Stress Eating. It Happens to the Best of Us.

Stress eating. Yes, it’s a thing.

When stress knocks on your door, your body might respond with a "fight", "flight" or "freeze" reaction. It's like your body's personal security system, where your brain signals danger and releases stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. This is your body's way of protecting you. As we continue to explore the complex workings of human physiology, we're constantly discovering more about these reactions.

You know that feeling when you're stressed out and suddenly you're rummaging through your pantry for something to munch on? Well, you're not alone. Researchers have shed some light on why we do that.

A recent article in the Nutrients journal delved into several studies to really understand if there's a connection between stress eating and hunger. What's really fascinating about this research is that it didn't rely on just one study, but combined insights from multiple sources. They chose ten top-notch studies, each scoring at least a six out of eight on their assessment scale, and examined them as a whole. It's like taking a helicopter view to see the overall pattern. Isn't that interesting?

What the researchers found consistently through these studies was that when people were subjected to stress, they released another “stress” hormone called ghrelin.

Ghrelin was discovered in 1996 and became known as the “hunger” hormone (it has several functions, but appetite-regulation seems to be the main one). Ghrelin is a protein-based hormone released mainly by the stomach (it’s found in other organs as well) and travels throughout the body to get you to start looking for food. I like to remember it because “ghrelin” causes an empty stomach to start “grumblin”.

When study participants were exposed to short-term stress (e.g., their non-dominant hand was placed in ice water for two minutes) their levels of ghrelin quickly increased, and then slowly decreased as minutes and hours went by. Another interesting thing is that we don’t know why ghrelin decreases after stress is removed. We used to think that ghrelin levels came down after finding and eating food, but that wasn’t the case here. More studies are needed to shed light on the factors that reduce levels of this hunger hormone in the body.

The bottom line is that several studies show that the hunger hormone ghrelin is released in response to stress and this is related to why we often feel the need to “stress eat.”

The researchers wanted to take this finding one step farther. Because we know that stress is tied to excess weight, and excess weight is a source of stress, they wondered if the stress-ghrelin response was different in people experiencing overweight and obesity. They found that stressed people with excess weight tended to have higher levels of ghrelin that lasted even longer than stressed people without excess weight. It’s not clear right now which comes first: increased ghrelin in response to weight or increased weight in response to ghrelin, but there certainly seems to be a correlation.

The overall conclusion is that, yes, ghrelin the “hunger” hormone is also a stress hormone and people experiencing overweight and obesity tend to experience higher levels of ghrelin when under stress.]

Taking a look at this fresh piece of research, let's explore how you can use this knowledge to improve your life.

We all experience stress, so finding positive ways to manage it can be very helpful. Some strategies we use with the DESTRESS Protocol are:

● Ramping up your mental self-care with mindfulness and gratitude

● Building your physical self-care with nutritious foods and physical activity

● Communicating your needs to others and/or saying “no” sometimes

While more research is needed to dig further into ghrelin as a hunger and stress hormone, one interesting takeaway was that the ghrelin levels decreased even without eating. So, if you’re compelled toward stress eating when you’re truly not hungry, know that the impulse will decrease even without satisfying it. You can try drinking water or if you do partake in stress eating, do so slowly and mindfully.

Want to finally end the constant stress eating? Let’s chat about how the DESTRESS Protocol can work for you.