A new research on mice suggests that the combination of chronic stress and poor weight loss diet which leads to a greater awareness weight than diet alone would.
Zofia Zukowska (USA) and Herbert Herzog (Australia) found that stressed mice without excessive caloric intake did not take weight while mice with a stress regime hypercalorique took two times more weight than their counterparts not stressed having the same feed. The stress would cause a greater storage.
The researchers also identified a mechanism by which this occurs. Stress, showed their experiments, leads to the release of a neuropeptide by the sympathetic nervous system which stimulates the growth of abdominal fat mass.
By blocking the receptors of this neuropeptide in the fatty tissue, there were no more excess fat provided by stress, explain the researchers.
These results enable us to envisage the development of drugs against obesity which would be acting not on the brain, but on fat and more particularly that block receptors that neuropeptide.
Studies have also shown that people under stress tend to have poorer health habits, such as less healthy eating.
