Many of us know of people who under pressure resort to “stress eating.”
Chocolate, French fries, and potato chips have all been implicated in stress overeating and while I’m sure that most junk foods have also been used for such purposes, I doubt the same could be said for foods like broccoli or blueberries.
The result – chronic stress can lead to habitual stress eating of unhealthy foods, which in turn leads to weight gain and possibly to obesity, diabetes, and a host of other health problems.
Many of us have witnessed this unfortunate progression of events, but up until recently, the biomedical research field has been unable to provide the corroborating scientific evidence.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences recently published a paper out of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel documenting the effects caused by changes to the gene Urocortin-3 (Ucn3).
Ucn3 is produced in certain brain cells during times of stress and is known to play a role in regulating the body’s stress response.
Dr. Alon Chen led a team of Weizmann researchers who were able to increase amounts of Ucn3 in certain areas of the brains of mice.
The results of these Ucn3 increases were two-fold: anxiety-related behavior increased while at the same time, their metabolism changed.
Specifically, the mice burned more sugars and less fatty acids and their metabolic rates increased.
An increase in metabolism is usually considered a good thing for weight loss, but not in this case.
This change in metabolism didn’t necessarily change the amount of food that the mice were ingesting, just their food preferences. Rather than eating a healthy balanced diet, the stress-induced metabolic changes caused them to choose sugary food.
Sugars are good if needing quick bursts of energy in order to escape a physical danger, but become a health issue if abused over the long term.
These mice (back to the Weizmann study) also started to show the first stage signs of type 2 diabetes with decreased sensitivity to insulin, increased sugar levels in the blood, and more insulin being produced by their pancreas.
The findings link stress to metabolic syndromes, especially diabetes and obesity.
To learn more about the effects of chronic stress, check out NICABM’s Mind/Body Courses.
In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts on the neurological effects of stress. Can information from new neurological studies help you become more effective in treating patients with chronic stress and fatigue?
Please share your thoughts and opinions below.
I think this information is important for modern people. Overeating because of stress is very widespread.
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Lots of great comments. I’d like to add:
We still tend to say that some stress is good for us because lethargy is also problematical. Dr Goodstone is, of course, absolutely right, but the important revelations of Stephen Porges Polyvagal Theory invite us to broaden our perspective.
Stress is a natural short term response to an immediate threat. We now know that long term stress was not in our evolutionary experience and so we respond to chronic stress in all kinds of unhealthy ways. The stressful periods of ‘uncontrolled mobilization’ is, however, balanced by our higher phylogenic response of ‘controlled mobilization’ which I simplify to the behavioral term – personal challenge.
Challenge does not close our focus on a threat, but broadens our capacities to create resolutions (see Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden and Build Theory). This is an entirely different cascade of neuro/physiological activity. This is more about dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine than cortisol and adrenalin.
The reason why we are inclined to produce a stressful response is multi-layered. One aspect is discussed in my winner/loser world theory, but there are many other issues such as absence of play during stress (see Jaak Panksepp).
The biggest issue we have, I believe, is our cultural difficulty announcing that we do not live in a culture that cares for itself properly. Business will readily produce products legally and illegally to tap into our needs, wants and addictions. Someone offered me a free donut at a corporate function the other day. I looked down at the deliciously inviting sugary, fatty, soft, creamy, emotionally soothing offering and instead of having a negative feeling of resisting or sacrificing, my educated brain sent off warning bells and shouted at me – Do not eat this, do not poke yourself in the eye with a stick and do not drink kerosene! Good advice for all of these readily available dangers to my health and well being.
Richard, Australia
I’m not quite sure how to say this; you made it exlermety easy for me!
Susan and Madelyn, thank you so much – very sweet of you to say.
Ruth
Thank you, Ruth, for your generosity of spirit as much as the quality of your information, which is much appreciated as well.
This study, interestingly enough, supports the findings of well-known sleep studies on the connection between cortisol regulation, sleep deprivation, and stress response in relation to body fat accumulation. Like the Weizmann study, it would seem that being awake and active would preclude weight gain by increasing metabolism, however, the effects of cortisol imbalance create quite the opposite effect, especially, the accumulation of dangerous “belly fat”.
Yes, it is true that stress can cause us to choose less healthy food. But even if we do not choose unhealthy and highly sugar and fat-filled food, the stress alone can cause us to retain water, not fully digest our food, sleep less (which adds to not metabolizing food properly). Our digestive system does not work well if we are operating in the fight or flight mode of the Sympathetic Nervous System. But a certain amount of stress is good for us. Because the other extreme, total lethargy, can also lead to weight gain. It is maintaining a proper balance.
I believe, both because of my own experiences, research I’ve done personally and academically, and because of amazing events I have witnessed that involved others, that a mind body connection is the absolute basis for dietary choices and habits.
It is evident that not many people really understand what makes up optimal health where food is related. There is a surplus of bad information and conflicting opinions, all that claim to be the facts about what our bodies need/want. Not many people focus on genetic differences, climate differences, and differences in the amount of energy expended when discussing healthy diets either – obviously someone who spends 9 hours a day seated in a desk chair would not need the same nutrition as someone who spends much of their time doing physical labor-type work.
Mindfulness is also a big underrated aspect of eating – not just eating to get rid of the ‘hungry’ feeling, but enjoying the process and activity of eating, always remaining aware that nutrients are being imbibed that will build the mind and body. It is my opinion that if we all kept such things in mind, our food would naturally give us more nutrients because our brains would instruct our digestive system to extract these nutrients, rather than the brain only being related to eating so far as killing the hunger gets us. Of course, eating nutrient-rich foods would magnify this effect greatly.
This is a wonderful blog. Many thanks for the work you do.
Charis Malloy
I WAS VEGETERIAN FOR 35 years
nutrition and holistic health has been my passion!
RECEINTLY, with news,stress and fear of having income reduced and not meeting my fincial obligations. I craved AND PURCHASD FRIED CHICKEN THIGHS AND JOE JOES EVERYDAY
for a week!
I was overcome with the desire for It!!
I love your blogs and your information. I read your blog all the time and one of these days will remember to come to your teleseminar.
Susan French M.A.
Clinical Hypnotherapist