The overstressed lives most of us lead today make the picture even more complicated. “We’re also hard-wired to store up calories to deal with stress,” says Boggiano, recalling that primordial savanna. “In those days, stress involved events where we needed energy. It was important for the body to have plenty of calories if it was being attacked by a saber-toothed tiger.” Food fuels muscles to launch a life-saving response (something along the lines of “Run for your life!”)—so “it makes sense for survival that stress and food are coupled,” she adds.
But in modern life, most of the stresses we face are the sedentary, nonfuel-requiring type—like that overdue presentation that must be finished tonight or the simmering feud with a nasty in-law. Nonetheless, the vestigial connections between food and stress remain—and we turn to food to soothe, or distract us from, our stressful emotions, especially if we have a tendency to binge. There’s a reason why we often turn to chocolate, cake and other treats. Anything high in sugar and fat causes opioids—“feel-good” chemicals like endorphins—to be released in the brain, which replace stressed-out feelings with pleasurable ones. Researchers from Boggiano’s lab and from the University of California, San Francisco, also found that sugary, fatty foods seem to help suppress levels of a key stress hormone, adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH).
So if your not fighting Giants or slaying lions and tigers and bears oh my ! then we at DTH suggest use that food to fuel your body to dance and relieve that stress
sources from www.eatingwell.com
sources from www.eatingwell.com
