Listening to your body to stop obesity
To be able to cope with stress more effectively, we should listen to our bodies more. This is the conclusion of a study conducted in San Diego, California where researchers evaluated brain function before and after a stressful situation using functional MRI. They found that people with high resilience were far more attentive to signals that their body were giving them (such as changes in breathing and heart rates) and were therefore able to moderate this response, effectively dampening the effect of stress.
As the stress response can play a role in the development of obesity, due to its proven effects on hormone regulation and cravings (sometimes referred to as ‘comfort eating’), this research has the potential to investigate the causes of obesity in some individuals, possibly creating opportunities for new interventions to be developed. The researchers are hoping to build on this work and explore the effect of resilience more, so that it may be used in a therapeutic setting.
