So we're full and heaving from the chicken and pasta that we just ate, but for some reason, we still manage to finish that bowl of ice cream. Is there really a second stomach for dessert? 

According to a study, the reason we can still eat even on a full stomach is because of the appetite-inducing hormone ghrelin. "What we show is that there may be situations where we are driven to seek out and eat very rewarding foods, even if we're full, for no other reason than our brain tells us to," says Dr. Jeffrey Zigman, assistant professor of internal medicine and psychiatry at UT Southwestern and co-senior author of the study appearing online and in a future edition of Biological Psychiatry. "They give us sensory pleasure, and they motivate us to work to obtain them," he said. "They also help us reorganize our memory so that we remember how to get them," he adds.

However, experts also say that we are almost powerless against dessert. Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Maryland, explains that there are chemical and neural systems signals that are sent to the brain to instruct us to stop eating, and when we are faced with delicious desserts, "the balance can be disturbed, leaving the signals from the full stomach unable to over-ride the powerful wanting produced by the brain."

So if you find yourself finishing that cake even after a hearty meal, really, it's not your fault. 

PHOTO: Pixabay