Feeling stressed? Here is how food can help

Throughout April, we’re sharing tips and useful information to help you identify, cope with, and relieve stress.

Back in 2019, we hosted a stress busters event at each of our campuses. It was a chance for our students to take some time out from their daily college routine and relax a little - particularly with exams on the horizon. During our three-day event, we conducted some research into the things that young people felt stressed about.

College work, deadlines, and exams came out on top, but a few other things popped up, including diet. The things that we eat and drink play a huge role in helping us to function properly, both physically and mentally.

So with that in mind, we asked nutritional expert and Complementary Healthcare lecturer, Kirsten Chick, to give us an insight into how food can combat stress.

Kirsten says that good nutrition is broadly underestimated when it comes to counteracting the effects of stress on your physical and mental health.

The nutrients in the food you eat can help your nerves to calm down, your adrenals to reset and your happy chemicals to flourish. What’s more, you can use nutrition to help rectify the physical impacts of stress, for example on your digestion, joints, skin, immune system and reproductive health.

Stress-related illness

We used to think of stress-related illnesses as something a bit woolly or made up. Actually, the many impacts of stress on your physical body have been well documented.

With regards to digestion, stress will downgrade its function significantly. If you need to deal with a threatening situation, you don’t want hunger getting in the way, or digestive processes using up all your energy. So your stomach and intestines may seek to empty what’s there – either up, by vomiting, or down, through diarrhoea. If stress hangs around for longer, then the effects of system shutdown may change. Appetite may stay low, or you may just crave refined foods, sugars and other processed foods that don’t take much digestion. You may also end up being constipated, having cramps or bloating and further effects from not being able to digest your food properly.

The impact on your gut lining and microbiome can contribute to inflammation throughout your body. Which is one of the reasons why joint pain or skin complaints might flare up in times of stress.

Fertility is also a low priority during stressful times, so menstrual health and sperm production can both take a hit.

Plus your immune system can be affected by stress in a number of ways – which can be a vicious cycle when you’re worried about your health.

The good news is that you can support all of these systems directly via a nutritional approach. However, you first need to address the stress.

Soothe stressful nerves

Let’s start with your nervous system. Your nerves send electrical messages around your body, a bit like texts, that either stimulate or calm activity. They use neurotransmitters as a kind of language. GABA (gamma-Aminobutyric acid) and acetylcholine tend to provide soothing messages, so anything that will help you make and release those should help keep you and your body calm. GABA can actually be produced by certain microbes in your gut, for example, so gut and microbiome health is important.

There are even foods that help you make serotonin, the neurotransmitter that makes you feel happy. Salmon, for example, contains the tryptophan you can make serotonin from, plus the B6 you need to convert it into your happy chemical. If you’re vegetarian, try combining sweet potato (for the B6) with spinach (for the tryptophan).

Electrical messages and neurotransmitters don’t just send themselves. They are fired by sodium, potassium and calcium, so you need to make sure you have the right balance of those in your diet. Plus you’ll need essential fatty acids, like those found in fish oil, nuts and seeds, alongside other raw materials to make healthy nerve cells. These omega 3s are usually depleted by stress, so even more reason to make sure you have enough.

Reset adrenal stress hormones

Hormones are another kind of messenger system. If nerve signals are text or instant messages, hormones are more like a traditional letter in an envelope. That “letter” has to be delivered to its target cells, which will have hormone receptors (think letterboxes) in a shape that matches that particular hormone.

Your adrenals sit on top of your kidneys, and release a number of hormones in response to stress. Hormones that make your heart beat faster, your fight and flight muscles ready for action, and your vision tunnelled to the threat ahead. They direct energy away from digestion, reproduction, elaborate thought processes and anything else it doesn’t have time for right now.

Certain nutrients are helpful in resetting and unravelling all of this. Nutrients such as vitamin B5, zinc and magnesium, alongside a host of others. A lentil daal with spinach will give you a boost in all of these. Zinc and magnesium are also useful anti-inflammatories – but again, can be depleted by stress, so you may need an extra boost of these.

Rebalance your microbiome

There has been interesting research around the relationship between your microbiome and how easily your adrenals can reset from stress. A double-blind placebo-controlled randomised test with healthy human volunteers showed that those taking probiotic supplements had lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, as well as reduced anxiety, depression and other mental health factors.

There are 3 key nutritional factors to establishing a healthy microbiome:

• Eat a large variety and quantity of fibre-rich vegetables
• Eat frequent but smaller amounts of fermented foods, such as sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir or yoghurt
• Reduce sugar, refined foods, and anything you know irritates your digestion

Kirsten teaches the nutrition module on our Complementary Healthcare degree in Eastbourne and regularly blogs on her own website, Connect with Nutrition. She has over a decade’s worth of experience to share, and her blogs are well worth a read if you feel your diet isn’t fully supporting your health and wellbeing.