Sugar for stress

Have you ever noticed that when you are feeling stressed you want some chocolate or something sweet? Did you ever wonder why this happens or just take it for granted because it has always been like this?

Why do we reach for something sugary in times of stress? There are good biological and chemical reasons for it but because we are stressed so often in our modern society we end up reaching for something sweet nearly every day.

All our cells need glucose. Sweet foods contain one or more types of sugar and our body will convert these into the glucose for us. Except for fructose, which I have mentioned before. It converts fructose into fatty acids and this is then sent off to float in our blood vessels and eventually be stored as fat. More about fructose another day.

In the days of wooly mammoths and sabre tooth tigers the need for sugar to provide instant energy made sense. It gave the cave woman some time to find other food supplies such as berries and nuts, and the cave men time to hunt for meat and possibly fish.

When our brain is tired it will ask your body for more glucose and this is why we reach for sweet foods when we are tired. We also sometimes fancy sweet foods when we are ill, because our bodies are using our resources to help to heal us. When I worked as a nurse in the emergency department we often made shocked relatives cups of hot sweet tea. The heat helped to keep the circulation going, tea is both a stimulant and a relaxant and the sugar provided a hit of instant energy because shock causes the digestive system to shut down so that the body can provide all its resources to the vital organs and the muscles.

As children most of us were rewarded with a sweet treat for being 'brave' during something unpleasant which could range from an injection to having a broken limp fixed. Sweet drinks were on hand for flu, any amount of infections brought home from school and lollies and chocolates helped when your best friend turned nasty and went off with another girl from school. Add in hormones as we mature and pretty soon chocolate is becoming something that we can always rely on to get us through a tough moment or entire bad year.

The combination of being physically engineered to seek out sweet food, a brain that demands glucose when tired and a body that demands glucose under stress with a life time of being given sweet food as a treat or to make us feel better all leads to us turning to chocolates and lollies every time we feel tired, upset or stressed. And this doesn't include the times we use them to celebrate occasions and success.

Once you understand all the chemistry and natural desires of our body and brain plus conditioning it becomes easier to notice it when it happens and seek out alternatives.

Next time you are stressed you could try this 10 second stress reliever:
Place your hands together palm to palm and then curl your fingers over each other.
Breath in deeply and then quickly breath out deeply.
Do this 10 times.
Each time you do this raise one finger until you have raised all 10 fingers (and thumbs).

This uses up the adrenaline that we pump out when we become stressed so that don't feel so agitated and jumpy, which in turn reduces our need for sugar.

love
Sarah