INBALANCE
Weight Gain? It’s Not All Your Fault — Blame Evolution! A neurologist explains why the hardwiring of the human brain is at the root of the extra pounds many of us gained over the past year and a half. By Susan Rupe
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here’s a joke that says the virus is called COVID-19 because 19 is the number of pounds we will gain during the pandemic. But pandemic weight gain is no joke for those of us who spent the past year and a half overeating, staying on the couch and staying out of the gym. The average American gained two pounds a month during the COVID-19 lockdown, according to a study published in The Journal of the American 48
Medical Association. You can blame the weight gain on a lack of exercise, or you can blame it on a lack of willpower. But a neurologist blames it on brain chemistry that evolved in humans over thousands of years. Dr. Steven Goldstein is the founder of the Houston Healthcare Initiative. He talked with InsuranceNewsNet about the stress and anxiety behind the weight gain and how to shed the pounds. The main reasons for the weight gain were stress and anxiety surrounding social isolation, he said. “People weren’t doing very much activity, so their whole lifestyle changed, but their eating habits didn’t. And on top of that, you have anxiety and stress that release hormones such as adrenaline and epinephrine into the body, and the sympathetic nervous
InsuranceNewsNet Magazine » October 2021
system gets stimulated. This is what happens during chronic stress.” In addition, he said, stress is tied to the “fight or flight” response that has been hardwired into the human brain. “From an evolutionary point of view, the adrenaline release was there when there was an acute stressor, like a predator that’s about to eat you,” Goldstein said. “You would naturally want to run away or figure some way to get the predator to go someplace else. If you were successful, you were able to outrun the predator and get away. That was great — the stress was over. Or if the predator caught you, the stress also was over because you weren’t around anymore. So that system works. But chronically, it leads to all sorts of hormonal changes in the body.”
