Evolutionarily, the drive to eat comfort foods makes sense, says Pecoraro. In the animal kingdom, it's an eat or be eaten world, and a body under constant, or chronic, stress may preferentially eat high-energy foods to stay in the game. Under the model that the research team has proposed, glucocorticoids would both prompt vigilance to threats and send a signal to the brain of a chronically stressed animal to seek high-energy food. If it were successful in finding such food, stress and its attendant feelings would be terminated.
In regions of the world where people struggle with wars, epidemics of disease and chronic food shortage, the need to seek out high-energy foods would be great, as well. In the developed world, where stress is more often found in a commuting office worker, people seem to be seeking the same solution and finding it at every street corner, says Pecoraro.
"If, after the near-miss on the freeway, you get into work and almost lose your job during an argument with your boss, and have a fight at home that night - and these types of events are relentless -- you're going to have chronically elevated adrenal hormones [ie., chronic stress]," he says. There has to be a brake on the system, and, for some, it's chocolate.
Importantly, there are other ways to treat chronic stress exercise, yoga, meditation, sex and baths all stimulate neurochemicals that activate regions of the brain that stimulate pleasure. Relaxation techniques may work by reducing the psychological drives on stress output, which can be the roo
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Contact: Jennifer OBrien
jobrien@pubaff.ucsf.edu
415-476-2557
University of California - San Francisco
10-Sep-2003