Can Your Diet Help Reduce Stress?

Kristin writes:

Can you talk about cortisol and how it affects our bodies? With all this COVID craziness, it feels like my stress levels are high all the time. What nutritional things can we do to help our stress levels? What can we do about the belly fat that being stressed makes us hang onto?

Kristin is not the only one feeling more stressed in recent months. The American Psychological Association conducts an annual poll to gauge stress levels. The specific things that people are stressed about change from year to year but the overall level of stress remains fairly constant.

Even in the best of times, a majority of Americans report living with moderate to high levels of stress and also feel that their stress levels aren’t healthy. Not surprisingly, a new poll conducted in April and May of 2020 found that reported stress levels have jumped up considerably in response to the pandemic.

Reaching for sweets or other comfort foods is a typical coping mechanism when we’re stressed.

As many of us know all too well, reaching for sweets or other comfort foods is a typical coping mechanism when we’re stressed. With many people cooped up at home, stress and boredom eating is on the rise, leading to weight gain. And as if that weren't bad enough, research suggests that when we're stressed, those comfort calories may lead to weight gain more quickly.

RELATED: Strategies to Reduce Stress Eating

Wouldn’t it be great if there were foods or nutrients that could defuse anxiety and ward off the negative effects of daily stress? No wonder that I see so many magazine and web articles about “stress-busting foods!”

Unfortunately, a lot of these are just puff pieces with little to no scientific basis. Sometimes, however, journalists interview actual scientists about their research. The problem is that researchers often use the word "stress" to mean something very different than what the general population thinks of as stress—and that often leads to confusion.

Physiological stress vs. psychological stress

When we say we’re stressed, we usually mean that we feel overwhelmed or anxious...

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