Stress is a biological reaction to a physical or psychological threat - think Moose attack or surprise presentation at work. Our nervous system and hormones work together to morph our body into its superhero form, ready for fight or flight. But what happens when we are stressed out for weeks, months or years on end? Not only is our health impacted, but our eating habits get way out of line. It becomes so much harder to choose healthy foods, and suddenly we're gaining weight. What's going on here? And is there anything we can do about it? Tune into Episode 17 to find out.
Want to recommend an episode topic? Send me a message on Instagram @nutritionbitespodcast
Credit to MonoSheep for the theme music.
Stress is a biological reaction to a physical or psychological threat - think Moose attack or surprise presentation at work. Our nervous system and hormones work together to morph our body into its superhero form, ready for fight or flight. But what happens when we are stressed out for weeks, months or years on end? Not only is our health impacted, but our eating habits get way out of line. It becomes so much harder to choose healthy foods, and suddenly we're gaining weight. What's going on here? And is there anything we can do about it? Tune into Episode 17 to find out.
Want to recommend an episode topic? Send me a message on Instagram @nutritionbitespodcast
Credit to MonoSheep for the theme music.
Welcome to Nutrition Bites. The no nonsense podcast where you get the truth about food so you can eat what you want, and be healthy. I’m your host Maggie and welcome to Episode 17 of this series! Today’s topic was inspired by the nostalgic feeling of back-to-school chaos. The lazy days of summer are far gone and we’re now entering a new season of frantic post-vacation madness. On the menu today, stress.
Just a few nights ago I was having dinner with a friend when the topic of stress eating came up. She’s a professional athlete and I am a professional...millennial. One of her coping mechanisms for the pressures of an international athletic career is to seek out comfort food, whereas my answer to the pressures of existentialism is a stomach full of knots and avoidance of food. Two different, but related reactions. Stress is a natural part of life, and our bodies are designed to handle these moments of short-term tension. Triggers for stress can range from short, uncomfortable moments like taking part in ice-breaker games to more scary events like narrowly avoiding a cycling accident. Stress also occurs due to long-term stressors like a poor health diagnosis or a demanding career . Whatever the stressor is, the reaction in our body is the same. And this biological response to stress also impacts how we eat and what we crave. Spoiler alert, it ain’t vegetables. Long-term stress is also one of the key risk factors for weight gain and health conditions like Type 2 Diabetes and cardiovascular disease. So it’s important we better understand what it is and what we can do about it.
When our brain establishes a threat, our body responds by orchestrating a bunch of physical reactions to help prepare us for fight or flight. This - is stress. In the before times, that would be like a Moose attack or the sight of a rival Viking ship. Moments that made us anticipate a physical altercation. But in today's times, a stressful event can include psychological threats, like giving a presentation in front of your colleagues, or a constant fear that you won’t make rent.
Whether the stressor is physical or psychological, our biological response is the same - immediate preparation for fight or flight. When a stressor is first detected, like the realization that you’re going to crash into another car, the brain prompts the release of adrenaline. Adrenaline is a fast-acting hormone that causes your heart to beat faster, your breathing to increase, your pupils to dilate, and lots of blood to be sent to your muscles. All reactions to help you process the situation, slam on the breaks and swerve your car to safety. Cortisol is another hormone that is simultaneously triggered by a stressful event. It’s main job is to suppress non-emergency functions and provide energy to fuel your brain and muscles. It diverts blood from the digestive tract, which is why you may feel nauseous under stress, and at the same time, it suppresses the immune system. That last part may sound a bit illogical but it makes sense when you think of the fact that the body’s priority during acute stress is to provide resources for a potential fight with a Moose or dash to safety, not scan for viral infection. Cortisol also constricts blood vessels and increases blood pressure to help move oxygenated blood around the body faster. And lastly cortisol helps flood the body with fuel by triggering the liver to make and release glucose. Not only does cortisol instantly make lots of energy available, it also prevents our tissues from storing excess glucose by messing with insulin. Remember, the focus of cortisol is to ensure a constant supply of glucose is available for instant access, not stored for a later day.
