugar water in the mouth then spitting it out was found to improve performance. Maybe a taste of salt improves digestion without swallowing it.
I read many Chris Masterjohn articles but didn't know that I commented recently. In the latest substack platform was mostly SNAFU.
An educated guess should be changed according to new info. Like Bayesian statistics.

Almost none of that addresses my point. Sure, splitting the difference with potassium chloride could work for chloride but the point is that salt is the most accessible thing to lower serotonin and restore the senses so that salting to taste is accurate. SoI already concluded that salting to taste can be unreliable which is OP may need salt bc they're not in a position to salt to taste properly. Also if salt is indeed low in an individual, potassium can be a big danger and it's reckless to recommend potassium. What was that about due diligence?

Your point about athletes seems off-handed. IIRC it had no conclusion; the research team implicated dopamine ("reward center stimulation"). I haven't kept up since that study back in 2017 if it's been expanded upon. How would you propose that works for salt? Perhaps you mean getting a "reward effect" and the dopamine would help balance the serotonin? Seems like anemic reasoning, especially if the salt itself is truly needed.

And what's this about "bayesian statistics"? I'm spitballing on a forum to help someone in need, not making a statistical model, belief injeciton or not lol. I mean, yeah, do you have a crystal ball or something to divine exact information so you can share here and we'll all come up with a better idea for OP? And for someone bringing up statistics (really a comment about belief) you don't even seem to have a grasp of why I would recommend salt. It follows that you have a poor or no grasp on Ray's work or you'd know why I "believe" what I've recommended.

Going by your numerous posts in defense of PUFA, I have to wonder if you've spent any time on raypeat.com. at all. Would explain a lot, salt included.

 

[GTW]

Mechanistic reductionist logic is apparently the primary MO in your thinking.
Is there a Ray Peat litmus test for credibility?

 

[LuMonty]

Mechanistic reductionist logic is apparently the primary MO in your thinking.
Is there a Ray Peat litmus test for credibility?

You haven't interacted with what I said at all, so I don't find your ideas credible. If you had, it would have shown that you understood my point, and by extension Ray's ideas. Never mind that salt would have a holistic effect for OP, namely increased cellular respiration, which makes your comment even stranger. It seems you took my off-handed, obviously incomplete list and extrapolated that to suit your fancy.

Your MO seems to be "piggyback off of better ideas with no rationale or any reason at all" so you don't have much room to comment, least of all because you haven't given any single reason for your comments. This is why my "belief" is still proving superior to your input. If you had countered with something to expand the conversation, iron sharpens iron and all that. Heck, even if it's something Ray wouldn't have necessarily endorsed that would be something.

I'd note here that salt does wonders for CO2 production and since increasing my salt intake my teeth have become very white and even started to heal in problem areas. You can use the search function on this forum if you don't know about the connection of CO2 and bone health. That wouldn't happen with potassium, it just doesn't work that way. Just the stimulation of metabolism by salt could help OP by the same mechanism. Also potassium wouldn't be a moderating force for OP's liquid calorie intake, salt would.

For transparency, especially for the OP, I am using around 30mcg T4 and 15 mcg T3 over the course of the day which has helped retain the sodium, and I've been reducing my intake intuitively starting yesterday.

 

[Peater503]

The only natural thing that worked for me is salt, which makes sense when you think about. Need that chloride to make stomach acid. Can't digest food, can't use the calories or nutrients. Dunno if it's the answer to your issues, how much salt do you consume when you can get food into you?

I generally don't add any salt to my food because I don't like the taste of it, even in small quantities (I also avoid iodine because of my hyperthyroid suspicion). Should I maybe try to take a teaspoon mixed with some water every day?

 

[Peater503]

Ray Peat talked about his inability to put on weight until he started taking thyroid supplements. He said he also grew another inch or two after taking thyroid supplements. So something was off with him and he had confusing symptoms similar to what you list and thyroid supplementation corrected the symptoms.

go here: bioenergetic search, search for SKINNY. The story comes up. Click on the paragraph to get the audio to start.

Very interesting, thank you for linking that. I believe I found the story, but I'm not sure I understand. These people who ate 3-4k calories per day and could not put on weight, were they hypo or hyperthyroid?

And so if I understood the audio correctly, RP would recommend to supplement with thyroid to avoid running on stress hormones (adrenalin) where you essentially need twice the amount of calories to function normally because the cells can't retain magnesium?

 

[Peater503]

Cyproheptadine, a first generation antihistamine, is usually only prescribed these days for underweight children with failure to thrive to help them increase appetite and gain weight. US brand name is Periactin, but Haidut’s Idealabs has it available for “R&D” use only .

Whenever I took cypro consistently every day for a period of weeks, I definitely had an increased appetite and gained weight.

Will look into this, thank you!

 

[LuMonty]

I generally don't add any salt to my food because I don't like the taste of it, even in small quantities (I also avoid iodine because of my hyperthyroid suspicion). Should I maybe try to take a teaspoon mixed with some water every day?

That would be a good start. See if it changes any of your issues and go from there. I had lost the taste for salt and I got very low in it, so I know how unappetizing salt can be even if it's needed. As for being hyperthyroid, it reminds me of a forum thread I read elsewhere. There were a few older cats who were quite skinny, and started to gain good weight properly after getting thyroid medication from their veterinarians.

 

[Peater503]

I mean everyone in high school always talked about getting the munchies when smoking pot.

Get it? High school.

*Badum tss* lol. But yeah, I'm not sure what RP's opinion was on weed but I'm definitely considering it right now. It's just that @mostlylurking's comment really made me re-think things, and made me think if maybe it's not my appetite that I need to work on, but instead my thyroid to lower the amount of calories I need since I might be running on stress hormones.