This is a YouTube video titled "Dr. Mark's Minute - Why Stress Makes You Fat" created in February 2012. It features a monologue by Ask AI Mark explaining how stress hormones, particularly cortisol, contribute to obesity, diabetes, and related health issues by affecting metabolism, appetite, and sleep.
Did you know that stress makes you fat? Stress hormones actually play a big role in obesity and diabetes. Chronic stress increases this hormone called cortisol. That's the stress hormone, the main stress hormone. And chronically high levels of cortisol cause high blood sugar, they cause high cholesterol, they cause depression, they even cause Dementia, and they promote the accumulation of that nasty belly fat we so commonly see in patients with insulin resistance or diabetes. Too much cortisol also causes muscle loss and it interferes with thyroid and growth hormones and it really affects your sleep, all of which promote weight gain. Sleep deprivation actually increases your appetite and your sugar cravings. In fact, they did a study of healthy young men and they deprived them of just two hours of sleep a night and their blood levels of ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, went way up. And their blood levels of PYY, which is the brake on the appetite, went down. And that made them crave and eat more sugar and carbs and all these foods that were driving them to have weight gain and diabetes. So getting enough quality sleep is really important in the treatment of diabetes and it can help you prevent weight gain, diabetes and heart disease. And also finding ways to push the pause button is critical to reduce those stress hormones.