Now just pause for a moment and marvel at the fact that ALL of this happens in a matter of milliseconds. It all sounds so epic when you think about it - we unconsciously transform into these superhero versions of ourselves thanks to a stellar nervous system and kick-ass hormones. But the superhero gig doesn’t last for long, and your body reverts back to it’s normal Bruce Banner self soon after the stressor disappears. Now this is a good thing because our body needs to shift focus back to other functions like immunity and digestion which were put on pause during our reaction. But unfortunately, the stress a lot of us experience today is not just these short-term, acute, reactions. We also tend to experience chronic stress, that is, pressure and anxiety that persists for weeks or months on end. And this is something to be concerned about.
One of the effects cortisol has on our immune system is to reduce inflammation. Inflammation is a natural, complex biological response to damaged cells and tissue. When you are injured, pro-inflammatory molecules are sent to the site and are responsible for assessing the injury, clearing out damaged material, and beginning repair. If you have big damage, like a sprained ankle, you’ll experience inflammation as swelling, heat, pain, redness, and loss of function. All signals that your body is working 9-to-5 to fix you up. But inflammation happens all the time at a smaller scale too and often we have no idea it’s happening.
During chronic stress, cortisol levels remain elevated - in other words they don’t drop down to normal levels like they’re supposed to. And when cortisol remains high for too long it will eventually lead to a breakdown in communication with the immune system. The body loves to be in balance, and when functions, or chemicals, are down or up-regulated for too long - things get wacky. During chronic stress, the immune system goes “no contact” with cortisol and stops listening. Tired of being suppressed, all of a sudden there is an uptick in the inflammatory response. Pro-inflammatory molecules are released, and with no damaged tissue to repair, they begin to attack healthy cells instead. Now you won’t feel this as redness, or swelling, but instead as fatigue, depression, general body pain, or gastrointestinal issues. Essentially, symptoms of a lot of other health problems. This “low-grade” inflammation that results from chronic stress not only makes you feel crappy in the moment but it's also strongly linked to the development of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, as well as conditions like cardiovascular disease, Type 2 Diabetes, cancer, and Alzhemiers. And that’s not all. Chronic stress also drastically impacts our eating habits - coaxing us into choosing unhealthy foods, which further contributes to the development of these diseases. It’s a real double whammy.
During acute states of stress, like when you watch the first episode of Walking Dead and the zombies are clamoring at the main guy under the car and his horse was already being eaten and you don’t know if he is going to be eaten and you start to freak out for him, and also for humanity.....yeah..you get the point. In those short moments of stress, it’s normal to not want food at all. Your appetite is temporarily suppressed as blood flow is diverted from your digestive system to other organs. But with chronic stress we have the opposite effect - overeating.
One of the reasons why is that cortisol also t increases the levels of our hunger hormone - ghrelin. Remember, cortisol wants to keep our body supplied with energy. That means under chronic stress, we have a bigger appetite than we normally do. Not only does cortisol have a direct effect on ghrelin, but chronic stress is also notorious for disrupting sleep, and like we learned in Episode 4 of the podcast, poor sleep leads to even higher levels of ghrelin. And the cherry on top is that chronic stress also impacts what we want to eat.
Plenty of evidence shows that long-term stress causes us to crave hyperpalatable foods.That’s just a fancy way of saying foods that are high in calories, sugar, and fat. Aka tasty, comfort foods. Sounds familiar right? If you think about the foods you turn to during stressful periods, I bet it’s more likely to include chips, cookies, and mac and cheese, over things like carrots, walnuts, and whole grain rice. And you can partially blame biology for that.
Hyperpalatable foods can counteract the negative emotions we feel during stressful periods. In other words, we actually feel better psychologically when we consume them. Eating high-sugar foods in particular activates the pleasure centers in our brain - causing the “feel good” chemical dopamine to be released. Sugar can also cause the release of internal opioids, our body’s natural painkillers, which makes us feel more at ease. But be wary of these momentarily reliving reactions. Sugar can have addictive effects too - actually changing our brain chemistry to make us constantly seek out high-sugar foods, and causing withdrawal symptoms if we don’t give in. It’s quite a nasty feedback loop, and especially hard to break during times of chronic stress.
