Mind the Heart – Psychosocial Risk Factors and Cognitive Functioning in Cardiovascular Disease

We are excited that a new Pollin Center article “Psychosocial Functioning, BMI, and Nutrition Behaviors in Women at Cardiovascular Risk“ has been published in “Frontiers in Psychology”

Although we all know that proper nutrition and physical activity decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease, many women have difficulty adopting good health habits.  We are  interested in exploring the psychological challenges facing women who seek to take charge of their health.  Using data collected at our multidisciplinary clinic, we studied the relationship between anxiety, overweight, and eating habits and made some surprising discoveries, particularly with regard to anxiety and consumption of high-carbohydrate foods.  We assumed that greater anxiety would lead to greater consumption of sugary foods (e.g., sweetened drinks and white bread), given our understanding of emotional eating.  We found that this was indeed the case as anxiety increased from low to moderate levels,  but we unexpectedly discovered that women with even higher levels of anxiety actually were actually less likely to consume sugar-rich foods.  

This may be explained by the physiology of anxiety, as the body’s reaction to anxiety changes when anxiety increases past moderate levels.  At the higher levels of anxiety, the body experiences a physiological “fight-or-flight” reaction which then gives way to a more passive “freeze” mode.  This phenomenon may explain women’s tendencies to indulge in more sugary foods when moderately anxious, but to be less attracted to these foods as anxiety increases from moderate to severe levels.  These findings highlight the importance of designing targeted lifestyle interventions that account not only for presence of psychological factors such as anxiety, but for the precise level at which a woman might be struggling with their emotions.