8. Loss of Appetite: When Food Loses Its Lure
It’s alarming when the sight or smell of food makes you recoil. Loss of appetite isn’t just a symptom; it’s a transformative experience that affects your entire relationship with nourishment. The once joyous act of eating becomes a chore, an obligation to meet the bare nutritional minimums.
Interestingly, appetite loss isn’t only about avoiding food; it can involve a shift in food preferences. Foods you once loved may now trigger a gag reflex. It’s as though the disease not only invades your body but alters your sense of taste. A sort of betrayal, it’s like your taste buds have joined the enemy camp.
Besides the distress, a diminished appetite spirals into malnutrition and emaciation. But the loss of weight is not just a drop in the numbers on the scale. Your body, deprived of essential nutrients, becomes frail, exacerbating other symptoms and further compromising your health.
The startling fact is that this aversion to food can be your body’s indirect way of conserving energy for essential functions. It’s not that you’re not hungry; your body is on energy-saving mode, and digestion is an expendable process. It’s a triage of biological priorities, with life-sustaining processes getting the nod.
The appetite loss is often a side effect of the body’s failed attempt to focus its resources on battling the cancerous cells in the gallbladder. The body, in its desperate attempt to marshal its defenses, considers the act of eating an expendable luxury. The whole experience turns the joy of eating into an uncomfortable necessity. (8)
