Is work exhausting you? Didn’t you go on vacation? When you come home exhausted and still stressed, you may tend to snack on unhealthy food.
The fact of losing one’s self-control in the face of food choices would be linked to cerebral mechanisms hitherto little known to scientists. A stress moderate would be enough to cause such a phenomenon.
In recent studyresearchers at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, studied how the stress could influence food decisions. They observed, via neuroimaging, 51 volunteers who wanted to adopt a healthy diet.
Less healthy food choices when under stress
22 of them did not receive any particular treatment and 29 others underwent moderate stress by dipping a hand in ice water for 3 minutes while being questioned by a scientist.
Then the volunteers had to choose between two food options: an appetizing but rather unhealthy food and a less tasty but healthy food. Result: the participants under stress opted instead for theunhealthy food.
Stress changes the activity of certain regions of the brain
On the images obtained usingMagnetic resonance image (MRI), the researchers noticed that the brain activity of stressed people had changed at the level of three regions of the brain: the prefrontal cortex, the striatum and the amygdala.
These areas respectively play a role in the self control, motivation and emotional management. Stress would thus alter certain neurons in these regions and reduce the ability to make coherent and reasoned choices. Scientists have also discovered that the stress hormone, cortisolactually played only a minor role in these brain changes.
Sport and emotional support: the balance the brain needs?
An important step in the relationship between stress and self-control. “Achieving self-control requires a precise balance in the activity of several areas of the brain, explains Silvia Maier, lead author of the study.
The next step for the researchers: to observe whether physical exercise and emotional support attenuate the effect of stress on decision-making.
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