Chronic stress not only makes you want to search for junk food, it can also cause some digestive problems ... It is an appropriate response to a real danger, but your body is well designed To cope with short bursts of life-saving stress, sustained stress can lead to health problems.
Being continually flooded with stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol) from your activated endocrine system draws your body's energy away from other systems, such as digestion and immunity. Your autonomic nervous system (ANS), which comprises the sympathetic, parasympathetic, and enteric nervous systems, controls your involuntary responses.
Stress hormones
Stress hormones activate the sympathetic nervous system to increase your heartbeat and send blood to the areas to deal with the emergency. In the process, the effects of the parasympathetic system in charge of other functions, such as digestion, are dampened. This can lead to unwanted digestive symptoms. such as constipation, diarrhea, nausea, stomach cramps, malabsorption, and irritable bowel symptoms.
Stress can also exacerbate the symptoms of heartburn and acid reflux in susceptible people and those suffering from stomach ulcers.
Stress and emotional eating
While some people may lose weight while stressed, people who are emotionally inclined to eat may go the other way. In susceptible people, chronic stress can lead to overeating, especially highly palatable foods and less nutritious that are high in carbohydrates, sugar, salt, and highly processed unhealthy fats.
High cortisol levels, in combination with high insulin levels, may be responsible. The hunger-regulating hormone ghrelin may also play a role. The happy hormone serotonin can have an impact, as consuming carbohydrate-rich foods can trigger the release, which can have a momentary calming effect on stressed people.
Unfortunately, the consumption of these foods can have a negative effect on blood sugar levels, causing spikes and drops in blood sugar that then make one feel agitated, fatigued and hungry and eat the same sugary foods Y highly processed foods that started this process, leading to a vicious cycle of poorer dietary choices.
Adrenaline can cause overeating or eating unhealthy foods to calm the response after the body has used glucose from the stressful situation. One can eat without thinking while thinking about the problem at hand and not even focusing on the taste of the food, the portions and its level of satiety. Elevated cortisol creates physiological changes that help replenish the body's energy stores that are used and depleted during the stress response. It makes you want to eat more to get more energy. This leads to an increased appetite and cravings for sweet and fatty foods, which can lead to an increase in fat in particular around the belly.