Hunger Hormone Helps Alleviate Stress and Depression

In a strange twist of events your stomach’s hunger hormone, ghrelin, may help to protect you against stress-induced anxiety and depression.  This “gift” of protection comes at a price – eating too much food in response to stress.  This new information shows just how powerful stress eating can be, as this type of survival signaling is wired to your core subconscious brain.

Using an animal model consistent with human responses scientists clearly demonstrated for the first time that elevated ghrelin¹ protected the animals from anxiety and depression.  Furthermore, they showed that an acute stress could leave ghrelin elevated for a full month following the stress! 

This is bad news for drug researchers who keep trying to make drugs to knock out ghrelin – as doing so will make a person anxious and depressed.

The best solution for this problem is a healthy lifestyle, adequate exercise, a good night’s sleep, improved stress management skills, and adequate dietary supplements to help your nerves tolerate stress more effectively.  Once you dip down into the feelings of being too stressed you are likely to eat too much food – partly as your body’s way of coping with anxiety and depression.