Contents:
- Medical Video: Strategies to End Nighttime Eating
- Appetite can go up and down due to stress
- Bad eating habits that arise due to stress
- The impact of bad eating habits when stressed
Medical Video: Strategies to End Nighttime Eating
Stress is a natural thing and anyone has experienced it. Usually, stress will arise when there are family problems, office work, to the surrounding environment. Even so, you must be smart in managing stress so that it does not drag on and eventually cause adverse effects on physical and mental health. One that is often an outlet when stress is food. Many claim that they eat a lot due to stress, but there are also those that actually reduce eating. Actually, how can stress affect someone's appetite?
Appetite can go up and down due to stress
Reported on the Harvard Medical School page, when stress occurs, a part of the brain called the hypothalamus releases the hormone corticotropin, which serves to suppress appetite.
The brain also sends messages to the adrenal glands that are above the kidneys to release more of the hormone epinephrine (often known as the adrenal hormone). This epinephrine helps trigger the body's response to delay eating. This is one of the relationships of stress and food that can happen to anyone.
If stress continues, or persists, the story will be different again. The adrenal gland releases another hormone called cortisol, and this hormone will have an effect to increase appetite and also increase overall motivation, including motivation to eat.
High levels of the hormone cortisol along with high levels of insulin in the body can eventually increase the hormone ghrelin. Ghrelin also called "hunger hormone" acts to give signals to the brain to eat and store calories and fat more effectively. Therefore, increasing this hormone can make people difficult to lose weight, weight can increase.
Conversely, if someone is stressed then does not want to eat, it means the hormone released when stress suppresses hunger and finally appetite decreases. This really depends on how the body responds to stress that is being experienced. So, your appetite can rise and fall due to stress.
Bad eating habits that arise due to stress
Not only makes the appetite to eat up and down, stress also makes you do a variety of bad eating habits. What are the bad eating habits that occur due to stress?
- Drink excessive coffee. Feeling a lot of pressure, stressed people hope to always be awake so they can finish all their work to completion. This is what ultimately makes people who are stressed will also lack time off.
- Wrong eating choices. Some people because their cortisol levels increase, they will tend to crave foods high in fat, sugar, and salt. As a result, many have potato chips, ice cream or other junk food when they are stressed. Once ingested, foods that contain fat and sugar seem to have the effect of being able to inhibit the activity in the brain that acts to produce and process stress and emotions. This makes the food high in sugar and high in fat that the body seeks to fight stress at that time.
- Skip eating and drinking. When faced with dense and stressful days, people forget to eat, let alone choose healthy food as a priority. Finally breakfast was missed, lunch also had no time because it was still busy, dinner was forgotten. If you like this you don't eat in a day. Not just eating, even drinking it might be forgotten.
The impact of bad eating habits when stressed
Stress and food relations will have an impact on various conditions. When you don't eat enough or don't meet your body's needs with the nutrients it needs, blood sugar levels can increase. This increase will cause changes in mood, fatigue, decreased concentration, and other negative effects.
In the long term, this condition can lead to hyperglycemia. Hyperglycemia that is not handled and managed properly will cause various long-term complications such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, nerve damage, kidney damage, and others.
Too much caffeine can also cause a decrease in concentration, low productivity, sleep disturbances, and increased levels of cortisol in the blood.
The choice of bad food can ultimately reduce the body's immunity so that it is more susceptible to disease. Especially if you only eat from foods high in calories but low in nutrients.
Decrease in endurance can also occur when people who are stressed choose not to eat. This decreases his ability to fight disease and inflammation. From this decreased immunity can then spread to various other health conditions.
