Mental Stress and Weight-loss – The Doomed Union

Mental Stress and Weight-loss – The Doomed Union

Mental stress is one of the biggest contributors towards the deadliest of diseases to affect mankind which includes heart disease, diabetes, cancer and deep psychological disturbances which lead to suicide.

Stress is a highly personal, and individualized psychological reaction that occurs due to a number of different psychological, physical, and environmental factors. While there are numerous causes and contributing factors that cause stress, the results of stress or the ways in which it affects us and our physical and mental health are endless.

To better understand what happens to the human body when stressed; let’s consider the physical response of a human body to stress.

When there is a presence of an external or internal stressful or excitable stimulus, the body produces a hormone called Cortisol. A diurnal hormone, cortisol is responsible for a person’s alertness and energy levels and is released from the adrenal cortex in a cyclic manner. Meaning that it peaks as you wake up and wanes during the day until the levels fall enough at night to allow the body to rest. Unfortunately though, most of us don’t have a very stable cortisol cycle anyway such that we require additional pickme-ups bright and early in the morning to function – yes we’re talking about caffeine. Doses of caffeine help release a small, but significant amount of cortisol within the body which allows us to go about our daily routine.

Now the catch with the use of caffeine as a stimulant to produce more cortisol is that it also has an overstimulatory effect on our adrenal cortex, one that causes a greater hormonal imbalance. This overstimulation and the resultant imbalance in the basal levels of cortisol can have a number of adverse effects of our body which include but are not limited to the following:

A fight-or-flight response that automatically gears up your body for action by increasing your blood pressure and sugar levels. Insomnia Tension headaches Weakened functionality of the heart Inability to form lasting new memories Increased hair loss May even cause pre-mature labor Inhibit weight loss.

Of all the various results of stress, the one that we are most concerned about is the inhibition of weight loss because we are talking about reducing those pounds that we suddenly seem to have gained. Before we talk about how it inhibits weight – loss though, we have to mention one tiny little tidbit of information. That is, that according to research conducted by a well-known obesity psychologist, it has been found that the human brain and body is naturally designed in a way that inclines it to eat and to eat well and enthusiastically.

Basically, eating is one of the most ingrained, basic activities that our bodies are intrinsically trained for – it is one of the reasons why it’s so difficult for us, as humans to challenge and alter the set eating habits and patterns in order to lose weight.