Stress-Proof Your Eating

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Next Article Skip to Article Content 5 Ways to Win Kids to Healthy Food Help your child say "no" to junk food and choose healthy foods instead. Healthy Eating in Stressful Times It's common to eat when you're stressed. Tips to help you de-stress your eating. Eat Healthy with the Internet Eating on-the-go? The Internet can help you with simple healthy eating tools. Healthy Guide to Dining Out Do you know how much food is on your plate? How to avoid restaurant pitfalls. False Eating Healthfully During Stressful Times WebMD Feature

By Robin Warshaw

Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD

You just found out that your glowing engine light means another repair bill. That will strain your checking account, which you’ve already been juggling like a circus performer.

The repair shop vending machine stands nearby, offering sweet, fatty, crunchy and salty snacks. You make your choice, hoping to banish worry with high-calorie help, even though you’re not really hungry. ?

Yet a candy bar or bag of chips gives only a momentary boost to sagging spirits. Refined sugars and starches in most packaged snack foods “make you feel better for a minute, then worse,” says Bethany Thayer, MS, RD, director of wellness programs and strategies at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit and a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association.

Emotional Eating and Stress Eating

When you feel tense, stress eating or emotional eating seem to be triggered like an automatic response. That’s especially so if your body reacts strongly to stress-released hormones. A 2010 study from the University of Michigan showed that when levels of the stress hormone cortisol, were boosted in healthy, non-stressed adults, they ate more snack foods.? ?

Indeed, stress may increase your desire for doughnuts, ice cream, and other high-fat or sugary foods. You also are likely to eat fewer regular meals and fewer vegetables. That may be why you grab a handful of cookies during stressful moments instead of healthy snacks such as baby carrots or a few almonds. Not surprising, then, that stress eaters gain weight more often than those who aren’t stress eaters.

Find New Outlets for Stress

"Emotional or stress eating soon becomes a habit that changes how you eat regularly," Thayer says. Healthy eating and good nutrition disappear as your daily meal plan starts looking like the menu for a Cub Scout sleepover. ?

“The food drives your behavior and your behavior drives your food choice,” says Susan Kleiner, PhD, RD, a specialist in nutrition and human performance and author of The Good Mood Diet. “You are stuck until you put your foot down.” ?

You can break the stress eating cycle and enjoy a healthful diet, even if difficult times continue, with these effective ideas:

Build a good nutritional foundation. Prepare your brain and body in advance and you’ll be better able to handle stress when it happens. To keep your emotions in balance, eat regularly during the day, every four or five hours. Enjoy complex carbohydrates. Have oatmeal, raisin bran and other whole-grain cereals and breads, as well as brown rice, whole-grain pasta, vegetables, beans, fruits, and nonfat milk. These complex carbohydrates help your brain make the feel-good chemical serotonin, which counteracts stress, says Thayer. Moderate amounts of healthy fats from olives, avocadoes, nuts, seeds, fatty fish, nut butters and olive oil also help, adds Kleiner. Recognize what’s happening. When stressful events or thoughts trigger the urge to eat, stop and evaluate first. Are you hungry or not? Rate your hunger on a scale from 1 to 10. Ask yourself when was the last time you ate, to see if your body needs food right now. “Often, negative emotions trigger what feels like hunger but is really just a habitual response to eat to get rid of negative feelings,” says Elissa S. Epel, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and a researcher on stress and eating. Try a little mindfulness. Derail your automatic trip to the cookie jar by becoming more aware of your eating patterns. Mindful eating encourages you to use your senses to choose foods that please you and are nourishing to your body. Pay attention to the physical cues of fullness or hunger that your body sends. Use these to make decisions about when to begin eating and when to stop. Have a Plan B ... and C. The stress-eating urge usually hits suddenly, so keep healthy snacks with you wherever you go. Try small packets of nuts or trail mix (without added sweets or salt), apples, or bananas. Those better options will help you bypass high-calorie comfort. When possible, Kleiner advises eating protein and complex carbohydrates together, such as cheese with a slice of whole-grain bread. ? Another great option: a small piece of dark chocolate (72% cocoa is good). “You don’t need to eat a ton of it,” Kleiner says. ? Fool yourself. In difficult moments, do you crave crunchy snacks like chips or pretzels? Keep cut-up carrots and celery ready in the refrigerator. Soy chips are also a healthier choice than most fried or baked crunchy snacks. Have a sweet tooth? Fruit provides natural sweetness that can reduce your urge for high sugar items. Out of sight really does help. If you must keep stress eating temptations like cookies or chips at home for others, store those foods behind larger packages or stacks of dishes. In the freezer, use bags of frozen vegetables to block your view of the ice cream container. When you’re commuting to work or running errands, avoid driving past the bakery or fast-food restaurants. Call on a substitute. To make stress eating less automatic, you need to find better ways to deal with everyday hassles and ongoing tensions. Choose a healthy stress-busting alternative such as going for a walk or run, listening to music, calling a friend for a chat, brushing your cat or dog, or just sitting quietly.

Instead of eating, try one of the solutions mentioned above. Add it to your action choices if it works or try a different one next time. By finding healthier alternatives, you’ll feel more in control. Then you’ll be more prepared for the next step: “You have to figure out what’s causing the stress and work to alleviate that,” Thayer says.

View Article Source

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Rutters, F. Obesity, January 2009; vol 17: pp 72-77.

Adam ,T. Physiology & Behavior, July 2007; vol 91: pp 449-458.

George, S. Psychoneuroendocrinology, May 2010; vol 35: pp 607-612.

Torres, S. Nutrition, November-December 2007; vol 23: pp 887-894.

