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Cortisol, Belly Fat and Skin Wrinkles

Cortisol Sends Fats to Belly (Stomach) and Love Handles (Waistline)

Throughout the ages, the fight-or-flight stress effect helped people escape from wild predators and survive. However today, in our fast-paced, technological age, mental and emotional stress pushes our panic button on a continual basis through crisis situations at work, home, etc. that prevent us from fighting or fleeing.

For example, in today's world, your boss is now the tiger that threatens you! And when he angrily yells and waves his finger in your face, you can not run away or argue back. So you give him that phony smile on the outside, while inside your stomach hurts, your chest gets tight, and your body releases excess cortisol due to the stress anxiety you are experiencing.

As your body releases extra cortisol because you're stressed, it causes fats to mobilize in the bloodstream to supply fuel for sustained activity. Ideally, you might immediately run a few miles or work out in a gym, and your body would safely burn off those extra fats.

However, most everyday work stress situations are stationary. People sit at a desk or in front of a computer. Or they stand behind a counter and deal with customers. Or a mom watches her kids. And when you can't exercise and burn up that fatty fuel, your body stores it as extra belly fat on your stomach and love handles on your waist, and you get fatter!

Belly Fat is the Worst Kind of Fat

More than just being unattractive, fat stimulated by stress that collects around the stomach and waistline (visceral fat) creates havoc in the body, not only raising risk for heart fatalities, but also diabetes and some types of cancer. Visceral fat (abdominal fat) wraps around the liver and other major organs, sending out bad hormones and impeding the production of good ones. (See Weight Control Section: Deadly Dangers of Fats and Sweets - Visceral Fat Verses Subcutaneous Fat.)

Cortisol Shuts Down Digestion, Causing Weight Retention

Glucocorticoids (cortisol) regulate carbohydrate metabolism, fat metabolism, protein metabolism and act as anti-inflammatory agents by preventing phospholipid release. Cortisol released when you're stressed shuts down the digestive process by redirecting blood flow to the muscles. This means when you come back from lunch and face work stress situations, you wind up experiencing indigestion, gas, bloating and extra weight retention.

Research also shows that stress hormones slow the release of stomach acid and the stomach empties too slowly. At the same time, the colon is stimulated, speeding passage of the materials moving through it. Chronic stress anxiety, which constantly produces elevated levels of cortisol, can result in an increase in appetite while the body gains unwanted pounds.

Research has also found that people with chronic stress anxiety consume 600 more calories per day because cortisol depletes serotonin. Eating extra food boosts low serotonin levels (a feel-good neurotransmitter), making the over-eating a way of self-medicating your stress anxiety with serotonin.

Cortisol Creates Skin Deficiencies That Cause Wrinkles

The cortisol stress effect protects the body from bleeding to death from open wounds by drawing blood away from the skin level. This is good for combat because if the skin is cut, bleeding is dramatically reduced. However this stress symptom is bad for healthy-looking skin because the diverting of blood flow robs the skin of valuable nutrients, creating nutritional deficiencies that dehydrate the skin and lead to premature wrinkles and accelerated aging.

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Sources: Stress and Body Shape: Stress-Induced Cortisol Secretion Is Consistently Greater Among Women With Central Fat Psychosomatic Medicine 62:623-632 (2000); Association Between the Metabolic Syndrome and Serum Cortisol in Overweight Latino Youth Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism; doi: 10.1210/jc.2007-2309; Stress-Induced Cortisol Response and Fat Distribution in Women Obesity Research 1994 May; 2(3): 255-62

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