Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/1511188
www.AbbysHealthFood.com | # 60| Page 27 Nutrition and Stress: A Two-way Street These relationships are clinically meaningful, yet there has been so little clinical research in this area. As nutrition scientists, practitioners, and policymakers, we are particularly interested in learning how stress affects nutrition and, conversely, how nutrition affects stress. Dr. Elissa Epel,Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, has dedicated much of her career to addressing these questions. According to Dr. Epel, "these relationships are clinically meaningful, yet there has been so little clinical research in this area." Recently, Dr. Epel shared her insights into the complex relationships between stress, nutrition, and chronic disease during Food and the Aging Brain: Updates on Nutrition and Cognitive Health in Older Adults, a webinar sponsored by the Food Forum, with support from Sarah Ohlhorst, ASN's Chief Science Policy Officer, who served on the planning committee. During the webinar, Dr. Epel explained how stress triggers our drive for comfort food, including excess sugar-sweetened beverages and sweets such as baked goods. At the same time, during times of stress, we tend to lower our intake of whole foods, fruits, and vegetables. This, in turn, leads to a higher risk of insulin resistance, excess visceral fat, and type 2 diabetes. Stress has its own deleterious effects on health but eating junk food while stressed synergistically leads to metabolic havoc. Interestingly, stress appears to have its own impact on health outcomes independent of its impact on the food we select. Dr. Epel pointed to an animal model study in which rodents were fed a "junk food" diet. A subset of the rodents were exposed to chronic stress (such as predator odors). The junk food alone did not lead to an increase in visceral fat among the rodents, but when the animals were also stressed, the combination of stress and poor diet substantially increased visceral fat and the risk of early metabolic disease. Dr. Epel and colleagues have found by Eric Graber that these same relationships exist among people. In one study, for example, highly stressed maternal caregivers exhibited greater compulsive eating and increased abdominal fat over several years. Just as stress can affect nutrition, nutrition can affect stress. Dr. Epel's research has found that mindful eating during pregnancy, particularly among low-income women with overweight, can reduce stress eating and improve glucose control. Studies published in ASN journals echo Dr. Epel's findings demonstrating how stress and our overall emotional state shape our eating behavior and food choices. Chronic stress played a role in negatively influencing dietary behaviors. A study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, "Occupational Burnout, Eating Behavior, and Weight among Working Women," found that women experiencing occupational burnout, resulting from chronic on-the-job stress, "may be more vulnerable to emotional eating and uncontrolled eating and have a hindered ability to make changes in their eating behavior." Among subjects who were overweight or obese, authors Nina J. Nevanperä et al. noted, "failure to make changes due to burnout and reduced resources may impair self-esteem and self-efficacy, which are important for achieving success in weight maintenance." Another facet of stress eating is emotional eating, which refers to how we eat in response to negative emotions often brought on by stress. The topic was addressed in "The Associations between Emotional Eating and Consumption of Energy-Dense Snack Foods Are Modified by Sex and Depressive Symptomatology," published in The Journal of Nutrition. Authors Géraldine M. Camilleri et al. observed "a positive association between emotional eating and energy-dense snack-food intake." Interestingly, among women the presence of depressive symptoms exacerbated this association; however, among men the relation between emotional eating and energy-dense snack foods was found only among men who did not exhibit depressive symptoms.