Alleviating Chronic Stress 16.11.2011

6 Nov 2011

In today’s changing society, daily life has become more stressful; Unemployment, recession, negative equity, cutbacks, hospitals in crises, insecurity all contribute to constant psychosocial stress that can negatively affects our work and private life. As a result, many people suffer from stress-related disorders such as anxiety and depression.

Previous research has shown that humans when exposed to stress change their eating habits from a healthy to a high fat snack diet; also called “comfort eating”. This “comfort eating” has been described as “self-medication” as the ingestion of these highly caloric foods can on one hand decrease stress-hormone levels, but on the other hand can contribute to the risk to develop obesity. So far however, few studies have investigated whether the effects of “comfort food” extend to the psychological consequences of chronic stress, namely anxiety and depression.

To investigate these aspects mice were fed with two different diets, one high and one low in fat content for 12 weeks. Animals on both diets were then tested to see whether how they respond to chronic psychosocial stress. In response to stress, only mice on a low-fat diet developed anxiety and depression-like behaviour. Mice that received a diet high in fat content were protected from some but not all of these stress-induced anxiety and depression responses. Thereby, the results prove that the consumption of high-fat diet can selectively protect from the negative effects of stress.

Professor John F Cryan says that: “We are very excited by these findings but future research efforts will be required to unravel the underlying molecular mechanisms of how high-fat diet can protect from stress-induced anxiety and depression”. Identifying these targets may help in the search for pharmacotherapies to treat anxiety and depression following daily stress exposure.

The research is funded by Food for Health Ireland (FHI; www.fhi.ie), a centre for functional food development funded by Enterprise Ireland (in conjunction with members of the Irish Food Industry).