In the modern world, stress is often an inescapable part of everyone's life. It really doesn't matter whether you are an adult, child or a senior citizen, you are likely to have stresses that you must deal with. Scientific studies show that stress can be damaging to health in a number of ways. Stress causes our bodies to undergo many involuntary changes. Among these changes is the secretion of the hormone known as cortisol. This hormone that is known as cortisol is directly related to the fight or flight response.

 

What this means is that, when we are stressed, we are liable to experience a very sudden increase in energy. The reason for this is because cortisol is the hormone in the body that is involved in immunity and healing functions as well as regulation of blood sugar and blood pressure. Read more about cortisol at http://www.ehow.com/about_4609349_what-is-cortisol.html. In a stressful situation, the body is flooded with cortisol that causes their blood glucose to spike and their blood pressure to increase. The body goes through these sudden changes in preparation for what it perceives as a life or death threat.

 

One of the big problems with the stresses in modern life is the fact that the body experiences the fight or flight response even when there is no actual threat in the environment. Often, stress is simply the repetition of certain thoughts that cause us to experience a physiological response that is akin to a fight or flight reaction. When we experience constant surges of cortisol, in an effort to replenish the glucose that was released, we experience a sudden increase in appetite. Regardless of the cause of your stress, whether it was the result of an actual threatening situation in the environment, or simply the result of stressful thinking, your stress will always cause the same surge in appetite. Ultimately, the result of this is a habitual craving for comfort foods, high in fat and sugar.

 

The ultimate result of these habitual craving patterns is the build up of excess abdominal or 'belly' fat. Obviously, this is a very common problem. Medical studies done recently suggest that abdominal fat is the most dangerous to our health. There are scientific studies that show that excess belly fat leads to cardiovascular disease, hypertension and diabetes.

 

If your weight situation sounds like the one illustrated above, the good news is that there are new scientific discoveries that are suggesting that we take a new approach to stress reduction in regard to our appetite control. For those who would like more information about what they can do to counter these problems and restore their health, the best thing you can do is search the Internet for information on cortisol, stress fat and excess belly fat.