Can Stress Make Me Fat?
Courtesy Forbes, April 26, 2019
In April of 2019 Forbes magazine reported the United States as one of the world’s top ten most stressed countries.¹ Based upon the stress levels of 143 countries the Gallup World Poll revealed that Americans are among the most stressed out people in the world. The study further found that 1 in 2 Americans felt worried often and 1 in 5 felt angry a lot. Do these emotions add to our stress and make us fat?
Can College Students Gain Weight from Stress?
Known as “the freshman fifteen” the weight gained from young adults going to college has been observed as directly stress related. Most college kids actually have a lower calorie consumption at college as they are eating on a budget; however, they still gain weight. In a peer-reviewed cross-sectional survey it was found that out of 268 students over half reported significant weight increase.² Reasons for the stress-based weight gain were primarily from not eating healthy foods due to stressful schedules that caused the students to choose fast foods as a primary meal.
How Does Cortisol Work?
Cortisol has a bad reputation as the “stress hormone”; however, it is a natural hormone in the human body responsible for the regulation of many bodily functions. Levels of cortisol vary throughout the day based upon how much is produced by the adrenal gland, with levels being normally higher in the morning and lower during sleep. Cortisol helps to maintain blood pressure and is related to producing energy from fat and carbohydrates. How does this relate to stress? Stress can cause the body to produce more cortisol than is needed, causing an unnatural hunger for fatty, salty, and sweet foods that provide quick energy to combat that stress. With too much cortisol the body also produces less testosterone, and both men and women need testosterone for building muscle, albeit in different levels. This can cause a decrease calorie burn resulting in more calories stored in the body as fat.
Can Cryotherapy Reduce Stress?
Reducing stress can benefit in many ways, especially in the restoration of proper cortisol levels in the body. The Journal of Obesity found in a peer-reviewed clinical study that whole body cryotherapy can significantly reduce stress and help you manage weight at the same time. Stress is a response to situations that seem to be overwhelming. Cryotherapy causes the body to endure an extreme level of cold, triggering a natural cellular response that is greater than the level needed to endure the extreme cold. One of these responses is the production of hormones such as norepinephrine that is related to depression. In many clinical studies there has been a positive correlation of whole body cryotherapy with the improvement of depression and anxiety disorder symptoms.³ Weight loss can benefit from less stress and the added effect of burning calories from the cryotherapy session, often more than 500 calories due to a metabolic reaction called non-shivering thermogenesis.
Stress from Not Exercising
As if exercising wasn’t hard enough an increasing amount of people are experiencing raised stress levels due to difficulties scheduling gym time. This has a double-negative effect: stress from not working out causes raised cortisol, and guilt from not working out causes people to exercise harder and potentially injure themselves. Cryotherapy protects people from overuse injuries by washing their skeletal muscle tissues with inflammation healing enzymes and hormones. This is why professional athletes and teams use whole body cryotherapy: reduce the occurrence of overuse injuries and stay in the game.
Learn more about the benefits of cryotherapy and go through the many cryotherapy clinical studies.
Founded on facts: for peer-reviewed articles, scholarly journals, and articles cited above please see the below sources.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/04/26/report-u-s-among-the-ten-most-stressed-nations-worldwide-infographic/
WEIGHT GAIN IN COLLEGE FRESHMAN https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938407001680
Rymaszewska J, Ramsey D, Chładzińska-Kiejna S. Whole-body cryotherapy as adjunct treatment of depressive and anxiety disorders. Arch Immunol Ther Exp (Warsz). 2008;56(1):63–68. doi:10.1007/s00005-008-0006-5