Yes, physical pain or extreme cravings are indicators that we are craving something. But I don’t want to confuse the meaning of these sensations with the true feelings behind them. I think they are two sides of the spectrum for us.
But then again, I’m not sure if I have a right to say that all of the cravings I get are “true” feelings.
Some people feel like they have a burning need for food, others feel like they have an overwhelming need to watch television, and others feel like they need to eat to relieve their boredom. It’s easy to get caught up in the feeling of intense cravings because we’ve all felt those sensations at some point.
The thing I like about this is that it alludes to the way the human body has a built-in mechanism to feel hunger and thirst. At times we feel the urge to drink, but at other times we feel the urge to eat. And those two needs are not mutually exclusive. I am always craving food, I am also always craving to watch or listen to TV, and I am always craving to get a drink.
The same process happens in our brains. We can feel the craving for food, and the desire to eat it, and the craving for it without necessarily experiencing the craving and the desire for it at the same time. The body is built to feel these two different things at the same time.
This is why we feel both hunger and thirst when we are on a diet. The brain may be designed to create a single, unified, brain-state that is both hunger and thirst. That neural state is hardwired into us, but our body then changes it, making it feel like food is something we want, even if we don’t know why. It is the same thing with pleasure, although we may have separate pleasure centers.
The reason you feel both hunger and thirst is because we are built to have the same two very different physiological states, which are also the same thing. The brain’s pleasure system is designed to feel pleasure and to keep us from feeling pain. The brain’s appetite system is designed to feel hunger and to keep us from feeling anything at all. In many ways, this is the same thing.
This is why it’s hard to give a clear answer to the question “Why are we so hungry?” because there’s no clear answer.
The problem is that hunger and thirst are two very different things. Hunger is an intense, intense feeling. It’s a feeling that can cause the body to move, to breathe, to vibrate, and to experience other sensations. As a way to feel hungry, hunger seems to be the same as pain. We feel both pain and hunger at the same time, but the different senses of pain and hunger make it difficult to give a clear answer without knowing exactly what hunger actually is.
In the past, we’ve used the word “hunger” to describe the intense sensation that comes from the desire to eat. That’s not the case here though, so I’ll just call it hunger. According to the National Institutes of Health, hunger is a very real and natural feeling that can be experienced by people of all ages, genders, and cultures.