POV: you get home on a Friday from a long, hard workweek, and you’re ready to RELAX. So, you pour a *large* glass of wine, grab a bag of potato chips and a tub of ice cream and park yourself in front of the TV to catch up on the HBO Max series you’ve neglected to follow throughout the week. As little as an hour later, you look down and the bag of potato chips are gone, the tub of ice cream is half empty, and you’re on the way back to the kitchen to finish off that bottle of wine. But guess what, your stress is still there. All of the deadlines at work, the meeting you have to prepare for, the never-ending to-do list, still there. You didn’t eradicate the stress like you did that bag of chips. Unfortunately, all you did was make it worse.
Sound familiar? You’re not alone. When we’re under stress, high-calorie, hyper palatable foods are where people commonly turn in order to “calm” their stress (Morera et al., 2019). And unfortunately, stress is no elusive occurrence in today’s society. 75-90% of all doctors visits can be attributed to ailments caused by excessive stress. With today’s fast-paced society, the ability to be in constant communication, economic inequality, oh and..of course…a global pandemic…it’s no wonder that we all are experiencing some type of stress. Just like the anecdote above, stress can impact your eating behaviors, but whether we know it or not, our eating behaviors can impact our susceptibility to, and the impact of, our response to stress. We’ll talk about that in a second, but first it’s important to understand what stress is and what it does to the body and brain.
What is Stress
Back in the saber toothed tiger days, when our ancestors had to worry about surviving an attack, stress was short-lived and a good thing! They experienced stress for those few short moments that they were under attack, and the stress response caused them to kick into ultra-man gear to outrun or fight out their attacker, something they couldn’t do without their physiological stress response. What is this response, you ask? Great question.
Our body responds to stress, whether its real (a saber-toothed tiger), or imagined (“what if my boss is mad at me and fires me tomorrow?”) in the same way. When we experience a stressor, our body’s “fight-or-flight” response turns on (also known as the Sympathetic Nervous System). When this happens, a series of hormones are released which causes increases in adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol (Lopretsi, 2019). This response is regulated by the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which is the body’s main stress regulator, and it causes your heart rate to increase, your pupils to dilates, your palms to sweat, and you to get butterflies in your stomach, all of which would help your body to “deal” with whatever stress you’re up against. This response causes body systems that aren’t necessary in the moment to “shut off” such as your digestive and reproductive systems.
In acute amounts, this stress response is a good thing. It is what has helped our species to survive as long as we have. It’s what causes mothers to develop super-strength to lift a car off of their baby, and firefighters to run into a burning building to save helpless people. However, when this stress response becomes chronic, as it has for so many of us in today’s society, it can wreak havoc on our body and our brain.
Stress & Cognitive Functioning
If you’ve ever tried to be productive when under extreme stress, you know just how impossible it is. Stress can cause your attention to be directed elsewhere, making it almost impossible to focus on the task at hand. Information processing, decision making, fatigue, and emotional control are all disrupted when we’re experiencing acute “in the moment” stress (Scott et al., 2015). We all experience this “in the moment” stress from time to time. However when I typically begin my work with clients they’re experiencing this “in the moment” stress constantly, making it no longer acute, but chronic stress, which can have even more of a lasting negative impact on our brain and cognitive functioning.
According to studies, chronic stress is positively correlated with obesity one to 38 years later (Lucassen & Cizza, 2012). Chronic stress has also been correlated with several diseases such as anxiety, depression, Alzheimer’s and Dementia, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and several cancers (Lopretsi, 2019). It is also shown to increase the risk of all of our cognitive killers such as increased inflammation and oxidative stress, insomnia, nutrient depletion, metabolic syndrome (Lopretsi, 2019), and gut dysbiosis (Madison & Kiecolt-Glaser, 2019). That can’t be good for our mental performance now can it? Chronic stress exerts its effects on these processes through several different mechanisms in the body, but the main one we’re going to cover today is the bi-directional relationship stress has with our dietary practices.
Diet and Stress. A Two-Way Street?
If you’re like most people (including me), you resonated with the beginning of this post. We are all familiar with the idea of stress-eating, and we’ve all experienced this affair once or twice. But did you know there’s actual physiological processes that explain this behavior?
For one, stress causes the blood flow in your brain “away” from the prefrontal cortex, which is where decision-making and higher order executive functioning are regulated, and towards your midbrain, which is the “survival” and “instinctual” part of your brain (Masley, 2018). The prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that helps you to consciously decide whether or not to consume a food based on its nutrient-content and your health goals, and the midbrain is the part of the brain that just says “we need to survive, eat anything you can get your hands on!” So now this idea of stress eating makes a bit more sense, huh?
In acute amounts, stress may “turn off” your appetite (Morera et al., 2019). Think of a time when you’ve been so anxious you can’t eat. When our ancestors were fleeing from a saber-toothed tiger, they likely weren’t thinking “so what’s for dinner tonight?!” they were just thinking about survival. However, if the stressor persists and becomes chronic, the cortisol released increases our motivation for seeking food. And not just any food, most of the time we reach for high-calorie, hyper-palatable foods that are high in calories, sugar, trans fat, and salt (Morera et al., 2019) often called “comfort food.” Why’s that? These foods increase our chances of survival by providing us with extra calories, and by causing our insulin to spike, it helps our body to store these calories for a time when food may be scarce, which is what this “stress response” is telling our body is coming. This can result in obesity, metabolic syndrome, and inflammation. Basically, everything we DON’T need or want when it comes to our health and mental performance.
So, stress influences our dietary patterns, but can our dietary patterns influence our susceptibility to stress? Short answer, yes. Long answer….keep reading.