In addition to being programmed to crave hyperpalatable foods, and punished for not acting on the craving, chronic stress also causes us to also lose motivation to stick with healthy habits. It’s just so much harder to spend an hour in the kitchen preparing a meal from scratch when you have a million other things competing for your time and energy. Chronic stress also causes us to lose sleep, which makes us feel extra fatigued and less motivated to exercise. All this combined and it’s no wonder that people who experience chronic stress often gain weight, and are more likely to develop a lifestyle-related disease. If you’re already at risk for Type 2 Diabetes it's even more dangerous. Remember that cortisol acts to flood the body with glucose, while simultaneously disrupting our insulin response. And Type 2 Diabetes is a disease marked by uncontrolled blood sugar and a damaged insulin response. So it’s extra important for anyone at risk of Diabetes, or who currently has it, to manage thier stress. So how do you do it?
Now there’s no one magic bullet that can eliminate stress. Most of the recommendations include practicing healthy habits you’ve heard plenty of times before, like prioritizing sleep, exercising regularly, leaning on social support, and practicing meditation and mindfulness. But diet can also play a role alongside these strategies.
Large-scale studies show that people who eat a plant-based diet with tons of fruits and vegetables, have lower levels of stress. Now remember, that’s correlation not causation. Maybe people who eat this way also exercise a lot, have a good sleep schedule, plenty of friends to lean on, and are financially secure. So we can’t conclude that this type of diet is the cure for chronic stress. But there is an underlying link between eating this way and controlling the “low-grade” inflammation that results from chronic stress.
You may have seen magazine articles or instagram posts about “anti-inflammatory” diets. Essentially, these types of diets eliminate foods that trigger or amplify the inflammatory response, and instead focus on foods that reduce it. Things that are excluded from this diet include the usual suspects: caffeine, alcohol, pop, processed foods, red meat, fried foods, and refined carbohydrates like white breads and candy. So...basically all the things that we crave as comfort foods. Ironic right? Foods that are included in an anti-inflammatory diet are the standard supermarket superheroes: whole fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, beans and fatty fish. A separate focus of the anti-inflammatory diet are gut-healthy foods and drinks. Your immune system is tightly linked to your gut health - those millions of bacteria and microorganisms are incredibly influential in your body. So consuming probiotic-rich yogurts and kefir, and prebiotic foods like oats, flaxseed, and bananas, is another great way to help with inflammation.
In addition to the general dietary advice, many click-baity news posts have focused on specific foods and nutrients that are thought to be anti-inflammatory, like dark chocolate, green tea, and omega-3 fatty acids. Unfortunately the science for these individual items is not rock solid. A lot of the studies investigating these foods and beverages are conducted on small groups of people (less than 100 subjects) and utilize unrealistic doses or formulas. For example, green tea is naturally caffeinated, and caffeine should be avoided in an anti-inflammatory diet. So the experiments that showed a positive effect of green tea on stress used specially formulated tea that was low in caffeine and high in other unique molecules thought to be helpful in managing inflammation. Point being - this isn’t the green tea you’re going to get in the grocery store. That said, dark chocolate, green tea, and omega-3s are all good things to include in your regular diet, so there’s no harm done in consuming them. Just don’t assume that a daily bar of 70% Lindt is going to resolve your chronic stress.
And that’s the thing. Diet alone can’t fix stress - you need a whole body approach, and that includes mental health as well. When it comes to eating, try to practice mindfulness. Instead of leaning into the robotic “shoving food in my face” response when stressed out, focus on the delicious sensations of whatever you’re consuming. And also try to learn the difference between emotional and physical hunger. Are you opening the fridge because you need energy or a distraction? And lastly, don’t beat yourself up if you do end up tearing into a bag of chips after dinner. Guilt only adds to your stress. It’s much more important to give yourself a break and recognize a momentary indulgence. When the bag is empty, dust those chip crumbs off your sweatpants, give yourself a little stretch, and go grab a glass of water. After all, combating chronic stress is the culmination of a lot of little habits, so start small and don’t worry about getting it perfect right away.
That’s been the bite for today. Stay hungry.