A new study indicates that a combination of high fat, high sugar, and high stress is what piles on dangerous abdominal fat. A high-stress life with a good diet is not a problem, as far as belly fat goes, and a a bad diet is not as much of a problem if stress levels are low. At least if you're a mouse.
This should be good news, since both diet and our response to stress can be controlled. However, the tone of the article bothers me, as it focuses on the medical and pharmaceutical possibilities the study raises. Not that these are necessarily wrong, but it misses the big picture.
I've also noticed a fad among dentists lately: selling mouth guards to protect the teeth of those whose stress response includes grinding their teeth at night. Again, there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you have to treat the symptoms.
However, treating symptoms while ignoring the disease itself can be irresponsible. It's true there's been a lot of hot air spilled on the subject of our bad diets, but a high level of stress still seems to be considered inevitable, even a badge of courage and a mark of success. Why aren't we paying more attention to preventing unnecessary stress in the first place, and to ways of controlling and moderating our response to unavoidable stress?Also, how about low-stress, good-diet?
