Stress can help you lose weight

Stress hormones activate brown fat, which burns glucose
In today's society, many people value a slim figure. Thus, it is not surprising that more and more people try to lose a few pounds through diet or exercise. But there seem to be other ways to help us lose weight. Researchers found that stress can promote the loss of weight.

More and more people are trying to eat healthily and thereby lose weight. Scientists from Nottingham University have now discovered that people under mental pressure generally lose calories faster. The researchers published the results of their current study in the journal "Experimental Physiology".

Stress could help overweight people lose weight. (Image: sirikorn_t / fotolia.com)

So-called brown fat helps us lose weight
Would you like to lose a few pounds? Then you have certainly already tried diets or trying to achieve their goal through more exercise and sports. Researchers have now found that released stress hormones in the body activate healthy brown fat. This burns glucose and thereby generates body heat. Thus, light stress in addition to a diet can support weight loss, says study author Professor Michael Symonds. In a stressful situation cortisol is increasingly released. This cortisol enhancement activates so-called brown fat, which consumes calories to produce heat. About 90 percent of the fat in the body of an average adult belongs to the unhealthy white strain, say the experts. It absorbs calories and stores them in the stomach and thighs. It also increases the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, explain the researchers. But the rest is brown fat, also known as fatty tissue.

Brown fat burns calories and generates heat for the body, experts say. Babies and children have a lot of brown fat. You need it to keep warm. But even the body of adults contains a small amount of healthy brown fat. People who carry more brown fat are slimmer, the researchers say. To induce mild psychological stress, the research team examined five healthy women. The scientists subjected the subjects to a brief math test, monitoring the cortisol level and the temperature of brown fat in the test subjects' throat, the doctors report. The scientists found that intense stress was triggered even before the test started in the subjects. The cortisol level rose and the temperature of the brown fat increased. This also burned calories faster, the experts add.

New techniques should be promoted that trigger mild stress
Our research shows that altering the activity of brown fat can be explained by the response to mental stress, the researchers say. This is important because brown fat has the unique ability to quickly generate heat and metabolize it into glucose, explains Prof. Symonds. Most adults only have between 50 and 100 grams of brown fat. However, this is about 300 times larger than any other tissue because of its ability to generate heat, explain the scientists. There is an inverse relationship between the amount of brown fat and our BMI. Whether this is a direct consequence of the effects of brown fat remains to be fully understood, the researchers add. A better understanding of the factors that influence our activity of brown fat, such as diet and exercise, has the potential to prevent obesity and diabetes in the future, the researchers say. New techniques need to be promoted to induce mild stress so that the activity of brown fat is triggered, explain the physicians. It should be noted that negative effects of chronic and severe stress lead to a poor metabolism. This then has a negative effect on our health, warn the experts. (As)