A Study Establishes Relationship Between Stress And Appetite

Dec, 2022 - By SMI

A recent research explains that how stressful life leads to increase in appetite and leads to obesity.

In today’s busy world of hustle, where people are chasing career targets, adjusting their financial planning, supressing their dreams because their day to day life is not letting them to fulfil those, there are numerous such ways by which a person can embrace stress. There is also a rapid growth seen in the number of stressful people which is supplemented by a stat which says that till the end of next decade amount of people suffering from stress and anxiety will get doubled. Stress does not come alone. It brings many side effects and also affects lots of things in a person’s life.

A research conducted in John Hopkins Medicine found out how stress can affect a person’s appetite and turn him towards obesity. The findings of this study were published in a Journal name as PLOS ONE.

Total 29 adults among those 16 were men and 13 women participated in the study. Among these participants 17 were obese and 12 were lean. FMRI scans were performed on the participants to find the social and psychological stress intensity. These test evaluated the way brains of participants responded to words related to food words, like menu items written on a menu card or hotel board.

The participants were asked to picture appearance of each food item, smell, and its taste, as well as how it will feel to eat it right then, in order to maximize the brain’s appetitive response. They were also asked questions such as how much they wished to consume each dish and whether they thought they should choose avoiding it to measure how they viewed food-related decision-making.The study found out that appetite increases because of stress and it results in obesity.