Craving Comfort Food?

[Guest guest]

Seems I am finding some pretty good Articals or things to write Articals on right now. They are not all fibro related yourever we could all benifiet From the articals. Hope you find something in them that helps you!

Craving Comfort Food?

Remember that deep dive into the peanut butter after 9/11? Or the incredible lure of chocolate when the seemingly last possibility for something wonderful has just fizzled in your face? And, the inexplicable satisfaction of a mammoth greasy cheeseburger when you are feeing put out by absolutely everything? No, you’re not crazy. You really do crave comfort foods when you’re under stress. And a very special collaboration between your brain and your body makes you do it.

We seek chocolate, ice cream or good old peanut butter, scientists have discovered, not just because they taste good. These cravings actually represent your body’s attempt to put a brake on the machinery of chronic stress.

Your body has a lot of natural wisdom in its operations. It just wasn’t designed to cope with chronic stress, nor with an ice cream shop on every corner. Here’s how it works. Say you’re driving on the freeway, a car cuts you off and you almost instantly swerve out of the way to avert disaster. When you experience that kind of a sudden stress, your brain instantly signals your body to turn out a hormone called cortisol. It in turn relays the message throughout the body to gear you up for a response to sudden danger.

Your heart races. You become highly attentive and alert, even vigilant. Blood vessels constrict and blood flow shifts to your muscles, as a way to prepare them for action. Metabolism shifts too, and energy is made rapidly available to your muscles, poised for action. But such emergencies don’t last forever. Your stress response system has built into it the capacity to turn itself off. The stress hormone cortisol acts as its own shut-off valve, sending a message to the brain to stop production of the hormone. Chronic stress is another story completely. The system does not turn off. As the situations that gave rise to stress endure, they prompt the continued outpouring of cortisol. That signals you to engage in pleasure-seeking activities. And among the most primary of pleasures is eating high-energy foods, those with high levels of fat and sugar. Cream puffs, chocolate, ice cream and peanut-butter cups. Under the threat of constant danger, which chronic stress reflects, these foods would help your body build up reserves and stay in the game of life. The foods get deposited on your body in the form of energy reserves, otherwise known as fat. Stress hormones send the fat to get deposited right on your abdomen. That fat, say the researchers, provides a signal to the brain to shut off the stress response. ...

“This seems to be the body’s way of telling the brain, ‘It’s OK, you can relax, you’re refueled with high-energy food,’” says Norman Pecoraro, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of California at San Francisco.

But the stresses we face today are not like the eat-or-be-eaten stresses we faced when our bodies evolved. Today you are more likely to be facing such stressors as job conflicts that threaten your livelihood. The energy reserves do not get used up. There’s a candy store or pizza place on every street corner that speaks directly to your ongoing need for stress relief. And, you keep gaining weight around your abdomen. There is a way out, Pecoraro says. There are other ways to shut off chronic stress. There’s exercise, yoga, meditation, hot baths and, yes, sex. They all stimulate pleasure centers in the brain. Relaxation techniques may work by reducing the psychological perception of stress. “In the short term, if you’re chronically stressed it might be worth eating and sleeping a little more to calm down, perhaps at the expense of gaining a few pounds,” says Pecoraro. “But seeking a long-term solution in comfort food -- rather than fixing the source of the stress or your relationship to the source of the stress -- is going to be bad for you.”

Love & God Bless!

/Wolf~President

I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.

"Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing." 1 Thessalonians 5:11Now as I always say this at the end of my e-mails:

IF GOD BRINGS YOU TO IT.

HE WILL BRING YOU THROUGH IT.

This has became my philosophy.