View Single Post
Old 12-06-2003, 02:01 AM   #2 (permalink)
lordjeebus
この印篭が目に入らぬか
 
Location: College
It actually makes sense that your appetite goes down under stress.

Stress reactions developed evolutionarily to cope with emergency situations. When you're being chased by a tiger, you don't need to digest food, or reproduce, or use your immune system, so these and other systems are shut down in order to devote all your resources to getting away alive.

Humans are unique in that we psychologically induce prolonged stress reactions. What this means is that your appetite could be suppressed for a long time if a stressful condition continues.

This is not healthy because the stress reaction is damaging in the long-term. With a lowered immune system you're more susceptible to disease. I believe the stress hormone cortisol can also cause some sort of neural damage -- I think there's some experiments out there about hippocampus shrinkage.

Of course, it also makes sense that some people eat more under stress. In this case, eating is typically a coping behavior that reduces one's stress reaction, and not due to an increase in appetite.
lordjeebus is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76