Tags
I found this great Article on Stress on www.jigsawhealth.com!!! It made a ton of sense to me. Stress is Bad!! At the very bottom of the article it talks about artificial sweeteners. People don’t ever think that their Diet Pop might be adding the layer of fat they are gaining.
I think we as a Nation have been Dooped….. who knew “Diet Anything” would make us fat. I have the BEST of the BEST remedies for STRESS!!! It is a supplement called Cortitrol. It Reduces Belly Fat inches, and makes you Nice to live with. Email me if you want me to share mine with you.
Lee Anne
3 Ways Stress Is Making You Fat…
…and What You Can Do About It!
by Dr. Charles Sefcik
Are you dealing with the battle of the bulge? Are you struggling to buckle your pants given your expanding waistline? Stress could be the culprit. There are multiple ways that stress can be making you fat, but let’s focus on just three right now.
It is important to realize that a chronic stress response leaves you in a constant “flight or fight” situation. When you are under a constant stress load, your body doesn’t take care of the “non-critical” life processes. These include weight management, reproduction, digestion, cognition, and tissue healing. Let’s face it…if your body thinks the saber-toothed tiger is going to eat you, it’s not too concerned with whether you can think through the next few moves of chess.
Stress can cause increased weight gain in a variety of ways, but I hope these three ways demonstrate the broad sweep that stress can have on your overall health and well-being.
1) Cortisol Makes You Fat
The hormone cortisol is a stress hormone. This hormone causes a rise in glucose…it forms more blood sugar. Stress may also contribute strongly to the development of metabolic syndrome. If your body is running away from the lion, then you want enough glucose pumping to your muscles to get to a safe place. Only problem is, you aren’t running from a lion. You are sitting behind an office desk silently hating your job and waiting to go home…all the while your cortisol levels are maintaining an abnormal elevation. So what happens to all that excess blood sugar? It’s stored as fat!
2) Stress Causes Cravings
Prolonged cortisol excess causes a deficiency in a very well-known and talked about neurotransmitter…serotonin. Serotonin can be thought of as our feel-good neurotransmitter. Stress burns out serotonin. When serotonin is low, in addition to feeling depressed, you will start to crave sweets and carbohydrate rich refined foods. In other words you try to self-medicate with sugar. Guess what happens with that excess sugar? It’s stored as fat! (See the trend developing here?)
3) Stress Ruins Your Sleep
Serotonin is also the precursor to melatonin which helps us sleep peacefully, and soundly, all night long. Poor sleep is very inflammatory and makes chronic pain issues worse. So now you have this vicious cycle occurring all started from chronic stress. So in order to stop the cycle, you have to attack the start of the cycle and that is the abnormal stress response. When your melatonin levels are altered because of stress then your sleep becomes disturbed. Abnormal sleep is highly inflammatory. Inflammation makes you fat! So you might be popping pain pills and anti-inflammatories like crazy, but if you aren’t sleeping properly you are just feeding the fires of inflammation.
You can patch up the breaks in the pathways that aren’t working, but if you don’t remove the cause of the problem the patches won’t last. Part of the benefits of 5-HTP supplementation (precursor to serotonin) is derived from the increased production of melatonin which has known antioxidant effects, supports immune function, and preserves mitochondrial function.
Serotonin plays a key role in the central processing of pain. When serotonin is deficient you will feel pain more readily than you should. This is one key reason that anti-depressants are used for chronic pain, however, they only work for a short time.
Ways You Can Stop This Negative Cycle
• Work on daily stress management with deep breathing, journaling, and removing yourself from stressful events.
• Consume adequate protein each day and avoid all processed foods, refined foods, high sugar foods and artificial sweeteners. Take your fish oil. Fish oil can positively impact serotonin pathways.
If your goal is to lose weight, have more energy, be pain-free and enjoy life then considering the stress in your life is a great starting point!
