Stay calm, it may save
your waistline.

You may be one of those people who eat excessively whenever depressed or sad but now researchers are finding that even simple stress can make us fat. With our modern-day, high-tech, stressed-out world, it’s no wonder that so many people are overweight. Could this be the hidden element behind so much obesity today? From an intriguing experiment with laboratory mice, scientists are now beginning to understand what part stress plays in obesity. You will be amazed at what happened with a group of otherwise slim mice when subjected to daily stress.

From an article in the Washington Post, an international team of scientists announced that they discovered a biological switch by which stress can promote obesity. In their series of experiments with mice, researchers found that the neurochemical pathway that they identified promotes fat growth in chronically stressed animals that ate a junk-food diet compared to those who were not stressed and ate the same diet.

The research team uncovered something very intriguing for those who are desperate to find ways to solve our obesity epidemic. They found that blocking those neurochemical pathways “can prevent fat accumulation and shrink fat deposits and that stimulating the pathway can strategically create new deposits — possibly offering new ways to remove fat as well as to mold youthful faces, firmer buttocks and bigger breasts”. That prospect certainly sounds appealing. One scientist, Zofia Zukowska of Georgetown University’s Department of Physiology and Biophysics, who led the research, even went so far as to say that “this could be revolutionary.”




Here’s what the experiment studied:

Zukowska and her colleagues subjected mice to chronic stress — either standing in cold water an hour a day or being caged with a more aggressive alpha mouse for 10 minutes a day — and then gave them standard feed or a high-fat, high-sugar diet similar to the junk-food fare many consume.

After two weeks, only the mice that were both stressed and fed the junk-food diet gained a significant amount of weight. They accumulated about twice as much fat in their bellies as non-stressed mice that consumed the same diet.

The researchers also stated that not only did the combo of a high-stress environment and junk-food create a significant amount of weight gain but that it is the worst kind of fat deposited around the abdomen and laced with hormones and other chemical signals that promote illness. They found that after three months, the mice became obese and developed a range of health problems including high blood pressure, early diabetes, high cholesterol and an increasingly common condition known as metabolic syndrome. This blog has written many articles concerning metabolic syndrome or otherwise known as syndrome X. There are a series of articles fully explaining this condition. To read Part I of the series, please go here.

When further examined, the researchers found sharply elevated concentrations of a substance called neuropeptide Y (NPY) which is a chemical messenger produced by nerves in the body, including those in fat. They also exhibited higher levels of a molecular partner that NPY needs to work, known as neuropeptide Y2R receptor.




The scientists explained that the NPY and the receptor Y2R trigger the whole process of stress-induced obesity. One of the other interesting findings of this discovery is that humans with defective NPY receptors are resistant to obesity, whereas those with excessive NPY are prone to it. That would explain why not all people who are subjected to chronic stress gain weight.

Now here’s the really exciting news. The researchers demonstrated that by injecting a substance that blocks NPY, it prevented mice from accumulating fat even if they were stressed and ate a high-fat diet. They found that they could even shrink fat deposits by 40 percent to 50 percent within two weeks. Zukowska noted “It just melts the fat. It’s incredible.”

The other interesting thing about their discovery was that they could also reverse this process and inject NPY under the skin instead of blocking it and stimulate fat growth. This could possibly suggest that this process could be used in cosmetic and reconstructive surgery to replace skin fillers such as collagen or silicone.

However, before you start booking your next session of shrinking or growing fat, the researchers caution that more research would be needed to confirm that the same system works in humans and to learn whether blocking or injecting NPY receptors is safe. There could be side effects that may offset the beneficial effects of the procedure.

It just goes to show you that it seems that whenever science comes up with a way to trick nature, nature just comes back by saying…”Not so fast”. And, you end up with worse problems than when you started. So until we can find a bullet proof method of tricking Mother Nature, we will probably be stuck with the old diet and exercise routine. So, for a safe and reliable way to lose weight — put on the old track shoes and push yourself away from the table. But now we also have to add — cut out the stress in your life. That is certainly easier said than done. Good luck!