O’Connor, D. Health Psychology, January 2008; vol 27: pp S20-S31.

Epel, E. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, December 2004; vol 1032: pp 208-210.

Kristeller, J. Eating Disorders, January 2011; vol 19: pp 49-61.

The Center for Mindful Eating web site: “The Principles of Mindful Eating.”

Bethany Thayer, MS, RD, director of wellness programs and strategies, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit; spokesman, American Dietetic Association.

Elissa S. Epel, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco; co-director, UCSF Center for Obesity Assessment, Study & Treatment.

Susan Kleiner, PhD, RD, author, The Good Mood Diet.

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD on June 27, 2011

c 2011 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Clues to Early Detection, Treatment of Alzheimer's

Brain, Blood Changes Occur Decades Before Alzheimer's Symptoms

July 22, 2011 (Paris) -- Brain and blood chemistry changes that indicate Alzheimer's disease can be detected 10 to 20 years before memory loss and other cognitive symptoms develop, according to doctors studying? families with inherited forms of the disease.

Studying people genetically destined to develop Alzheimer's disease at a young age will help researchers understand the changes that occur prior to the development of the "type of Alzheimer's everyone recognizes -- the [non-inherited] form of the disease that? typically strikes people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s," says? John C. Morris, MD, of Washington University in St. Louis.

Morris heads the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN), which is recruiting about 400 people whose families harbor genetic mutations that virtually guarantee a person will develop Alzheimer's at the same young age as the parent, usually before age 60.

As part of the NIH-funded program, participants will also be enrolled in clinical trials of potentially disease-modifying drugs that target the underlying processes thought to cause Alzheimer's disease.

The hope is that such drugs will work early on to delay mental decline and slow the progressive degeneration of brain tissue. Currently available drugs like Aricept, Cognex, Exelon, and Razadyne boost mental functioning in a small percentage of people for a time, but none halts the inevitable progression of the disease.

Because study participants are almost certain to develop Alzheimer's disease at a young age, fewer of them need to be followed for a shorter amount of time to show a drug works in the early stages of the disease than if high-risk people in the general population are studied, says DIAN member Randall Bateman, MD, also of Washington University in St. Louis.

The cholesterol-lowering statin drugs that have revolutionized the prevention and treatment of heart disease were first tested in people with an inherited form of high cholesterol, Bateman tells WebMD.

At the Alzheimer's Association International Conference here, the DIAN researchers presented some early findings gleaned from the first 128 patients to be enrolled in the study:

MRI and PET brain scans show substantial buildup of beta-amyloid plaque in the brain at least 10 years before symptoms appear.Beta-amyloid and tau proteins -- both of which have been identified as biomarkers for the disease -- are elevated in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid, respectively, a decade prior to the development of symptoms.

"We think these changes start even earlier, 15 or 20 years prior to symptoms, but the patients have to be followed longer to confirm that," Morris says.
About half of study participants have gene mutations that cause Alzheimer's and half don't. Nearly all have no or only mild symptoms when recruited.
Bateman would not name the drugs that will be tested, although he did acknowledge that most target beta-amyloid plaque.

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Breastfeeding May Cut Risk of Asthma for Baby

Study Shows Exclusive Breastfeeding for 6 Months Offers the Most Protection From Asthma

July 21, 2011 -- Breastfeeding for at least six months appears to reduce the risk of a child developing asthma, new Dutch research suggests. Exclusive breastfeeding offered even more protection, the researchers found.

The link between breastfeeding and asthma risk has been reported before. However, the new study is believed to be the first to link the length of breastfeeding with the number of wheezing episodes a child has later on.

"Children who were never breastfed had almost 50% more risk of wheezing symptoms as compared to children who were breastfed for more than six months," says Liesbeth Duijts, MD, PhD, a researcher at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Children who were breastfed and given other milk and solids early had 20% more wheezing risk than babies who were exclusively breastfed, Duijts found.

"We suggest that longer and exclusive breastfeeding is associated with a reduced risk of asthma-related symptoms compared to children who do not receive any breastfeeding," Duijts tells WebMD.

The study is published in the European Respiratory Journal.

Duijts and colleagues evaluated more than 5,000 children from the Netherlands. They asked whether the children had ever been breastfed and if so for how long. They also asked when other milk or solids were given.

Parents answered questions about asthma-related symptoms annually when their children were ages 1 to 4.

Of the total, 92.3% of the children had ever been breastfed. Information about the length of time they were breastfed and whether it was exclusive was available for about 80%.

For those children, the median duration of breastfeeding was 3.5 months (half were breastfed longer, half less).? About 21% of the children were breastfed exclusively until age 4 months.

Besides the increase in wheezing, children never breastfed had an increased risk of shortness of breath, dry cough, and persistent phlegm during their first four years, compared to children breastfed for more than six months.

The risks for wheezing and phlegm were the strongest.

Breastfed babies who also were given other milk or solids during their first four months also had an increased risk of symptoms compared to children only breastfed, the researchers found. Besides more wheezing, they had more shortness of breath, dry cough, and phlegm.

Exactly why the breastfeeding seems to protect against asthma was not looked at in this study, Duijts says. However, she says earlier studies suggest the protection is due to breastfeeding's favorable effects on the immune system and on the gut.

"According to our data, we suggest that mothers breastfeed their children for at least six months and at least four months exclusively," Duijts tells WebMD. The researchers only looked at exclusive breastfeeding for four months, as the numbers who exclusively breastfed at six months were too low.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for about the first six months.

While 75% of U.S. babies start out being breastfed, just 43% are still breastfed at six months and only 13.3% exclusively at six months, according to the CDC.

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