I'm never hungry & seeing/smelling food makes me sick

[TheCheeseLady]

I used to always love food. I never had a problem with it. I'll admit that I was and still am a picky eater, but for the past 6-7 years, I've never really been hungry. I seemed to have forgotten what hunger feels like.

I have no problem with my wieght or with the way I look. I'm active because I play sports year round. I'm currently 17 years old and this never being hungry thing tends to get in the way of many activities. Being that most people my age enjoy going out to eat or pigging out at a friends house, it poses many problems for me.

I can't eat big meals at one sitting, and I must force myself to eat small snacky stuff. Some times throughout the day, if I see or smell food, it can make me sick to my stomach. I've been to the doctor concerning the stomach issues, but the only thing they came up with was that I had a little more acid in my stomach than normal. That wasn't what was making me not hungry though.

I went to a psychologist just to see if it was something to do with, well...me. But nothing came out of it. It is quite frustrating to deal with and nobody seems to understand. Some people even take it as rude when I don't eat. I guess I could live with the eating snacky stuff throughout the day thing, but my biggest concern is me being sick to my stomach most of the time.

I feel sick every morning. The sickness usually tapers off by the afternoon. Some people I've talked to said to try to eat breakfast, since I never do/can. I've tried to force myself, but it jsut seems to make matters worse. Are there any people out there with some of the same symptoms? Are there anyways to stop myself from feeling nauseous?

[charles_darwin]

Hello, my situation is very similar to yours. I rarely feel hungry and most of the time have to force feed myself meals, then often throw most of it up(often being like once in every 6-7 meals). Also like you, the smell of food can make me sick, especially if I have recently eaten.
The only thing that I have found to help without fail is cannabis... sorry if you didn't want to hear that. It really works though, give me one joint and ill be able to eat a supersized meal and still be starving. Munchies are absolutely amazing.

[sum12stupid4u]

Hey I'm kinda going through something similar right now. I never feel hungry anymore at all, and I always feel dizzy, tired and nauseous. This gets especially bad if I eat... Most of the time I don't even want food, but if I do try to eat, just a few bites in I'll start feeling dizzy and nauseous, and I'll have pain in my upper abdomen. I recently discovered that meat greatly exaggerates this reaction. But, when I was around your age, the smell of certain foods would make me so sick that I sometimes would have to go to sleep and I would sleep for nearly an entire day just trying to get myself to stop feeling sick. I couldn't eat breakfast or I'd hurl. I also couldn't remember what it felt like to be *actually* hungry and when I was in school people mistakenly thought I was an anorexic because I would read through lunch and let someone else use my food card. So here goes:

I have neurocardiogenic syncope which counts for a substantial amount of my problems, but isn't likely to account for me getting sick when I smell food, and I don't think it causes appetite loss.

I will say though... that when I was in school, I *always* felt sick. It was especially bad in the mornings, just like you. I eventually figured out what was doing it. It was definitely emotional/mental, but I could never pinpoint why. When I'd wake up in the morning (even though I barely realized it) I was always filled with a sense of dread. The idea of going to school was worse than actually being at school. It was the weirdest thing, I would be sick to my stomach  five mornings out of the week, and then (unless something was planned for that day) I was fine for two.I would go all day during the week without eating.. and sometimes would go 2+ days with no food at all. Then on the weekend I felt good enough to eat normal sized meals. I barely payed any attention to this pattern, but did one day realize what was going on. My anxiety just runs *that* deep. I have a horrific fear of the unknown, even if the unknown is something simple or stupid.

Such as: I love the show Family Guy. I also love Smallville and Young at the Restless. When the latter two come on, their almost always or always brand new episodes. So no matter how bad I want to watch them, sometimes I'll wait for long periods of time before I watch them and when I go to turn it on, I just feel sick to my stomach. Whereas when I watch Family Guy, I'm familiar with 100% of the episodes, and since there is no storyline that moves from episode to episode, I feel no sense of impending doom if I watch it. So I'll watch the same episode of Family Guy 30 times even if I have a list full of brand new shows that I love.

Although I doubt watching tv or going to school is what is making you feel ill, (but hey, ya never know), you might think to sit down and consider if such a psychological trigger exists. It might even be hard to find one, because I went 21 years before I figured out that anxiety had that big of an impact on my life. So you might not think you're anxious... but nausea feel surprisingly similar to anxiety.

[ruffmagruff]

ok, you are all saying you are not hungry, and FOOD makes you sick. and when you take a bite of SOMETHING you want to throw up.

FIRST THING  we have to ask is: WHAT DO YOU EAT...???

i fear that you are meaning doritos, or cupcakes or prepared soups or some mysterious processed food, like bread

FOOD INTOLERANCE/ALLERGIES/SENSITIVITY ARE MORE COMMON THAN MOST PEOPLE THINK.

digestion is a fickle thing sometimes, a food that you could eat alone might make you sick combined with another.

FIRST THING TO DO: try WHOLE foods seperately. as in eat just one fruit. or one vegetable, or rice, or beans, or meat. alone, separate from anything else. not any processed food as they are high in cotaminants and allergy prone foods.this should help you identify what is ok for you to eat, and what you are reacting to.

common food intolerances are to: wheat, dairy, peanuts, treenuts, soy, yeast, vinegar, citric acid...looking in preprepared or processed foods almost every kind has a potential allergen of some kind. you may always be trying to eat FOOD, or SOMETHING that is harmful to you, but there may be plenty whole foods you can tolerate

so try this and post again, and you may just see you all have certain foods that you dont want to eat and certain foods that you can eat...

try steamed vegetables (preferably organic to avoid pesticides), rice, beans, meat, or rice with vegetables, beans with vegetables, meat with vegetables. avoid using additives or sugar at first. next try adding spices such as ginger, cinnamon, cayenne, turmeric, and herbs such as rosemary, basil to improve digestion and add flavor.

towards health!
good luck
and much peace

~ruff

[bbq33]

I had the same problem you have. I had a colonascopy and found out my large intestent where it meets the small intestant was very enlarged. The doctor said this could be caused by constipation once in a while. It will make you not want to eat. He put me on over the counter citrical and the condition cleared up in a few months. you might give it a try.
bbq33

[mikes1992]

You should try cannabis it may not legal but its the best way. Its used in some countrys to treat anorexia and nausea (suffered by aids and chemotherapy patients). Cannabis is one of the worlds greatest medicines and can be used to treat hundreds of illnesses.

[spongee]

i get the same, but even the sight of food make me want to be physicly sick, the smell on food is horrible and im getting headaches as well as pain in my stomach, the doctor said thers nothing they can do, they gave me some medicine for acid reflex and it made it worse, they gave me 2 rounds of different tablets and that didn't work either, it just made things worse. i just want to be able to eat like a normal 17 year old, help.