小心！壓力大時狂吃小確幸美食的後遺症。

Stressed Women burn few comfort food calories

Sometimes, after a long, hard day, all you want is a bacon cheeseburger, a pile of fries and maybe a desert doughnut. After all, the stress that seems to be eating you up can be eased by what you eat up, right? Sadly, it’s time to burst the bubble in your comfort food milkshake.

有時，在結束漫長辛苦的一天後，你想要的只是培根起司堡、一堆薯條或甜甜圈。畢竟吃下這些東西就好像把壓力一同吞下，對嗎 ？悲慘的是，該是戳破你奶昔上漂亮泡泡的時候了！

Researchers asked women about things that had recently stressed them out. The women were then given a fat-and calorie-packed meal of eggs, turkey sausage and biscuits and gravy. The researchers then measured the womens’ metabolism, blood sugar, cholesterol, insulin and stress hormones.

研究人員要求受測女性把最近所受的壓力釋放出來，之後研究人員給了這些女性高脂肪熱量的蛋、火雞香腸、餅乾、肉醬。並測量了，這些女性的新陳代謝、血糖、膽固醇、胰島素和壓力賀爾蒙。

Turns out that the most stressed women had higher levels of insulin. Which slows down metabolism and causes the body to store fat. And that fat, if not burned off, accumulates in the body. 

結果，壓力大女性的胰島素數值較高，造成新陳代謝變慢使得身體開始堆積起脂肪。脂肪若不燃燒，便會悲劇性的一直累積在體內。

The women who had reported feeling stressed or depressed in the day before eating the meal burned 104 fewer calories during the seven hours following the meal than women who felt more mellow. The study is in the journal Biological Psychiatry. 

相較於受測前一天輕鬆愉悅的女性，憂鬱且壓力較大的女性，在進食後七小時燃燒的熱量會少於前者104大卡。這項研究報告被刊登在生物精神醫學(Biological Psychiatry)期刊中。

If eating high-calorie comfort food to alleviate stress becomes habitual, the result could be an average weight gain of 11 pounds per year. Which brings its own stress—like spending money on new clothes.

如果習慣吃大量高熱量的食物去紓解壓力的話，結果將會使你平均每年增加11磅(約5公斤)，而這樣的結果也會帶來壓力---像是花錢買新衣服!

原文出處http://www.scientificamerican.com