The stress factor
October 13, 2008
“Stress”- this particular word is flipped quite often at Saladworks than the word lettuce. Scientifically, it is this head-ache-provoking, nerve-jangling sensation which is your body’s only solution to sustain its balance amongst hostile and quick-transforming situations. By the discharge of hormones, your body attains its balance. Hence, incase your wallet is missing or missed a period, your body seeks its only solution: it sends indications to the adrenaline glands for the secretion of the stress hormones adrenaline (it is also called epinephrine by docs) and cortisol.
To you, probably adrenaline is more recognizable as the fight-or-flight hormone. It provides you energy instantly to seek your way out from any given harmful situation. In primitive times this boost was required so as to surpass predators. These days it is necessary at times only when you have to respond physically and instantly to a frightening situation. The reason following our need to be nourished under pressure, however, is less apparent. Nevertheless, too much stuffing of cupcakes only makes you feel more sluggish. This is actually the opposite of what would happen if adrenaline made its way through your system. The answer to this question is getting to know cortisol in more details. This stress hormone is secreted at the same time along with adrenaline and its effect is felt for only an hour or so. But you soon get to realize its effect. Cortisol’s sole function is to make you feel starved and hungry always. You can consult WH’s Ultimate Meal Plan for a more thorough healthy consumption guide for weight loss and energy throughout the day.
According to nutritional biochemist Shawn Talbott, PhD and author of The Metabolic Method, Cortisol happens to be one of the most effective appetite indicators. Some case studies state that at times it may interfere with the workings of other signals that control appetite (ghrelin) and satiety (leptin). Sweets might turn out to be liked a lot by the brain when stress and cortisol work together. You might even long for a decadent dessert after a big meal because cortisol might mix up with hunger signals.
This was a good thing back when we just burned through a ton of calories fleeing a sabretooth and had to refuel. But now-a-days, the stress factor is more related to jam-packed schedules and unbalanced chequebooks than chasing and surpassing wild beasts and hence our major threat is of growing our butts to enormous proportions. It might seem that stress is the reason for the decrement in will-power but the actual cause is cortisol. Cortisol is the actual reason behind your craving for a brownie instead of raw veggies when you are stuck up in a bumper-to-bumper traffic. It demands the most easily available resources of energy such as fat-rich, simple-carb foods which the body can use quickly. This is the reason why pasta, potato chips and chocolates are so much in demand by the body when you land up in any trouble.
We are not the only animals who give this unique response to stress. Researchers have shown that even mice move towards fatty foods when they are ticked off. Pennsylvania University researchers had offered regular food to their lab mice and for an hour each day, a pellet of fat-rich foods. When the mice were put under stress (since rodents, as far as we know, don’t sweat gridlock, researchers riled them up by exposing them to the odor of a predator, among other things), they finished of as many of the high-fat pellets as they could in one hour and as a result their average intake increased. Result: a lot of fat, angry little critters.
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