Stress, eating, and the college student

by Stephanie Scott

Twinkie by nataliej

Stressful situations cause the production of cortisol, a stress hormone.  This hormone causes an increased heart rate, diversion of blood flow to muscles, and metabolic changes, which allows energy to be made ready for use by the muscles.  All of these responses aim to aid in survival in stressful, and possibly life-threatening, situations.  This mechanism works through a negative feedback system, so the stress response is able to quickly shut itself off and allow the body to function normally again.

Generally, this is not the type of stress that college students deal with in their lives. With ever-increasing demands from classes, the responsibility of being on one’s own, possible financial responsibilities, lack of sleep, substance abuse (or decisions about whether to take part in such activity), and trying to figure out how to balance everything, stress levels are often elevated in college students. If students do not learn to manage their busy lives, it can lead to chronic stress.

Chronic stress affects the body using the same mechanism as a regular stress response.  However, chronic stress causes the body to produce cortisol in a routine manner to allow the body to physiologically respond to the stressful situations it is placed in, and these stress responses do not shut themselves off using a negative feedback system. When a response that requires much energy does not shut off, it quickly depletes the body’s energy supply.  This can lead to food cravings– especially cravings for high-energy foods containing much sugar and fat.  These foods are favorable because they tend to be deposited as fat in the abdomen, and abdominal fat is easily accessible by the liver to be used for energy.  Also, these abdominal fat deposits send out metabolic signals that turn off the stress response in the body. Therefore, eating high-energy foods is important when dealing with chronic stress because it allows the body to gain energy deposits so the body can function once previously stored fat deposits have been depleted by energy-consuming stress responses.

The evolution of a kiss

by Julia Ding

Lips, Eyes, Kiss! by Carlo Nicora

Watching a romantic comedy with my friends, my reflex to say “aww” after every deep and passionate kiss was dangerously unchecked throughout the film. When I realized what I was doing, it made me wonder why exactly humans choose kissing as a means to convey feelings of affection to one another, as opposed to any other act of physical contact (a pat on the head, or perhaps a pinch on the cheek). As it turns out, recent research indicates that underneath a person’s desire to kiss someone are a slew of other motives believed to be developed as evolutionary advantages.

Kissing is believed to have originated from mothers feeding their child by mouth, and over time expanding to signify affection past parent-child relationships (Walter, 2008).  The notion of expressing affection in such a way has been noted throughout nature, with the habit of kissing seen in such animals as chimpanzees, bonobos, and elephants.It then evolved to aid both men and women in choosing a compatible mate. When two people kiss romantically, information is passed between them about each other. With their faces so close together, people are able to gain an impression of the person they are kissing through their sensing of smell, taste, movement, and temperature. From an evolutionary standpoint, analysis of a person’s breath, scent, and the appearance of their teeth can give indications about their general health.  A previous post on the importance of kissing explored the work of Gallup, Hughes, and Harrison (2007)  Studying over 1,000 college students, they found that women are most concerned with kissing as an assessment of possible mates, while men are less selective about kissing, and often kiss with the notion that it is a precursor to sex.  One of the authors noted that women were more likely to screen potential sexual partners on the basis of their kisses (Stein, 2008). All this agrees with the belief that women have more invested in a sexual relationship, with the prospect of producing and caring for children.

All these factors encourage romantic kissing, but there may also be further chemical benefits in sharing an enjoyable kiss. In a new study, psychologist Wendy L. Hill monitored the levels of oxytocin, a hormone that influences bonding, trust, and male and female orgasm, and cortisol, a stress hormone, before and after kissing and other intimate acts such as hand-holding between 15 college male-female couples (Walter, 2008). Although the results showed an increase in oxytocin only in males, cortisol levels dropped for both males and females after kissing, supporting their hypothesis that kissing is a stress reliever.

Rebel without a hormone

by Eve Andrews

Photo by melisdramatic

A recent study orchestrated by Dr. Graeme Fairchild and Professor Ian Goodyer at the University of Cambridge suggests that the heartbreakingly misunderstood bad boy you had a crush on in high school may have suffered from a deficiency in a crucial stress hormone more so than a case of incurable angst.  Adolescent males who display “antisocial behavior,” such as aggression or other tendencies toward delinquency, have significantly lower levels of cortisol than their better-behaved counterparts.
Cortisol, the hormone in question, assists in the control of strong – especially violent and angry – emotions in a stressful situation.  When an individual is placed under stress, the adrenal gland then secretes cortisol to elicit a response to the initial stress stimulus in the body.  Fairchild and Goodyer’s study utilized teenage boys with a history of “severe antisocial behavior” – recruited from disciplinary institutions and referred by schools – and also boys without such a history. Researchers compared cortisol levels in saliva samples taken in a neutral setting and those taken in a stressful situation.  Among the non-antisocial boys, cortisol levels surged during the stressful situation, whereas among the antisocial ones cortisol levels dropped below the neutral level.

This is not the first study to link cortisol deficiency and hostile behavior.  In 2000, the University of Chicago illustrated a correlation between low levels of cortisol and aggression at a young age.  The significance of these studies, especially in tandem, is that they offer a fairly simple biological explanation for a behavioral disorder.  As scientists have discovered that depression and schizophrenia stem from biological irregularities in the brain, they have been able to formulate treatments for these diseases.  Thus the “cure for the bad boy” becomes a tangible possibility, since all those lunch detentions were never really doing the trick.

References:
•    University of Cambridge (2008, October 5). Antisocial Behavior May Be Caused By Low Stress Hormone Levels. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 7, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081001093506.htm
•    University Of Chicago Medical Center (2000, January 20). Low Levels Of Salivary Cortisol Associated With Aggressive Behavior. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 7, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/01/000120073039.htm

The importance of a kiss

by Emmaline Keddy-hector

This afternoon I was sitting with a group of friends and they began discussing the different people they had “hooked-up” with recently-who they had kissed. One of them remarked that they ‘needed’ to find someone to make-out with that weekend. This got me thinking about the importance of the kiss. The climax of every movie romance is always when the couple kisses, and a person’s first kiss is seen as a huge step towards growing up.

Susan M. Hughes of Albright College, recently performed a study on kissing- why we do it, and how members of either gender react to it differently. She found that in general, women judge their partners as potential mates through their kiss. They found that taste and smell were more important to women in a kiss, and that “Women were much more likely to say they would refuse to have sex with a bad kisser.”(quoted in Stein, 2008, p. 3) The research also suggested that women were more likely to kiss just for the sake of kissing, while men were more likely to assume that kissing would lead to sex. Another factor in the kiss is the overall sensitivity of the lips and mouth. The lips are one of the most sensitive parts of the body, and the tongue receives and sends huge amounts of information to the brain. According to an article in the Washington Post, kissing has also been shown to lower cortisol (the stress hormone) in members of both genders. Some of their findings suggested that kissing might release oxytocin at least in males, a hormone which promotes bonding. So while many consider kissing to be no more than a amusing diversion, it turns out that, at least subconsciously, kissing means much more to us than we think.