Is Anxiety making you fat ?

Just when you thought it was safe in the kitchen ……! .Now we might be gaining weight due to our anxiety.

I just pile on the good news when it comes to anxiety ……is it possible that high levels of anxiety or trauma can actually cause us to gain weight? . I have sort of looked into this in a previous post , but that was mainly looking at eating as a form of escape from our problems . This time in the sequel ( fat 2 …the return ) we will look at the biology of the problem , does it exist , what causes it and what we can do about it . I bet if I asked you to describe an anxious person you might describe them as pale and thin ..so what’s all this weight gain stuff about ?

A major study from Yale University published in Psychosomatic Medicine October 2020 looked into lean women who suffered from ‘stress belly ‘ or abdominal fat . It is known that abdominal fat is related to poor health outcomes including diabetes and heart problems, so knowing a cause is important. The lead investigator Elissa S.Espel PhD shows that these women have an exaggerated response to cortisol. She shows that a main cause of this may be their vulnerability to stress and this in turn leads to enhanced cortisol reactivity. This matters as , just as we have seen in a previous post cortisol affects the distribution of fat . We have all heard how bad visceral fat is to our health ( this is the fat that is surrounding our major organs), those with increased exposure to cortisol also have large amounts of visceral fat around their organs. Tests run during the research led Epel to state that the women who were repeatedly exposed to stress tended to overreact to stressors and have a greater lifetime exposure to cortisol . Of course we cannot rule out the part genetics plays in body shape and stress reaction as well as lifestyle Epel also points out.

Now the keen eyed may have spotted we are only talking about women here , men tend to put on weight in their abdomen , pre menopausal women tend to put weight on in the hip area, leading to a greater possible body shape reaction to excess cortisol. The same process will probably be found in men Epel points out but it may be less noticeable from body shape .

US news ( Health ) ran an article in October 2023 stating that there are five ways stress can lead to weight gain . We have already covered food cravings in previous posts but the second claim is quite new to me , that is that stress makes insulin less effective. The claim is that free radicals caused by stress damage cells and increase insulin , this causes the body to under react to insulin within the cells. I fact checked this and came up with quite a few supporting articles including one from 2022 ( Sharma , Acre ,Chakole and Wanjari 10.7759/cureus.29142 ) showing that stress can cause ‘stress induced Diabeties ‘. This is caused by blood sugar levels rising as hormones are released as a response to stress.his in turn can cause insulin resistance or diabetes. Stress if you like over a long period causes metabolic disfunction , all this makes sense if you remember the body ( for example the brain and immune system) needs a good source of energy during periods of danger or infection , it can be beneficial in the short term but over the longer turn it just promotes insulin resistance in the body .

So we have deviated from the five ways US news describes stress leads to weight gain , we have covered two . Number three suggests that chronic stress leads to belly fat , we have covered this in the first paragraph , but this article does add to the information . This article suggests that the visceral fat also adds to the chances of developing diabetes , high blood pressure , heart disease and high cholesterol levels, so more good news!

Number 4 from the article lays out other effects of cortisol , in case you weren’t worried enough ….. Cortisol also regulates other areas of our health for example sleep . I think we all realise this anyway , we know it’s hard to sleep or we get disturbed sleep when we are stressed , thats partly due to the cortisol . The hormone is also involved in waking you up in the mornings , sleep deprivation the article goes on to state can add 400 calories a day as we tend to eat more when sleepy or tired …..I can relate to that one …

Number five in the article is a bit of a no brainer , when your stressed you feel less likely to go to the gym ( as if Im ever there) or makes you feel like you might not want to exercise. M Stults-Kolehmainen et al wrote an interesting article in 2012 ( PMID 2268829 ) showed that stress actually moderated , or reduced the recovery time of muscles after exercise . So even if you do manage to exercise with stress , you might feel the pain after for longer.

Stress Makes inflammation worse

Researching this stress makes you fat post I came across something I had no idea existed , brown fat or also known as brown adipose tissue . The average body only has 50-100g of brown fat , but it can generate heat more than 300 times any other tissue. Yale news from June 30 2020 looked into why stress hormones , that on the face of it should actually decrease inflammation do the opposite. Research at Yale showed that stress made inflammatory disease worse , this should not really be the case as Cortisol and Adrenaline are supposed to suppress the immune system not activate it. The identified a specific immune system cell ( IL-6 , but don’t worry about remembering it ), that triggers inflammation in times of stress.

Hang on ….we’re getting to the brown fat bit and how it works in weight gain ………..so the researchers found IL-6 ( remember I told you not to remember it, I’ve changed my mind ) was being secreted in brown fat . Brown fat in case you’re not aware ….just as Im not, is usually part of the system for regulating body metabolism ( life sustaining chemical reactions in organisms ) and body temperature. There is some preliminary evidence according to Yale news that IL-6 may play a role in diabetes and obesity.

In fact Professor Symonds , school of medicine , Nottingham University states that there is an inverse relationship between brown fat and BMI . The researchers think that the brown fat prepares the body for increase production of glucose in anticipation of threats. The lead researcher Dr Andrew Wang from Yale also suspects IL-6 is important in disorders such as depression and anxiety . If all of this is true and further evidence is required , then we already have drugs that we use to treat Rheumatoid Arthritis that block the activity of IL-6 .

IL-6 is definitely an area to watch in the treatment of obesity , depression and anxiety. Professor Symonds hopes that a better understanding of brown fat could help with the treatment of obesity and severe stress.

Does stress make us Fat ?

What is the answer then , does stress cause us to get ….well I hate to say the word …but fat ? The answer is probably yes , not just through changes to our actions , such as eating more but through biological changes such as insulin resistance, cortisol , adrenaline or IL-6 . This is a short post , the coffee shop Im writing this in is closing soon and Im getting the looks …you know the ones …hurry up and finish we want to go home early and shut the shop …that sort of look.

Thanks for spending some time on my site , it mens a lot , I know there is a lot of content out there …I hope I find you all well and happy . If you’re suffering with depression or anxiety , remember you are not alone , reach out to a medical professional if you feel able .