Children of Poverty – Cortisol/Stress Affects Cognitive Development

As reported in The Washington Post, "Chronic stress from growing up poor appears to have a direct impact on the brain, leaving children with impairment in at least one key area – working memory."

A study of 195 children (ages 9, 13 and 17) from households living above and below the poverty line took a look at stress levels by measuring the stress hormones cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine with blood pressure and body-mass index data.

The unfortunate results?

"The longer they lived in poverty, the higher the allostatic load (wear and tear on the body) and the lower the working memory score," the study found.

New questions are arising based on this research. What about stress caused by factors other than poverty? What about adult brains and an increased allostatic load?

The Post asks: “What is the effect of the allostatic load in women from the chronic dangers and stresses of being treated as second-class citizens all their lives? What does the allostatic load do to the working memory of males who are shorter and more slenderly built than the bullies at school? And what does it do to members of any devalued racial or ethnic group in society?”

Seems that continues stress in all shapes and forms has severely negative effects on cognition and overall brain performance.

Now it’s clear to see why controlling excess cortisol via products like Sanyx (http://www.MySanyx.com) -- and measuring the results using biometric devices -- are so important to overall health and well being. It’s no exaggeration that cortisol agonists can be among the most important supplements we can take… given the laundry list of harmful effects excess stress and cortisol can encourage.

Cortisol and Stress Affect Eating Habits

It’s common knowledge that excess cortisol causes the body to store excess fat around the middle.  Few dispute this fact. When the body is consistently stressed, the effects of elevated cortisol create a demand for more fats to be deposited to the abdominal area, where cortisol receptors are higher.

But the increased girth is caused by other factors, too… related to how and what we eat when were under pressure.

Stress can drive us to eat comfort foods, generally fast foods loaded with salt, fat and sugar. Plus, these foods destroy our self-control. In short, we eat ‘bad’ food in excess.

When we’re stressed we grab the easiest, most convenient, and tastiest food – burgers, pizza, chicken nuggets, chips, etc. You know – a 7-11 diet.

Plus, high consumption of alcohol is also another by-product of stress. Alcohol is caloric… alcohol in excess is excessively caloric. One is never enough and two are just nice.

Three pints of beer = 500 calories. Do this twice a week and you’ve added 4,000 calories in a month. A year later, you’re at least 10 pounds heavier (13.7 pounds to be exact).

Eating and drinking comfort foods can help feel calm, but their long-term effects are horrific to your shape and your health.

Control stress, reduce cortisol… and stay slim around the middle. In fact, controlling cortisol through diet, meditation, biometric (mHealth) testing and supplementation, (see http://www.MySanyx.com), could be the best weight loss plan ever… and the simplest.

Cortisol and Abdominal Obesity

Interesting observation taken from:

The molecular neurobiology of depressionVaishnav Krishnan and Eric J. Nestler


Published in final edited form as:

Nature. 2008 October 16; 455(7215): 894–902. doi:10.1038/nature07455.

Abstract
Unravelling the pathophysiology of depression is a unique challenge. Not only are depressive syndromes heterogeneous and their aetiologies diverse, but symptoms such as guilt and suicidality are impossible to reproduce in animal models. Nevertheless, other symptoms have been accurately modelled, and these, together with clinical data, are providing insight into the neurobiology of depression. Recent studies combining behavioural, molecular and electrophysiological techniques reveal that certain aspects of depression result from maladaptive stress-induced neuroplastic changes in specific neural circuits. They also show that understanding the mechanisms of resilience to stress offers a crucial new dimension for the development of fundamentally novel antidepressant treatments.

Here's the interesting bit related to obesity:

Several metabolic abnormalities that are often associated with depression, such as insulin resistance and abdominal obesity, can be at least partly explained by an increase in glucocorticoids. Hypercortisolaemia in depression is manifested at several levels, including impaired glucocorticoid-receptor-mediated negative feedback, adrenal hyper-responsiveness to circulating adreno-corticotropic hormone (ACTH) and hypersecretion of cortico tropinreleasing factor, the hypothalamic activator of ACTH release from the pituitary. In line with these findings, glucocorticoid and corticotropin-releasing factor receptor antagonists are currently being tested in clinical trials.