You're stuck in traffic and you're already late for work. You
start, stop, and almost hit the guy in front. You finally get to work and
the boss yells at you--you missed a client.
Such everyday stress drains your energy and makes you miserable.
But that's not all the damage it does. It also goes straight to your
waist. That may not only do serious damage to your looks and wardrobe, it
can also put you at greater risk for a heart attack.
The psychological stress people can't handle increases the
depositing of fat on the abdomen, report Yale University psychologists
Mareille Rebuffe-Scrive, Ph.D., and Judith Rodin, Ph.D. The link between
the two is the hormone cortisol. It's pumped out of the adrenal glands
when we're under stress.
Everyone produces cortisol--we need it to live. But, Rebuffe-Scrive
recently reported to the Society for Behavioral Medicine, some people
secrete excessive amounts when pressure intensifies. Cortisol diverts fat
supplies quite literally to the front, where it can be quickly mobilized
for the fight-or-flight response we once relied on.
Rebuffe-Scrive and Rodin looked at 42 overweight women with
different types of fat distribution as determined by measurement of the
waist-hip ratio (WHR). The lower the ratio, the more the body fat in the
hip-thigh area rather than in the middle.
The women were put through an hour of six stressful tasks. They had
to solve complicated math problems under a time limit, make speeches, and
solve puzzles. Then they got false negative feedback about their work.
Through it all, their levels of cortisol were measured in their
saliva.
The ladies with tubby tummies secreted more cortisol than those
with thunder thighs. High-WHR women differed from the low-WHR women in
two other major ways:
o Their coping efficiency was lower. They lost self-control earlier
and had more negative I reactivity.
o All women reacted to the negative assessment of their efforts
with anger, but the potbellied got significantly less angry than their
hippy sisters. They secreted a lot more cortisol, though.
Now that you know psychological factors influence fat distribution,
is there a worthier reason for learning techniques to combat stress?
Rebuffe-Scrive and crew are now trying to determine which
stress-reduction steps can inhibit production of cortisol.
Tags:
adrenal glands,
behavioral medicine,
cortisol,
excessive amounts,
flight response,
health,
hormone,
hormone cortisol,
math problems,
overweight women,
psychological stress,
reactivity,
saliva,
self control,
stress,
tummies,
weight,
yale university