If you remember from the nutrient status blog post, you’ll remember that certain vitamins and minerals are needed to synthesize certain hormones and neurotransmitters. This is important as it relates to stress because certain micronutrients such as B vitamins, vitamin C, magnesium, and zinc are needed to form the hormones that are involved in the stress response such as adrenaline and cortisol (McCabe & Colbeck, 2015). So these nutrients help to “pump us up” when there’s a stressor present, but they ALSO help to synthesize the hormones that our body uses to calm us down after a stressor, such as serotonin. It probably goes without saying that the body prioritizes “pumping us up” for a stressor over relaxation, as that “pumping up” is what’s going to help us survive. So, these nutrients are regularly used within the stress response, and when this response becomes chronic, these nutrients can become depleted, especially if we’re not getting enough of them through our diet. When we lack these nutrients, our bodies won’t be able to form the hormones needed to return to a place of relaxation and calm after experiencing a stressor (McCabe & Colbeck, 2015). Not to mention, as you know from the pillar on nutrient status, these nutrients are crucial for optimizing mental health and performance!
As Hippocrates says, “all disease begins in the gut,” including our response to stress. The bacteria in our gut (for more information, read here), have an essential role in our development and function of the HPA axis (remember from above, this is our body’s main stress regulator) (Liang et al., 2018). When the gut lining becomes “leaky,” potentially due to dietary practices, our body produces an inflammatory response, which activates the HPA axis and may lead to an exaggerated stress response or a chronic stress response. Many studies have found that supplementing with probiotics and prebiotics to help restore the gut lining and the beneficial bacteria found in the gut can help to reduce stress and cortisol levels, and HPA axis response (Madison & Keicolt-Glaser, 2019).
Chill Out for Optimized Mental Performance
In order to improve your mental performance and overall health, it’s important to relax. Easier said than done, right? In today’s society, that might be the case. But we do have the power to regulate our own stress response by way of nutrition and lifestyle habits. Instead of sitting down on the couch, binging your favorite comfort food, the tips below can help you to ACTUALLY relax a bit more, improve your health, and optimize your mental performance.
- Take Some Deep Breaths: breathing deeply can help to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, lower heart rate, and reduce cortisol. This is a simple exercise that you can do ANYWHERE to help yourself relax. Start by inhaling through the nose for 4 seconds, and then exhale through the nose for 6-8 seconds. As you get used to this exercise, you can lengthen the in and out breaths for as long as feel comfortable. This is especially helpful before engaging in binge-stress eating.
- Consume Enough Fiber: fiber, especially prebiotic fiber, helps to “feed” the good bacteria in the gut which can help to regulate the HPA response to stress. Aim to get between 25-35g of fiber per day!
- Eat the Rainbow: by eating a wide variety of colorful fruits and vegetables regularly, you’ll make sure that you’re getting plenty of nutrients that will help to synthesize the hormones and neurotransmitters necessary to turn “on” the calming response.
- Get Some Sleep: lack of sleep can increase your susceptibility to stress (I mean, duh). If you find yourself pulling all-nighters, or even half-nighters, you’re increasing your risk for all of the stress-related troubles. Aim to get at least 7-8 hours of restful shut-eye nightly.
I can say without a doubt that every single client that comes to work with me is dealing with chronic stress. They often find it confusing that, as a nutrition coach, one of my most important responsibilities is to help them regulate their stress. Now, you know why this is such a critical piece of my coaching philosophy. By helping them to regulate their stress, it improves their dietary patterns, their overall health, and of course their mental performance.
If you want to learn how I can help YOU to improve your stress, dietary patterns and mental performance, jump on a FREE 30 minute coaching call with me! Come prepared to learn just how we are going to help you chill out a bit more. To schedule your session, click here.
References
Liang, S., Wu, X., & Jin, F. (2018). Gut-Brain Psychology: Rethinking Psychology From the Microbiota–Gut–Brain Axis. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2018.00033
Lopresti, A. L. (2019). The Effects of Psychological and Environmental Stress on Micronutrient Concentrations in the Body: A Review of the Evidence. Advances in Nutrition. https://doi.org/10.1093/advances/nmz082
Lucassen, E. A., & Cizza, G. (2012). The Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis, Obesity, and Chronic Stress Exposure: Sleep and the HPA Axis in Obesity. Current Obesity Reports, 1(4), 208–215. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13679-012-0028-5
Madison, A., & Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. (2019). Stress, depression, diet, and the gut microbiota: human–bacteria interactions at the core of psychoneuroimmunology and nutrition. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 28, 105–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2019.01.011
Masley, S. (2018). The Better Brain Solution: How to Sharpen Cognitive Function and Prevent Memory Loss at Any Age (Reprint ed.). Vintage.
McCabe, D., & Colbeck, M. (2015). The effectiveness of essential fatty acid, B vitamin, Vitamin C, magnesium and zinc supplementation for managing stress in women: a systematic review protocol. JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports, 13(7), 104–118. https://doi.org/10.11124/jbisrir-2015-2298
Morera, L. P., Marchiori, G. N., Medrano, L. A., & Defagó, M. D. (2019). Stress, Dietary Patterns and Cardiovascular Disease: A Mini-Review. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2019.01226
Scott, S. B., Graham-Engeland, J. E., Engeland, C. G., Smyth, J. M., Almeida, D. M., Katz, M. J., Lipton, R. B., Mogle, J. A., Munoz, E., Ram, N., & Sliwinski, M. J. (2015). The Effects of Stress on Cognitive Aging, Physiology and Emotion (ESCAPE) Project. BMC Psychiatry, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-015-0497-7