Based on “Fat Chance” and “The Hacking of the American Mind” by H .Robert Lustig. MD .
“Over several years, prolonged cortisol leads to excessive food intake–but not just any food.Human research shows that cortisol specifically increases calorie intake of “comfort foods”(those with high energy density or high fat and sugar). Your spouse is late and the kid’s won’t stop whining ? Break out the Ben & Jerry’s .
What predisposes certain people to stressed- induced eating?. Stress, like art ,is in the eye of the beholder. The same level of stress can have varying effects on different people .The perception of chronic stress of causes increased caloric intake of “comfort foods”,but only among those with high cortisol reactivity. People who are “stress eaters”exhibit significant increases in insulin, weight and cortisol at night (normally the time for cortisol to be very low) during a stressful period. My colleague Elisa Epel at the University of California , San Francisco showed that those subjects who generated the greatest amount of cortisol in response to psychological stressor also consumed the greatest amount of high fat , and sugary food. Stress has also been postulated to play a role in metabolic syndrome in childhood, a time when eating patterns and fat cells are “programmed “.
Stress and cortisol also promote faster addiction to various drugs of abuse and likely food as well.Thus the stress and reward systems are linked, making food addiction among those who eat to manage stress a fait accompli.“
