COLUMBUS, Ohio – Today’s busy families often rely on fast food and
take-out to keep everyone fed and on schedule. Researchers at The Ohio
State University Wexner Medical Center want to know whether those types
of food, which are often high in saturated fat, impact the body’s
reaction to stress.
The recently launched study is for married
couples and conducted by the husband and wife team of Ron Glaser,
director of The Ohio State University College of Medicine’s Institute
for Behavioral Medicine Research; and Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor
at the same institute. Both have spent more than three decades studying
stress and its physical effects.
“In the marital studies we
conduct, we’re also interested in how close personal relationships can
either be protective or make things more difficult,” says
Kiecolt-Glaser, who is also principal investigator of the study.
The
research is designed to help gain an understanding of the physiological
differences in the body’s responses to a fast-food type meal compared
to a healthier meal, and how the discussion of a stressful topic can
impact health.
As part of the study, married couples are asked to
attend two day-long research sessions together at Ohio State’s Clinical
Research Center. During each visit, blood samples are taken and the
couples eat meals that appear identical. At one visit, the food is high
in saturated fat. However, the other meal is low in saturated fat. The
couples are asked to discuss a stressful subject in their marriage, such
as finances, in-laws, annoying habits, etc. More blood is taken
afterward to determine if the stressful discussions influence how the
body processes the fat in the food by looking for changes in
triglycerides.
“What you’re eating may actually interact with
your behavior, to make things worse in terms of your physiological
response,” says Kiecolt-Glaser. “In previous studies, when discussions
got a little more heated we saw bigger changes in stress hormones and
larger changes in immune response. In this study, we theorize that after
the high saturated fat meal, a negative discussion might increase
physiological responses more steeply.”
Kiecolt-Glaser, Glaser and
their team are looking for changes in pro-inflammatory cytokines in the
couples’ blood samples. These proteins are part of the immune response
and start the healing process after an infection, injury or other tissue
damage that leads to inflammation. Previous research by Kiecolt-Glaser
and Glaser has shown when stress causes cytokines, particularly
interleukin-6 (IL-6), to remain elevated in the blood stream too long,
they contribute to long-term inflammation which is linked to a number of
age-related diseases including diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease
and cancer. Glaser says stress isn’t the only factor that can keep
levels of cytokines elevated; fat can too.
“Fat cells around the
abdomen, called adipocytes, also make cytokines. So the more fat you
have around your waist, the higher levels of these cytokines you have,
and the more health risks you have,” says Glaser who is also a professor
of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics. “It’s really
about the processes of how stress affects the body. When we start
learning about the processes, then we can try to find ways to modify
them.”
The study is expected to wrap up in 2014 and is funded by
the National Institutes of Health and the Ohio State Center for Clinical
and Translational Science, a collaboration of scientists and clinicians
from seven OSU Health Science Colleges, Ohio State’s Wexner Medical
Center and Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
This article was first published at www.newswise.com