What does it mean to be hungry?

When someone says “I’m hungry” can mean two things. The most common in our country wants simply mean that someone who has not eaten hungry. But in many countries around the world suffer from hunger is chronically hungry.

In the first case it is only a short-term hunger, while the second is a problem in the short, medium and long term, often related to the unavailability of food but also lack of access available food because of poverty.

Can hunger become a disease?

It is not by definition but may become so if we do not give your body the nutrients it needs. The common feeling of hunger is simply a response to your body when you are in need of food. It is a physiological response.

But it’s different when hunger is chronic. In these cases the body develops coping mechanisms in the short term but also problems in specific organs like the kidneys, intestine and finally the heart.

Lack of food leads to weight loss and therefore a loss of protein in the kidneys, liver, muscle, brain …The first phase of this pathological process is a chemical step involved in the endocrine system, producing, for example, abnormal levels of insulin or cortisone.

Usually within 48 hours develop ketones, acids that the body produces when you burn your glucose reserves. These reserves are usually burned in the first 24 hours without food. After you burn your fat and sugar at this time is when ketones are produced.

In the third phase is when you go really in a nutritional deficit. So far you’ve burned your glucose, then your fat and now is when you start to burn your protein, because amino acids are created by the tissue and are now beginning to be burned and rusted, so you start to lose your kidneys, liver, muscles, brain … at this time your immune system stops working properly.

Is this a reversible process or a state of malnutrition drag consequences in the future?

This is an interesting question. There is no doubt that malnutrition in early life and childhood has an impact on intellectual development when you are young.

Recent studies demonstrate the strong impact of healthy food in intelligence and psychosocial behavior when you are young.

There is no doubt that malnutrition and other forms of malnutrition such as iron deficiency involve irreversible intellectual damage.

Sources from the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of the rapid emergence of epidemics of cholera and malaria among the refugees, who remain in precarious conditions and their number is greater than hitherto had been brought.

The range of aid agencies has been extended north of the worst affected regions, the valleys of the Limpopo and Save rivers to reach downtown areas of the country where famine has also emerged.

The crops and most of the cattle have been lost in the provinces of Gaza and Inhamban, which according to unconfirmed reports, raise a million and half the number of those affected by the disaster.

Sixty helicopters and planes from South Africa, Germany and France, among others, have initiated the launch of bags of food to help ease the situation of the population lacks safe drinking water.

President Joachim Chissano said that the people affected by flooding will have to be fed by public assistance for at least 10 months until they can plant and harvest new crops.

Some 250,000 people crowded into 64 camps are poorly equipped, and aid organizations have warned already that are running out of drinking water.

The WHO spokesman in Maputo, Carlos Tiny, expected in the coming days have seen a sharp increase in outbreaks of typhus and other diseases that occur in refugee centers in the cities of Xai-Xai and Choku.

In the camps mounted by aid organizations have started mass vaccination campaigns to prevent the spread of diseases to the poor sanitary conditions.